saradevil

Ago

2020-04-19T15:13:00.000-07:00

I started thinking about last year. There is nary a real story told of last year. Last year, the year before, the year, before, the year before.

A life accelerated.

Before I would have said my life in Korea was the male-storm. The endless tidal pool of spinning and resurfacing to spin again.

I was everywhere.

And yet, there were so many stretches of lassitude. No- movement. It's unfair though, there was so much, but it was all small. My movements were the shaken atoms in the sphere. We moved together in a wild cacophony of sound, making everything a dizzy of delight and adventure and misadventure. Mix in a bowl of a foreign country and there is always some endless whimsy in the banal.

There was quiet when I came back to America. It was all too quiet for so long, and all too routine. And then, slowly, creepily, unexpectedly, wildly, my small scale life of movement in Korea explodes into an exponential international adventure.

Soft lights of sundown in Montmartre, window scenes hundreds of generations old, and new to my eyes. A guitar player in Argentina. An old crow on the cliffs of Dover. The clouds collecting on the edge of a hurricane, only cotton in the wind. Snow on Rockies and the melting, endless summer of Miami. So often I say 'time has no meaning'.

Time is suddenly so full of meaning.

A year ago I was sitting in Heathrow, getting ready to board a flight, having toured the bit of England I could get at in a weekend. My head was full of ley lines and sunsets in the middle of sacred groves.

Now, I look from my little tower at the lake and the little grove below and wonder where through leads this time.

The Day the World Ended

2020-03-23T18:10:00.000-07:00

8 hours later I agreed to cancel the flight.

1 week later all flights were cancelled to Europe.

1 day later all flights were grounded outside of the continent.

2 days later the borders closed around the word.

It was Thursday, you see, March 19th the end of the world.

I died.

And yet I live.

New Years

2020-02-03T11:25:00.000-08:00

2018 ended.

2019 began.

2019 ended.

2020 began.

2019 was the fastest year, the most complicated year, the most jam packed year of living. I should have known from the beginning it would be so complicated.

2018 ended in bed, in the arms of the Gambler, in happy moments of stolen amusement before a show that would easily not end before midnight. Happy and amused, I dragged us across town for the end of year show, maybe the end of the world show.

The beginning of 2019 heralded great strife.

I left my phone with security when we got to the venue. I had to go back for it, amused. At least I knew it was in good hands.

Together the gambler and I greeted the friends in the band that we knew we would soon see on stage. We had come for the Mucca Pazza show, the Chicago marching band, who were closing out the old year and opening the new with marching band music. Mucca Pazza is a collection of all the old marching band members who liked playing then and want to continue playing now. Like the marching band of my youth, the modern day grown ups are much the same. Gender non-conforming, queer, high, silly, goofy, misanthropes and misfits and the color guard, not quite cheerleaders, probably all a bunch of lesbians and gays and non-off us caring a goddamn wit. Modern day me remembers Ancient Marching band me, and this is on par. Mucca Pazza is the marching band grown up, grown out, grown loud and grown proud.

We stand on a rail to watch and Chicago floods in. The horns blare the drummers keep up the pace, the color guard encourages our laughs and our cheers and our uncoordinated dancing. We give them every letter they want to spell out naught words and chant phrases of power that only those who have spent a life living on the counter of norm culture, who have become adults participating in norm culture, and adult who still secretly live their lives underground, we cheer for who we are all together and unashamed because what other kinds of people would start the year at with an alternative Marching Band.

I kissed the Gambler at midnight at the close of 2018 and the start of 2019 and new I was going to be in for a hell of a year.

2019 did not disappoint.

The end of the year, was as frenetic as the beginning. I ran, hand in hand through a sea of humanity to celebrate with fire and sparkles and a city exploding for my entertainment.

There are so many stories that should be told, so many stories being made, the years ending and beginning in wildness and joy and becoming precedents for the years to follow.

Same Old Me

2020-02-03T11:13:00.000-08:00

It is a new year.

It is now 2020.

These words are being communicated through the electronic box I use to do all my communication. For work, for play, for pleasure, my life is the glowing lights and the keyboard.

I type over 200 words a minute.

It is 2020.

Later today I will use a small device that is a miniature version of this one to read a book, to watch the news, to listen to music, to check on transit information, and make a decision about whether I want to order a car, order dinner, or take a bus somewhere new.

This morning I have used the magic boxes and lit screens to remember moments of my past I had forgotten.

Good moments.

Somewhere, in a database warehouse in a dark room, this person exists. The words that balance and dangle on light fliting across an accessible world floating through the air, waiting to be received, accepted, read, this is all real. The construct of this piece of work, dairy, journal, uploading the core of who I am, all of this is now a data point.

A million little characters of a data point.

The dynamic capture of information here is wild, human, frail and frayed.

This data log in 2020 is enough to recreate enough of me to analyze me, to break me down to try to understand my right from wrong thoughts, and my good from bad thoughts.

Yet, because this is utterly human, the digital channels we use to parse the data fall flat, subtly is not understood. My fear and my utter laise faire attitude about all the happenings at the same time are impossible to render. Contridictions.

This catalog of data is a collection of contridictions and change.

A life experienced and forgotten by the soft mushy brain bag that also has all this same data.

An algorithm may some day be able to recreate from all the pieces here something that is like a construct of me. It's 2020. That algorithm could exist tomorrow if anyone cared to build it.

It would be flawed and not be me.

But still I live in 2020, and I must deal with the reality that I know this. That I have read the history of the future and I understand how all these data points lead eventually to manipulation and control. Sharing, and openness and honesty are a terrifying albatross that might pit anyone one person against the algorithms that are being built to tell us what kind of good person we should be.

I live in a generation that has never seen Demolition Man, which is hilarious to me as I watch how we push and push and push for a safer society through technology. There is a generation that gets a waterdowned versions of the important messages they should be taking from P. Dick, or I. Asmov, or F. Herbert, or J. Tiptree, or J. Vance, or...so many names....the joymaker belongs to Pohl and I shall be forever greatful to understand the Age of the Pussyfoot is also the age we live in.

With influencers and credits and units and expectations of how much easier and better it all is while watching the moral and social society that exists outside of our electronics burn to the ground.

Because technology is making it all better.

Because technology is making it all worse.

And in the meantime, technology is recreating me from the digital pixels my life occupied in the ether. I have not been able to find a way to come to peace with it, but I also know it is important to continue.

For whatever value this has to me, in 2020, it may have more to me in 2030, should we figure out how to make it another 10 years without letting ourselves, and our frailty and our humanity destroy it all.

Should that destruction happen, I know, I will have had this.

And in 2020, real records still matter, no matter how flawed the human those records reflect.

It's a new year. The last was magical, and barely captured in words. This year, I think I want to remember completely. And while I do that, I want to capture that past as it has become to me. And for the future me, the projection of me, the experiment of me, the footprint of me, the placeholder I might become flesh or electronic. This is important too.

Someday I may be judged by this record, and I'm horrified and amused. Such a quandary to try to judge such a life as mine.

It's a new year.

It's the same old me.

Sunny Dog Day Walk

2020-02-03T10:58:00.000-08:00

We strapped in and prepared for a good mile walk. The day was the right mix of gloomy grey cloudy and cool almost autumn now breeze. The small dogs, once over the shock of their harnesses, were ready to go.

These are long walks in Chicago.

We stop often. People want to talk to us, I want to talk to know one. I want to be in the moment. I want to be out of the moment. I want to bond with these tiny dogs. I want to watch the adulation as we pass by.

There is nothing and noone on the streets as we walk. We stop. We practice. We train. We are together and complete with each other. They are my walking armor guard, and I am their captain.

After the long walk south along Sheridan we decided to take the bus back. The dogs were tired and exhausted as I wanted them to be. I was feeling wound down, happy, tired, accomplished. Sometimes walking to relax is really the most important thing you can do.

Sometimes you just need to go for a walk.

From Russia To Home

2019-10-21T19:27:00.001-07:00

It's late. I'm tired.

It's not as late as some of the hours I land. It's before midnight, barely scraping the end of what science might refer to as 20:00 although maybe UTC would make more sense if we think about it that way.

This doesn't really matter. It's flying from the west coast after a two hour 5 a.m. bus. It's 4 hours in the air and ages of man on the ground. I depart my metal tube without making out with a young lady, much to my own shagrin, though the memory does make me smile. It's up the plank and down the bend and to home. All I want to do is to be home.

I order a car, because this is how we live now. Using our devices, our tethers, our joymakers, the infinite us that we are building from our own data to ensure we will live on forever. I call the car and I ascend to the platform and I look out over a sea of cars in wall to wall traffic backed up as far as the eye can see in all directions.

It's late.

I seriously consider taking the train.

In the end I manage to hold out the more than 40 minute wait for the car that was desperately trying to get to me. I called and got a full voicemail, which only added to my frustration, and my anger, and my annoyance. At least the beverage in my travel cup was not water.

When the car finally does get close enough I find it by walking, and hope in muttering under my breath in anger about the full voicemail. The driver doesn't really acknowledge me, further fouling my mood. So I sit back, silent and sulking, sullen and annoy and watch as Terminal 2 mocks me.

"Here you leave and here you return and here you always shall be."

I want my dogs.

The driver is fiddling with his phone and it occurs to me that he's trying to find a way out of the traffic. In the thirty odd minutes we have been sitting there we have managed to move to terminal three, thankfully the last terminal on this particular drive, the final terminal before we can hopefully get some speed. I see what he is doing, and I actually happen to know the route to my place from Touhy, so I tell him so.

He stares at me blankly.

I recall reading his name in the app, but I don't remember it. It's not a native English name, so there is a good guess he doesn't speak English.

"What's your first language?" I ask. I've been trying to figure out polite ways to ask, because asking where are you from makes me angry these days. It seems to have landed, though, as he smiled with no malice and answered, "Russian."

"Russian, is not one of my languages."

I don't know why, but suddenly all my anger is a puddle and in its place is something other. Something very important here. This space. This time. Or maybe it was this particular action. I tell my new friend that I know how to get home as soon as we can turn off at Touhy and in response he turns to his phone.

And I watch a thing.

I do this thing when I travel now. I embrace and engage. I have decided language or no, that will experience the world. Quiero el mundo. Es mio y lo quiero. My head is already awash in language. I have come from so many languages. So many wonderful and amazing and beautiful languages.

"Russian, is not one of my languages, but that doesn't have to be a problem."

Our fingers do the talking for a moment. I watch as he types and then pushes play. He tells me through his female interpreter that he is from Russia, and that he has lived here for two years, and he has just had a daughter and he really wants to learn English. He plans to start school in the winter. It's the last bit when I put my headphones back on.

It's not that I didn't want to listen, but now, I am inside a deep, peaceful place. Here is something I know so well and it is me, and all of me, and this is the moment I live for, all week talking around communication and understanding the implications of what I do and the impact has for all of us...so, I put on my headphones.

"I want to learn English, but I'm afraid to talk." she tells me.

I respond back. "Я не боюсь."

He stares a full minute at me. The luxury of the wall to wall traffic. I show him how I am doing what I am doing, my magic language trick, and I encourage him to do the same. By the time we get to the edge of traffic we have really gotten going and it is hard to remember that without cars in front of you it's no longer safe to turn around to make eye contact to talk. So much talk.

We talk about his fear of language.

I talk about why it is important.

Расскажи историю. Какая у тебя история? Что вы хотите, чтобы люди знали. Запиши это. Как и сейчас. Используйте свой телефон. Переведите и попрактикуйтесь в истории. Запомни это. Выскажи это громко. Снова и снова. Вы будете говорить в кратчайшие сроки.

"I don't know what to talk about."

So I told him my story in Russian. But it is a story I work for myself.

Los idiomas son importantes para ti. Para mi. Por su identidad, lo sé porque mi abuelo hablaba español, pero yo no. O no me criaron hablando español.

¿Por qué? A mi abuelo le costaba tanto aprender inglés que no dejaba que sus hijos aprendieran a
hablar español. Quería que sus hijos fueran estadounidenses.

When we pulled up on my street, I had just finished. He helped me out with tears in his eyes. I knew right than I had done the thing I do. The thing that I am trying to become comfortable with doing. The thing I have long been uncomfortable with doing.

I changed his life. I changed mine.

A veces, el cambio es todo lo que tenemos.

Spinning

2019-10-20T19:11:00.006-07:00

I feel like I am on the cusp of an impossible moment.

I have more hope than I have had in years. I don't know exactly what it is that I am doing, or where it is that I want to go, anymore. I am content somehow, and I feel like I've already put into place all the appropriate pieces to take me wherever it is that I aspire to go.

I think that my goal is now more aspirational than anything else. There is no more destination.

There is only the weird in between.

It is so weird.

It is so wonderful.

Saturday night, light night, halfway to the airport a the edge of the city, driving roads I know like the back of my hand now, after years and years of flights away, and away and up there I see those planes landing without me because tonight I'm on the ground in this car and -

We are parking. The lot is empty. I don't think this is it. We walk, random, arm in arm, talking in the quite air and sneaking up on buildings.

"It's a school."

"Yeah, they play these wherever they can."

"But, it's a catholic school."

"Heh. Yeah." His head nods and I catch a toothy smile in the breeze, and I smile as we corner the building looking for an old gym and a bunch of smokers, finding our success after several minutes of meandering in the cool fall evening.

There, under the gym lights, I sit fascinated, I sit paralyzed, I sit in silence, I sit in wonder and I look at the men, so many men, hunched and chunked up over a table, in their hoodies, and coats, and caps, and hats, and jackets with their music and conversations and random lives spilling on the table as fast and chips and as fast as cards turning over.

I sit hand after hand, folding and folding, and amused by this life. These bright lights in this old gym, this venue I know in so many lights and now, here a new one, with popup plastic picnic tables, folding chairs, ancient chips and greasy cards.

The mend around the table try to shock me with stories of strip clubs in the Middle East. Of course, there are stories, and of course they are blue, and I sit and smile and think about the lips of the pretty young blonde girl I kissed a few weeks back, while flying over the Georgia.

Life has become a symphony of caviler amusements. Of bizarre excitements and wild moods. It is unpredictable and spinning like a wheel with no point, except that the point of the spinning should be to keep going, to keep it steady, and to get better if at all possible.

Like I said, it's aspirational.

Tomorrow I pave a future of unpredictable wonder and hope. I feel hope like I never have before.

Massive Attack Mezzanine:XXI

2019-09-13T05:54:00.001-07:00

Last year we had a conversation in the cold winter. It was chilly and one or the other of our beds was warm. Planning music, planning concerts, planning fun.

"What should we listen to now?"

"Massive Attack?"

"Yes, good choice. Massive Attack."

"You know if they ever come to Chicago, I'm getting tickets and you will be my date. I don't care if we are still seeing each other than. I don't care if you've moved to Vegas. I will find you. I will put you over my shoulder. I will take you to a Massive Attack concert."

"I guess I'm going to a Massive Attack concert then."

We laughed and went back to being warm.

A week later Massive Attack announced it was touring. Getting tickets proved to be a challenge, but the challenge did result in Thom Yorke Tuesday, so it was fine. The tickets, destined for a concert in March, end up being for a concert in September. It didn't matter. The night rolled around and we rolled out. Me in all my goth princess finery with a see-through head to tow lace dress with a split that made it far less decent than advertised.

The show was at the Chicago theater, the line was around the block and down two. We were far too safe to care and far too happy to finally be at the show. In one of the most beautiful cities, in one of the most beautiful theaters, we found our seats and we waited, center stage, but in the balcony. Perfect to see everything that was happening and take in every note, every light, with joy.

Massive Attack did not come for joy.

There was an oddness as we waited listening to a washed out music track that had a couple of songs that we recognized the second run through because the washed out tiny refrain of "Hit Me Baby One More Time" was easy to spot on round two. And round three. They had announced the show was starting at some point during the first round of this weird washed out cycle, so it seemed odd to be taking so very long for the band to enter onto the stage.

I could read the nervous anticipation bordering on anger from the crowd.

"It's not hard to lose a Chicago audience and it's not good when you do," I said. This was foreshadowing, I didn't realize it at the time. We had noted the subtlety of the unease.

"Bad house management."

"Could be. But if they don't come out soon they might have a classic Chicago riot on their hands." I watched over the crowd while speaking. A variety of various goths, and teens, and older stoners, and classic rockers, and punks, and freaks, and fucking DJ Scary Lady Sarah walked right by me and she smells like every inch the dark goth goddess Queen of Chicago that she is.

"That's her," I sequel in delight. "Gods she even smells like the Queen of Gothness. Can't you smell it?"

A charming laugh. "And what does a Gothness smell like?"

"Like Patchouli, and clove cigarettes and the insufferable longing of a hundred ages, obviously."

"Obviously."

Suddenly, I hear it click over, the crowd music starts the fourth time. There is no Britney Spears this time, but I recognize the tinny lines of Ray of Light from Madonna and suddenly the theater is plunged into darkness.

There is not notice.

There is not an announcement.

The lights just go off. The crowd takes a breath.

There is no opener.

There is only Massive Attack. Or rather, the Velvet Underground "I found a Reason." We fall into the music. We fall into the words. It starts with a missive about the data, and it goes from there. It is, as if watching a dystopian science fiction story written by Massive Attack unfold, to a soundtrack of Massive Attack. Behind them music, the seven piece band, behind all of this rolling hills and technicolor lightness. The light board for this show encompasses the entire theater. The technicolor is documentary images interwoven between powerful flashing, throbbing stage lights.

"I'm glad we brought the sunglasses." A nod. The sunglasses do not come off.

Between the lights, and the story, and the music of Mezzanine which is like a soundtrack of my life given how long I have listened to this very album, it was easy to get complacent as the audience. To think nothing of it.

Until the ticking and drum beat indicate something I didn't expect. I sit up straight. I look to my left.

I recognize Bela Lugosi is Dead within three notes, this is a song I have known for so long that it is like a part of my fabric. It reminds me of spinning in darkness randomly on a rare night at the Neo, out with the other dervish vampires. It reminds me of smokey hotel rooms in the American Northwest. It reminds me of a thousand weird, wild, things. But darkness. How can one miss the darkness?

And it is from this darkness, from the green glowing stage that is now a vampire's delight of deep dark shadows that can't be cut through and the wispy darkness of "I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead" the show takes it's turn. Massive Attack asked a lot of their fans. Their music, our music, has been the soundtrack of so many thrills, beauties, chills, astoundments. It has also been co-opted as impressive music to narrate death, destruction, and hardship. As the group slides from the shaded darkness to the technicolor reality and suddenly, as they put it, "outside the pleasure dome, the wars continue."

For three songs starting here, I kept my eyes tightly closed. I could hear, from the sounds of the audience, that I had made the right choice. I knew were it was going as soon as they hinted it. They warned us, not everyone paid attention. While they asked a lot of us, though, they still gave the music performance we wanted. From here I vacillated between eyes open and closed, lost in the story they were telling. Not the science fiction dystopian reality that I was thinking, no, this was the real life dystopian horror and this music is as much as part of that, a part of this, as I am, we are, we all are.

It was utterly devastating, and utterly perfect.

"Let the past be the past."

The lights came up as suddenly as they went down.

I sat silently stunned, holding hands, watching the theater drain.

"That was phenomenal."

"Yes."

Weedeater

2019-09-10T17:45:00.002-07:00

"This popped up in my feed again."

It was a screenshot of a concert. I had mentioned this concert some months ago.

We go to shows together.

We are rock stars.

We are rock attendees.

A few months ago the concert had shown up and I mentioned it.

"I checked into that Weedeater concert but they are touring Europe. I don't know what that's all about."

Oh.

In another country it is the morning or the evening. I am playing a princess trapped by raiders being taken to every city where I am displayed, over and over gain, to the satisfaction of the gathered crowed.

A concert pops up on my phone. The West? I'm in the West? The East? What is this place where I want to be when time and space have lost all meaning to me. I send a picture.

"I got the tickets!"

And so it was that we gathered together to pre-game for a Weedeater concert.

"It's going to be phenomenal!"

"No doubt."

The venue is new to me, Thaila Hall. I've had tickets for shows here before but I always abandon them because it's so far away and the shows start so late. Entering this night I feel a small sense of remorse for this. It's a beautiful space, quiet, old in that Chicago way.

Everyone there is dark metal sledge metal stoner metal crowd. We make eye contact to know, we make eye contact to forget. I seize the arm next to mine to steady myself after the earlier safety meeting. We are ultimately as safe as safe can be.

"I'm getting a drink, do you want anything?"

"Naw, I'm good."

"I'll be back."

I get two club sodas in the back of the bar. I notice the merch booth entrance just behind. Being exceptionally early, we have plenty of time so I go back and announce this merry occurrence.

"Should we go check it out?"

"¿Porque no?"

Back in the back in the back of the back, we enter the merch tent and all the bands are represented. The headliner is UK grunge band popular since I left high school, not touring since I left Korea. Time is a strangeness now. Orange Goblin is the reason this tour is happening. Weedeater is the reason we are hear. The opening band SKULL is just a rock metal big band that ties the whole thing together opening with a classic prog presented with skill that is pleasant regardless of ones familiarity.

We saunter over to the band I notice a bottle of opened Jalapeno Sauce on the merch table. I'm curious about this having just made a batch of jalapeno sauce from the peppers grown at the house.

"And this, what's this?

"Well, that young lady is some sauce. Anyone can try it just screw off the lid and go for it."

I smile a very safe smile.

"And what's in it?"

Perhaps it's the Cheshire expression, but the band member pauses. I can't remember who is who, I'm pretty sure this is the bassist.

"Oh, well...it doesn't have ANYTHING in it if that is what you are worried about."

"Well, take the fun out of it."

He blinks.

"Well if that is what you are after, I can offer you these cookies."

A bag at his hip slides open and he withdraws a cookie and breaks off a bit.

"What do you think," I turn, "should I take cookies from strangers?"

"What could possibly go wrong?"

I eat the cookie and share, and we giggle while looking at the merch. He buys a shirt and as the purchase is being sealed the Bassist looks at us and tells the story of the cookie.

"We were at this show, like, middle of fucking nowhere, you know. Back of forever. Beyond. Whatever man, the nights were dark and the beds were alright. We were there and I'm standing at the merch like now, and this kid, man, this kid. All night. Just sitting there staring at me. I ask him 'Man you need anything?' and he's like 'NO!' he's like...like fucking emphatic about it, right? But like, man he's like a gargoyle all hunched over, and shit, and I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with this kid? and I try to ask him more questions or something but he just keeps starring at me. And, well, anyway, I'm getting ready to pack it so I can get on stage and this kid just comes rushing me, and I'm like, you know, fuck, cause you know America right now, like is this kid gonna kill me? But like, no, this kid he just slams these huge ass cookies into my money jar and he, like, shouts, "THAT'S FOR YOU!" and that was like it, man."

"That's amazing," I say.

"That's how you are going to feel in about 20 minutes."

The show was phenomenal. Weedeater stole the performance with their practiced set.

I felt amazing.

Latin American Landings

2019-09-10T17:19:00.001-07:00

It's early in the morning.

It's always early in the morning.

Everyone around me is speaking in Spanish.

And now I understand more than I used to.

There is a strangeness here. I am more at home now than I have ever been in. The mornings in Peru are cold and chilly. October is not yet summer, it's late spring. I'm entirely under-packed. I am entirely under-rested.

It is four a.m. and I find my taxi to the airport. The hotel staff is polite and discreet. Mysterious Madame Davila who is living with them for two weeks.

She says almost nothing.
'
She drinks a negroni at the bar sometimes alone.

She is often frustrated.

Mostly, she is sad.

I can feel the perception and I appreciate the astuteness.

In some places in the world who I am, what I do, is a level of attainment, but there is so much about what I do that is service through and through. I understand the audience because I feel the day to day experience of the audience more than most who stand in the same place. I have never forgotten that I am the audience.

It serves me well.

At four in the morning on the ride to the airport I watch the sunrise over the ocean shore, lapping waves, and the coasts of Lima from Milaflores to the airport.

I am quiet.

Days and days of walking across the tarmac. Myself. Alone. A plane full of travelers at four a.m.

We are all strangers.

We are all alike.

I love the fucking Andes.

Survivors gonna survive

2019-09-08T08:02:00.000-07:00

Watching the world melt down for the last three years has not been entertaining. This thing, the exposure of all the toxic underlying reality that some of us have always known and some of us have never known.

The survivors do what must be done while the collective rest lose their collective mind and wonder what happened to all the decent and normal and wonderful and innocent world...then there is the collective that has just figure out how to keep moving.

The world has manifested the underbelly.

I wondered the other day if this is not part of a 100 years cycle that humanity beats to, a single drum of the real, unfettered, human that we are-restrained animal with toys and wealth and capacity far beyond any maturity we have sustained as a species.

We rush towards the future, looking already head to 2030 and 2040 and 2050...and in the meantime around us are the same signs of a precipice, of a society driven to it's darkest pockets of exclusivity and alienation. Anyone not me is alien. Everyone is alien.

Burn the whole thing now.

100 years ago, the 1930s.

100 years later the 2030s.

Is it any wonder that we haven't even acknowledged the first world war of the twenty aughts. It's a marvel that it is that almost 100 years after the first world war, spanning 2014 to 2018, we have had a repeat.

Perhaps very few people see it, but someday I think there will be historians that look back at us and shake their heads that we have been so naive as not to realize that we are already in the midst of a war that started in the mid 2000s and rages yet still, now a burning ember of a war. We are now all the survivors of the first data wars, and as the fallout continues to settle and winners and losers continue to rise and fall, the trailing threads and insecurities created by the early 21st Century data wars are the burning embers of resentment in culture, social change, and mobility that will eventually become the raging fires of the 2030s. Perhaps by then, it will be fought be weapons, but it seems clear that our desire for blood thirsty pillaging is at the moment being mitigated into a manifested need to control and capitalize.

It's an odd thing to know that I have lived through a war waged on glowing screens. It is a wonder to know that even more fighting will happen in the next 10 years. This dark war is not one without causalities. Countries have fallen to the misinformation campaigns waged in the twenty aughts. Western democracy attacked mercilessly is in the throes of restoration, yet still strangled by property into capitulating into the defeat that was created very specifically for us. The active campaign may have been exposed, and possibly ended, the consequences still far from revealed. And this is the stage up which we will enter our mid-century.

I'm curious what will happen halfway through this century, perhaps I will even get to witness it first hand.

For now, like most survivors, I've been trying to handle myself. The world outside my mind always provided the stability for me to navigated the tender tendrils of my own humanity, which oftentimes is a game of cat and mouse. Can we be human for 24 hours today and if we cannot, what then?

When the world goes mad around you, madness becomes everything.

Disengaging is a way to handle this.

Reengaging is another.

The cluster and cacophony that has been raging is a boil. It spills over. There is so much to say.

There is so much more to survive.

Moving Forward

2019-09-08T06:46:00.002-07:00

It's taken me awhile to figure out how I want to proceed. Almost 20 years ago, and far beyond that, capturing fleeting feeling and memories, documenting them, shooting them into the void...it was a time honored human tradition.

For thousands of years there are humans out there that cannot help documenting their existence for one reason or another. In some cases, the documentation is fully consented to, an act of life defiance to live so exposed, so open. Nin comes to mind with her radical truth and willingness to shed all her words into the world for her life to be an experience that can be experience by others. There are paintings in caves that are millions of years old, documenting ritual and life, to be sure. However, artists have been found, and we know that even back in through ancient ages someone was telling a less conventional story about humans in the world in favor for the more personal story of one's personal connection to the world.

My world is a strange strange place.

Through pages and pages of this database, my way of skip rocks along the void, I have documented pieces of myself from a variety of ages. Some of those mes are terrifying to relive and I steer away from finding my words then and there and remembering who that was. Some of my words bring great joy and a sense of my absurd duty to the world to keep existing in a state of constant adventure. Some of me are bittersweet. Some of me are falling in love. Some of me suffer through death. Some of me suffer through heartbreak. Some of me dance. Some of my connect with the universe again and celebrate the connection.

It is me though. It's mine.

The survielance state is something I have always been aware of. If we are honest, we have all always been aware of the survielance state, but the overarching and most human expectation of all is that one person, this person, me, is not nearly important enough to be the trained spot in the ether that the state wants to watch.

We were naive.

We are still naive.

And so lets us continue. I have no illusions about what continuing to write could mean but I know what the absence of writing does mean in real physical ways. There is no loss, because I remember, but I like so much recalling it through the lens of me real time, she who was there who is different from I who am now and from she who will yet to be.

It's all paradoxical, continuing makes no sense, and yet, I'd rather have the reality of the exposure of my life and history than nothing at all. A fear of remembering or being remembered makes no sense anymore. Even if we are so insignificant that no one really has considered looking, some ancient years in the future, maybe those will be the scattered pieces of humanity that matter more. Big events are impossible to avoid. The subtly of the human experience to be found in our smaller lives, in a single moment, in my single moment, is far more interesting a discovery to be had, one that can only exist if it is being created.

Thus, the tapestry must continue.

Perhaps it is no longer in order.

Perhaps it will no longer make sense.

Did it ever really make sense?

And

2019-07-07T16:55:00.000-07:00

Of course, the most accurate parallel narrative will always lie at the foot up steps in a city that is dust beyond dust and nothing but the original.

The story never goes away.

It just gets longer, weirder and stranger.

A 4,000 year old analogy is always apt.

Absence

2019-02-02T11:08:00.004-08:00

It's the times.

The times makes it hard to write. The times make me feel like I'm not even here anymore. I'm so much inside the fact that everyday is so much bigger. Every day so many more things are happening that make any little thing I do, any little adventure I have, seen entirely unimportant in the context of it all.

I have fits and starts of writing.

A card catalog of thoughts that are strings of words that are moments that I wanted to remember that are now little scratches on a napkin here, a collection of 1s and 0s in the binary that are more digital flotsam collecting fractions of energy from the universe to keep existing until they don't.

Random elements that are me in the times.

The Times have become so huge that nothing seems important. The Times as they are allow us to collect and catalog the flotsam of our words, experiences, existences in a way that history has never seen so prolific before. The masses who have become contributors, weighing down under a million bytes of data the collection of the hive mind that is the now. The NOW, like the Times, so documented: where every word is meaningless and full of meaning and everything is persistent at the speed of this now.

It's crushing.

It's crushing to find a voice in with either of these pressures. And with a voice is a danger, because we have the ability to search through that crush so much more effectively than ever before. If words have become power to some extent, they have also become the chinks inside of our existence that can any moment become your present, your now and your doom. 15 years ago we revealed in exploring a world through communication without barriers.

10 years ago, we became friends with the world.

2 years ago our passion for the greater, larger, world, to leave a thousand pieces of ourselves in on the digital canvas screaming "I am here" became the weaponized ammunition of a thousand downfalls. Some greater than others. Some less than you would think.

We thought we knew so much, together.

In all of that, my desire to express hasn't really gone away, it's just full of fears of what I say and who might see. But then, I've never been much for keeping the words from flowing. The absence hurts more than the presence.

I turn to a friend and I say "You know, in the hundreds of thousands of tablets we have, the greatest volume of writing produced by humans after they figured out how to write, the majority of it is transactions. Receipts. Hundreds of thousands of ancient records describing what we bought and what we sold. Nearly ninety percent of the cuneiform tablets we have unearthed are nothing but that."

The Andes

2018-11-03T19:22:00.002-07:00

I am in love with the Andes.

If I have a choice of where I end, let it be the Andes. Something about the mountains there speaks to a part of the soul I can't express.

The peaks reach.

So.

Hi.

Each step more.

Go higher.

Be higher.

But.

Each.

Step.

Higher...

Higher.

Struggle in it.

Calm yourself.

Try to breath.

Chock on your effort.

But the mountains.

And.

The.

Mountains.

Rising up around, in a circle. You at the bottom.

In the valley look up.

Struggling.

Climbing.

Pushing forward.

But the mountains.

The struggle.

The Andes understand.

The Andes have been where you have been in.

The know.

Undewater drowning in the moment when you are nothing. Submissive to the...

And suddenly, forced up..pushed up...saved. This warm thing that brings you something like peace and you change and you move, and you think nothing of it.

Until flat surface boils in ways that make you terrified. Your are an explosion waiting to be. And then you are. Hot and cold and ash and gas, beautiful and terrible. Whole and destroyed. Rescued and changed.

The Andes understand.

They have been there.

Tengo calor.

Tengo frio.

It's always when I leave the Andes that I feel the most at home.

Leaving the Andes

2018-11-03T19:14:00.000-07:00

I'm on a flight home from Peru and I'm stomach sick.

Two weeks in Peru and not once did I subcumb to that sickness.

At the tops of the mountains, when I was at the top of the world I felt it. I look out at an audience of 300 and I watched them worry as I might collapse.

I did not.

And I taught them.

I will not have been the most important moment in their life. But for an instant, like every audience, gasp, word, exclamation, raised hand, question, question, question, response...

They are my most important audience in history. In that time, and in that place. For 90 minutes I am the most important thing in the world to 90 poeple, and that makes it all okay.

That's what matters.

Sixteen days in country and not once sick, even in a moment when I had the most reason to be ill. I was all.

I was whole.

I was...me.

Enough for then, I suppose, but not enough really, ever in the end.

I'm on a home plane from Peru.

I'm on a way to home.

Somewhere ,there is a home.

Those things I say and those things I don't say

2018-09-30T13:05:00.001-07:00

I haven't been writing. Not because I have nothing to say. Everything, everywhere, feels so bad. So monumentally awful. I want to check out, do something else, have been someone else.

There is a trail of memories leading up to the moment that I am. I am now. I am the memories that have made me.

Part of the lack of writing is using every single waking moment to learn Spanish. I have decided to learn Spanish. I am proud of taking on the challenge. I am terrified by what it will make me. No me veo como una ciudadana de los Estados Unidos. No soy de Corena. No soy de Puerto Rican. ¿Quién soy?

That is the thing. Speaking Korean has just always made me somewhat other. Being other I always understood. I will never really understand being a latina, I was not raised latina, I have no history or culture to call on there, but still...I am. I am undeniably other because I cannot wake up any day and look like anything other than I am. I embody difference. I always have. The last few years in America have only made it worse.

And yet...

I haven't been writing for so many reasons. Then, just when you think it's safe, let's have a fun public slog down the depths of teenage "maybe" assault. What a good time. What a wonderful thing.

Let's knock some dust of the rape apologists and give them some new talking points. Among my favorites the: if it was rape, not raping and just trying to rape is not rape...of course the old 'boys will be boys'...

Funny thing: I grew up in the 80s, I was a pre-teen, but still, the 85-95 pretty much encapsulated most of my adolescence so I came of age and watched the weird transition happen between "he didn't mean that" and "date rape". I watched the entire national confusion as all of that went down. I even fully understand why so many older white people are freaked the fuck out about 80s date rape because, for them, that was normal society. The fear that no one seems to want to really talk about is not that these things didn't happen, not that the experiences aren't valid, not that drunken teenage assault, attempted assault, and full on rape were not okay! Of course they were not okay, just, you see, the standard was different. In the 80s the passed out drunk girl in your room, as long as they were in your friend circle, was totally open season as long as you were friends. What's a little sexual assault between friends! But you see, it wasn't assault, it was just high jinks, people!? Why does the modern area have to rob those innocents of everything?!

The thing is, for everyone defending this and down right terrified by this, especially those in their fifties and sixties, the real question is: what are you so afraid of? The truth, if you boil it down, is they are afraid of the fact that if they knew then what they know now they would know they were so far out of line it was beyond the pale. And the even greater fear: acceptance and humility. "Why should I have to feel sorry for something that, in that time, wasn't really that bad?"

Reality check. You can't change the past. I am fully aware.

I look at the long rope of history that weaves together and creates me as who I am now. I am willing to accept I made a great number of mistakes along that line. I own all of them. From misunderstanding, to awkwardness, to trying to figure out belonging, to miscommunication, all of it. I have been both demon and angel, predator and victim. Yes, I was too young and too naive to know. The difference between me now and much of the popular narrative is that I'm willing to accept that I've hurt people.

Any living, breathing, human being should be willing to accept that they have hurt people. None of us are perfect and that thing you said one time, in passing, that immediately left your mind never to grace the doorstep of your memories again? Someone, somewhere was crushed by it.

The thing I see most palpably is an unwillingness to accept that maybe, just maybe, there is a place for humility and a willingness to accept that our intersection in the lives of others may not always be a shining golden, gleaming light. This is truth.

This is all, of course, a torrent of words to think through a thing that bothers me most of all. The whole, "if it was that bad, you should have said something then?"

Here is my redacted story: When I was 16 years old my mother paid someone 20 dollars to come to my room and sexually assault me.

When he was in my room, I did not know this.

When I unlocked my door, I did not know this.

I cannot tell you much about the day before or after, only that I know it was a weekend or a holiday because I was home in my room, with a locked door, reading. Or watching stolen HBO. Or masturbating, who knows...I was sixteen fucking years old and more than anything else I wanted to be alone.

I can't tell you what happened the rest of the day. It's a total blank, if the rest of the day even happened. If the rest of the year even happened. I can barely recall with any kind of clarity any of the other days when I was 16 years old.

I can tell you I know the name he went by.

I can tell you I know what he looked like.

I can tell you he was muscular and thin and strong. But not nearly as strong or practiced as I was in wrestling and fighting. Part instinct. Part siblings.

I can tell you what his face looked like as I fought him out of my room and to the stairs, where I eventually pushed him down.

I can tell you I went back to my bedroom and locked the door and listened to my heart beat for a long time.

I love to read. I can't even tell you what I was reading when all this happened.

It did happen.

I found out weeks later from the siblings how it happened. That my mother had paid him, that she was pissed her money was wasted and I hadn't been raped. There was a level of amusement from the siblings in how I had thwarted my mother. As the oldest, I was the only one who was even remotely aware of how fucked up the entire thing was.

In all the years since it has happened it is a story I have told. My emotional detachment from this story is a weird thing. I have almost no feelings. I have so many feelings, but they aren't really there. On occasion, I have told this as a winning story in a contest of "how bad were your parents" with almost a point of pride at just how fucked up my childhood was. I have told this story enough to worry, and rightly so, that people believe I am making it up and this is a lie. No one, surely, has become who I am and yet come from so much malice.

And yet, here I am.

And yet, this is still true.

This week, I listen as a bunch of people demand to know why, if something was so bad, they didn't tell someone 30 years ago.

Who am I? ¿Quién soy? Esta es mi historia, pero ¿qué significa? Why didn't I say anything then?

Why do I even bother saying anything now.

I'm on a precipice of in-between of who I have been and who I am becoming and the world keeps pushing me to confront the narrative of who made me. Mi historia. My story. Soy es...

It's all awful and I keep holding out hope. Tengo la esperanza.

Some days, that is all I have. Perhaps, I shall find that "Soy latina, Soy de Puerto Rican, Soy de hispanic, Soy un sobreviviente" those things won't hurt. Maybe they hurt less in another language. Maybe the new stories do conquer the old.

Maybe high jinks were just high jinks.

Or maybe we have cold realities we have to face about ourselves, our lives and our histories and we must be prepared to answer to them, and for them, for both who were were and who we are.

I'm not sorry. I am sorry.

Yo vivo.

Summer Crooning

2018-08-19T17:59:00.003-07:00

All around the world the cicada rhythm sounds the same.

Feels the same, too.

The hot sweaty sing song lilt of a thousand plump little lovers all seeking, all hoping, some finding.

Unhidden is the desire they protect into the breeze, picked up on the wind a sound wave form that travels the same way in this country as the next, the song warm, and pulpy and beaty and pulsy and you fall into it a little as you listen.

The natural imploring sounds of desperation for love, for holding, for belonging, for contentedness, for now, for then, and for the future, future, future pulsing future of the only sort of immortality to be found.

The thrum hum humming lighting up the night under the same stars, in different lands, with oceans and rivers and streams and languages and the genetic composition of the varying locals interacting just the same, doing just the same, enjoying, annoying just the same to the backgroun hum hum hum thrumming that seems to never end in the late summer evening.

The sound travels like I do, traveling like I will, have been, will do again, the feel of that traveling.

The thrum hum humming sounds like the sounds of waking up in your new place.

It sounds like purpose.

It sounds like the wrapping togetherness.

It sound like unraveling.

All around the world the same sound.

Hurricane History

2018-08-16T19:03:00.004-07:00

Winds whipping through my brain at hurricane force carrying thoughts about the now and the then and the ever present and the thinking in the other realities. Who I am/was/is?

Remember that time you died going off that bridge in an unexpected blizzard when the roads weren't plowed. After you died you went home and woke your partner and tried to explain, but they said you were still here and it was time for you to go to bed and for them to wake up.

There is no eye to the storm. It's a spinning whirling tour of everything mashed together. Storm chasers are running around it trying to figure it out and unlock the secrets to prevent harm. This is impossible as there will always be harm. The history hurricane is a mish-mash of thoughts and weird and harm.

Remember that time you died when you were driving barefoot without a seatbelt and got hit by a semi-truck. Later, at the hospital they when you tried to explain, they asked if they could set your broken are with a pillow and the Twin Evils said yes because it saved them money, and now, when you ghost lifts weights you can feel the break in the dead arm that doesn't really exist.

Suddenly, it's all the moments when you cease to be and you don't recall why you are not ceasing to be. The storm is an open door to ever dimension and suddenly there is an awareness of everyone. I look through that door and I see all the me's. It reminds me of all the mes. Innana would understand. Ereshkigal, not so much. Enki is still pissed about it though.

Remember that time you died stepping off the corner, not looking both ways and the car honked so loudly just before the impact and you had less than a moment to really think about it. And then later, as you sat in a bar consoling yourself in chatter you felt bad for the driver and the damage to their car?

Swimming through the soup of memory mind and thinking all the thinking and all the times when it went straight off the rails. I remember wondering in awe, as I watch the winds spin, how very fortunate I am now. Am I now. Who is now.

This is now.

But.

Remember that you died when you gave a stranger the key to your room and their only interest was in your slaughter. It started as a love fest and ended in your entrails strung from the lights and a cryptic teasing message painted in your blood. The police, entirely confounded in the morning, trying to find the hints of the crime somewhere when you insisted, but the body was gone and there was nothing to investigate, and the ghost of you was being ever unhelpful in generating a lead.

It's a rapid flow spinning up now.

You died in the water, don't you remember? When you believed you were a mermaid who could stay underwater forever. So vivid, walking into that patch of foggy water in a river in a holler on a hot summer morning when the chill from the overnight was still melting away. You swam out but you never swam back in.

You died that time you took taxi and watched as he road about time hell bent on making every light and because you were in another country you didn't care about seat-belts, even though they might have saved you. When you corpse arrived no one would listen to the story of your death, your resurrection, your you.

You died that night you walked the lost stranger to his hotel, boredom, curiosity, amusement. You do things for strange reasons and really only contemplate them later when your ghost passes through the veil and you wonder exactly how you managed to get yourself raped and murdered in a country with almost no rap and murder, but then again, he was a GI and he was only in for a visit and who were you anyway. The staff ignores your corpse because they are well trained and then understand.

You died. You died. You died.

You died when that car hit you after you threw yourself in the street in front of it. You just forgot because you were distracted by a piano recital the next day.

You died that time you cut yourself in the kitchen, but you forgot because of the yelling and the guilt and the shame being dumped on you by El Diablo Madre.

You died slipping down that cliff when you wanted the view. They told you not to lean so far. Your ghost argued all the way back to the hotel.

You died in that brightly colored ally on that dimly lit street. The boys behind you herding you into the gang you weren't looking for and didn't pay attention too.

The winds kick up and on them spinning ghosts and as they whip faster, and faster, and faster I can see through them. These lives, those lives, their lives, my life, all whipping up a storm that is pain and pleasure and amusement and the sorrow sleep memory of continuing reality. The storm spins and takes shape and there.

There at the center.

There I stand.

Remembering that time I died.

And lived.

Headaches

2018-08-03T05:50:00.001-07:00

The day had gone fine, all told. Meetings were meetings, the overall day ran a little long, but in the end an average, pretty Thursday with pleasant late summer Chicago weather, so there was no good reason that I should have a depressive anxiety episode, and yet, I realized shortly after I finished walking the dogs that I was on my way down the rabbit hole whether I wanted to be or not. I thought perhaps going out to eat at the local pub would help, but feeling only more isolated and alone, I ended the night back home in bed before the sun had set.

And so it was.

There is a weird challenge in trying to communicate what it's like to have these things happen. That there is some part of the functional, perfectly normal human side of me that asks "What the fuck, seriously, like, if you know you are getting upset do something else." Maybe that's just the internal voice that contributes the dialogue I don't need of the judgmental other. I get that voice all the time, episodes or not.

If you have had a friend who is not neurotypical, or someone like me who is actually neurotypical but who has suffered high (seriously fucking high) trauma and you may be curious what this is like. How is it that someone who is otherwise a contributing member of society can't just not be anxious or depressed when a situation is perfectly normal.

This morning, after a solid workout, while making coffee, I stood finding myself trying to explain. Maybe to explain it to me. I want to know what happened to me yesterday. Don't I know, shouldn't I have that kind of insight into my own brain at this point, in my early forties? My brain and I have been together long enough that you'd think we have that basic work function of getting through a perfectly average day without creating internal trauma; that should be a breeze, right?

For me, it's just not that simple. It's more like having a headache, with the varying tiers of headache experience you may go through. There are those days where everything is just ducky and you suddenly feel that tickle above your right eye and you know its coming, and its coming fast, and if you take a pill right now you might, maybe, be okay and get out of it this time. There are days when you have been working flat out, perfectly reasonable, happily sound, and suddenly you just want to close your eyes and hide because that headache just opened up and dropped on you out of nowhere and nothing you do at this point is going to make it any better and you know.

Then there are the days that you feel it coming, you take something for it, and you know that the best strategy would be to relax in bed but you have already committed yourself to getting through the thing you have agreed to do, and now you are trying to do the thing while balancing the pain.

Worst, perhaps, is when you have been working but everything is going to shit, nothing is coming out right, the calculations are all wrong and you can't figure out why this is happened when suddenly it dawns on you that you have a massive headache that you missed because it snuck in and built up so creepily that it was already level 7 dangerzone before you even realized it was there.

Varying stages of depressive anxiety are very much like the varying types of headaches one may have. Sometimes you can take something for it and it works, sometimes there is nothing you can do, it's already too late, or you have committed and have to push through regardless. And sometimes, you don't even know until you've done something you will regret, that you can't take back, that you may or may not be able to apologize for, that you may or may not live through.

So far, I've managed not to tick a box I can't untick, but not without leaving an assorted swath of bodies in the wake of my anxiety, not to mention several parts of myself sometimes that feel like they are incomplete because of the pain that is a part of who I am.

Getting Dressed

2018-07-23T19:32:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I manage to find amazing ways to fill time voids that don't really exist. I might spend an hour or five sitting in a hammock reading a book which is time I could use to do...anything, I suppose.

But then, I'll not do anything.

Saturday I managed to rather spectacularly overbook myself. Having done so, I set an alarm so I would wake up around 6 a.m., even though it was the weekend, in order to have time to get up, get dressed and get the day going no later than 10. On a weekend when the commitments are not work related, this is a real chore.

However, having set the alarm, I managed to wake and even abide by all the rules. I got out of bed, I made coffee and had a bite of cheese, a normal weekend. Then I contemplated the clothing I would where that would need to get me through lunch, a possible three hour bike ride, and then onto a date. I wanted something that would be cool, as it was insanely ripe and humid out, but also something goth and dark and flowing.

Sadly, I had to admit that what I wanted was a dress made of material I had picked up in Brasila that I hadn't managed to get around making yet.

I checked the time and saw that it was only 8 a.m. I ran a quick calculation in my head. I new exactly the cut I wanted. This was a pattern-less dress that I was basically copying off a copy of another pattern I had copied and modified. All together I needed only three puzzle pieces plus the wrap, and I figured if I started cutting now, I'd have time to make the dress, get shower, and get out the door by 10 a.m. at the latest.

Any sane person would just go into the overflowing closet of close, finish their breakfast, watch a bit of T.V. and then go to the doctor. Sadly, I am not this sane person.

Hence, scissors, fabric, cutting, setting up my machine and from cut to finish putting together a wrap dress for the rest of the days randomness. Random is the best description, for the day went wild indeed, but at least I felt well dressed for it.

For some, getting dressed is an act of making a decision, for me, it is often the act of making the clothes I need to walk out of the door in that day.

Pumpkin Hour

2018-07-16T19:14:00.000-07:00

"So, I hate to tell you this, but I saw something in the kitchen on my way back in, it was round and orange and -"

"Shit. Like a pumpkin?"

"Yup."

"Were there like, singing mice in little carts?"

"Uh-huh."

"Gods, don't tell me there was an old lady."

"In a blue dress, yes."

"Did she have wings?"

"Rather iridescent wings."

"Gods, she's such a bitch. The positive attitude, too. She won't leave until I do."

"Uh-huh."

We snuggle back into an embrace we hadn't wanted to leave in the first place. I giggle into the warm strong arm wrapped around me.

"Did she have a crown?"

"Yup. And a wand."

"Ugh, she's relentless. You have no idea."

We giggle, our giggles stopping as our lips meet and do what lips do together, so slowly, so very slowly, with the quiet patience of being in the here and now and the not going anywhere. With the realization that we both knew before we started that eventually one of us would have to go back to their own beds.

I don't want to leave.

I'm the odd bed out, so it's my turn to go home.

We snuggle back and look at the stars.

"I guess I should probably get dressed then. I wouldn't want to upset your flatmate with the old lady and the talking mice."

"Uh-huh," laughs, arms around my shoulders.

"We are ridiculous, you know."

"Oh yeah."

"This should be a play."

"But it would only be meaningful to the two of us."

Perhaps, I think and perhaps not. The moment feels too warm, too real, too lush, too right to be a moment that exists only between two lovers wrapped together in arms unwilling to leave. We are in the trap all lovers find themselves in at some point, of wanting each other and wanting to get on with life and wanting sleep and wanting to be independent and wanting to lose oneself entirely in the other.

"Perhaps."

Wrapped in black, and thorns, and roses, I navigate narrow spaces, and find myself wrapped again in arms before I can make it out the door, and for a moment my mind is blank and there is nothing but strong arms and an even stronger desire to stay right where I am and let this moment exist until the end of time.

And like all moments, this one refuses to do so.

"It's pumpkin hour, darlin' and I have to go."

"Yes, you do."

It takes another five minutes to leave, and by then the kitchen is full of muckrakers, fairy godmothers rolling around the ceiling, and mice pacing too and fro worried about the time, and me, with one shoe on the foot, the other in had, disappearing into the night and out the door.

Deletion

2018-07-13T19:17:00.004-07:00

I was reading in passing somewhere tonight and the mention of "deleting posts" put a tremor of terror in me.

Delete?

Delete!

Delete?!

Destruction, demolition, debris, detritus, deletion...

There was a part of me that was horrified by this. To take it away, delete it? I couldn't imagine. I would never (when I know that like Nin before me there are parts here and there that have been witheld from the public whole).

All of the words that make up the journal, that make up the thing that exists here, the emotions, the moments, the strange, the weird, the sad, the girl, the woman, the thing, the object, all of it in some way encapsulated here and to curate that to an extent that it just...never...existed?

Lately, I've been obsessed with the thought of HARD COPY.

Do I want that. You would think with over 15 years of outpourings here, that when I read through nothing must be a surprise, but I'm always amused about what I was compelled to speak about in any given year. I have to try to find that emotional mindscape again, the who I WAS than vs who I am now, and is the now me really so much different from the then me, and then we start to get off the rails and into the depths of existence itself, tricky.

So very tricky.

No, for better or for worse it's all here, it will be here, and it won't be me that makes the decision on what happens to all the letters in the void that no one actually reads. I might curate it.

But I won't delete it.

Past lights

2018-07-08T07:24:00.001-07:00

It's one of those blisteringly beautiful Chicago summer mornings. Quite literally my hands sit in sun dappled light, clicking away at keys to bring about letters to create words that illustrate thoughts that communicate thinkings and feelings and it all seems a little mad, and it all seems so very lovely. Today, it makes me think so very clearly about time, life, the life I have lived. My life has change, the beauty that is the light that falls upon my hands from the windows is already eight minutes old. I am illuminated by the recent past as I contemplate my current now and consider my near future. The next eight minutes, the next thirty-six, and then...

What a strange and wonderful thing this life has been. Parts of it now feel like caked over capsules of mirth that are someone else's existence. I can think back so far and deep into the past, a blessing, a curse. I know what memories hide in the dark corners of my mind waiting for even a second of weakness to come chorusing to the surface to sidetrack me from my day, my week, my month. I avoid those old cupboard monsters as best I can, but I know they exist.

And then, of course, all that time when I was not in Chicago. When I was somewhere else. Overseas. An ex-pat. There is something so beautifully haunting about all that time spent in another country. Experiencing different kinds of summers. I cannot imagine sitting on July morning in Korea thinking about how lovely the day might be, when they day might best be described as thick as soup, so hot that you choke on the boiling air, watching the plastics in your unconditioned apartment melt.

There are so many stories.

This thing I have done, this long deep dive into various aspects of me, sometimes more coy than others, sometimes more just a stylist, a journalist living through the moments and trying to record them, this thing I have done captures only minutes or seconds, or sometimes hours of an event, giving me a foothold into some memories, some stories some aspect of who I was then, and who I am now. This thing is both the baseline and the layers on a wall that tell the story and make it easy to see how the narrative has changed.

All things are here. All of me.

None of me.

It's just a funny thing, this life. Barely three years ago when I was desperate to try to reintegrate with this country that was not the country I knew I loved, I would go out of my way to avoid telling any stories of Korea, of the other, of the overseas. If I did, I tried to describe them in such a way that it could be almost plausible that it happened just anywhere in the world. Now, now, I tell the stories and I do not mind that these stories put me in strange places, other worlds, make me otherworldly.

This is how I feel sometimes, as I look at everything happening, everything that happened, thinking about everything that will happen. Otherworldly.

This, then is the funny thing. New people, new places, new names, new faces, new experiences, new, new, new.

But the things that always make me interesting are the stories, and the stories are always old, old, old.

And isn't that funny. And shouldn't it be.

This life is a funny thing and I've yet to tire of it. This funny thing keeps going, with highs that are inexplicable and lows that are skimming the depths of our very human souls, we are of this now and that is enough.

Even as we do it in light that is already old, and already has stories to tell.

Just Hanging Around

2018-07-07T10:25:00.000-07:00

Roughly two years ago, just around the time of the somewhat rushed move from New York back to Chicago, I spent a week in Recife being good at my job. Like most weeks spent in foreign countries, I usually manage to do what I set out to do, and that particular week was no exception.

On this particular trip I'd managed to get some cash in the local currency. This happens less and less often now, as I may well forgo getting any cash at all under the assumption that most of the time I'll be with handlers or likely to be able to use plastic to science fiction exchange labor credits for things.
However, occasionally, it seems like having cashy-money is a good thing.

There was a car set to come and fetch me from the hotel that morning, and I still had a few dollars worth of local coin burning a whole in my pocket. The day before, when walking back from the beach I had noticed a gentleman on the corner selling various types of fabric things and made a note to try to stop by before I left for the airport the next day.

When I approached the guy on the corner, there was not much to see. He had a few macrame car seat covers, and some various other types of fabric one my used to adorn a vehicle, but then I noticed some stuff hanging around the other side of the wall which appeared to be tapestries, but I wasn't quite sure. Through a muddled process of 'I don't know your language' we managed to work out a system of communication that eventually allowed me to stumble upon a word we both knew "hammock". So the last of my dollars in the local currency went to procure a hammock. I recall he asked for probably a hundred more pesos than I had on hand, but when I showed him my wallet and that this was, quite literally, all the money I had in the world, he happily took my cash in exchange for a hammock.

My thinking at the time was that this hammock would make a nice housewarming gift for the Bard and the Electrician. After over a year of languishing in an upstairs closet, a stand has been acquired and the hammock now swings prettily in the backyard. The dogs are in love with it.