tuckova

murmuration

Last night, sitting on the balcony and watching the birds swoop across the sky in waves, like schools of fish, and trying to decide if that's a murmuration or just flocking without looking at my phone to see what the difference was. Our voices got quieter and hushed as the dusk shifted the sky to darker shades of purple or violet, a difference I also don't know without looking it up. You told me about a discussion or debate you'd recently had with a friend over whether theater can still serve any purpose in a world like this one. This one incorporating climate change and now a war that is not quite at our doorstep. You'd argued that of course it did, of course stories, always, as long as we've been here. Of course. But you came away wondering if you were right. It was my job to hear that fear and to tell you that of course you were right: of course stories, always. As usual with rehearsals I didn't do as well as I could have, so now I try again.

Of course theater, because of course stories. This, our humanity, how we pass our knowledge to each other most effectively and longest. Cave paintings. Ancient cultures. Acting it out. Stories are how we tell each other things, with and without words. What do we tell each other? Where the food is. Adventures we had. What to look out for. We tell each other stories to inform and to warn and to entertain. Stories to pass on to the future what we've learned so far, so we don't have to learn it again. We tell each other stories to hold back the dark, or to make the dark less frightening. Shh, go to sleep. I will tell you the story of tomorrow: how the sun will be hidden from us and then rise again.

I cannot imagine a world without stories, without words. And yet, as a wise woman has pointed out, we seem to be living at or near the end of the world. Well not the world altogether, just the world as we inhabit it, humans. I think so. So the stories we are telling are not stories for the future, but stories we tell ourselves. The sun will continue to rise and set with or without our observation; starlings will fill the sky and will not care if we know what they are called. Do the stories we tell continue to have value if they do not continue beyond us?

I didn't think I'd live past fifty. At this point every year is a combination of a revelation and curiosity to see how much further I'll go, and to be honest at this point whether I'll outlast the world. I try to love what I can while realizing each time could be the last time I see or hear or smell or taste something. There is no smell in the world more sweet and primal than a baby's head, but when my son say he'll never have children and I'll never be a grandmother I only feel profound relief. On some level I've already said goodbye to almost everything but that would be really very hard. 

Theater is not dead; theater will not die until we die. The issue of whether it serves a purpose now, while we are alive, is not the part that frightened your friend and that in turn frightened you. The real fear is the realization that this will not be for very long, and that the darkness is coming. We're only telling stories to ourselves now, I think. But the darkness is always where we told stories anyway. Stories in general and theater specifically: the shared experience of telling and listening is literally vital. Let's put on a play, let's do what we can, not because it makes a difference to our future, because I don't believe it does, but because it's how we connect with each other as long as we can. 

churning and musing

This has been on my mind and I'd like to write something better but I'm putting it here so I don't forget

I have to believe that people are doing their best. I mean: I have to believe it. Like, in order to get through my day. I have to think that whatever people are doing, on an individual level, is the best they can do. It may be the best they can do at a thing that they are not prioritizing; they may be prioritizing something else and doing a really good job at that, and the other thing that I wish they would do better at, they just don't have time or energy or capacity to do well because they are doing the thing they prioritize so very well. But I still have to think: this is the best they can do. 

I have to believe it because it is a way for me to function in the world with other people's behaviors and not think: this person is deliberately and thoughtfully behaving in a way I consider to be subpar or even unkind. I genuinely cannot exist in the world if I see unpleasant things that people do as deliberately and thoughtfully unpleasant. I have to think: the things that are beautiful are usually deliberate and thoughtful, and the things that are ugly usually are not.

This is a good survival strategy for me, honestly. It might not work for everyone. It enables a great deal of forgiveness. It cuts down on nagging. I used to imagine myself as a wave beating itself on the shore, trying to pull in grains of attention to make piles of things I cared about. Eroding people with my need and my desire for them to change. It was exhausting to feel that way, to feel like if I could just say what I wanted in precisely the right way, it would be heard. I would say: Could you please. Would you mind. I wish that you wouldn't. It hurts me when you do. Now I think: they are doing their best. 

And I hope at the same time that people will look at me, in the ways I disappoint them, and know that I am also really doing my best. I miss birthdays, forget to check in, don't say thank you enough, haven't read the books I was given, didn't answer messages. I am not even living up to my own standards most of the time, but I really am trying to make the butter reach all the way to the end of the bread. 

Of course there are people whose best is exclusively self-serving, I'll call them evil people, and they can be avoided as they're easy to spot. What I sometimes struggle with is when I encounter people whose best is so far from aligning with mine that it looks bad but not evil. It looks maybe just ignorant. I mean generally the safest bet for me is if it looks actively mean, I should avoid that person. But sometimes I struggle with: If I inform this person of how their behavior looks to me, will it result in a change? Like I had a kid, and I had to teach him stuff; I know we don't spring into the world perfect. And I have had friends that didn't know how to do things that I could teach them how to do, and that's okay. But surely by adulthood the information is available of how to behave in the world. Or is it like spinach on the teeth, something that it's a kindness to mention. In any case the spinach isn't there on purpose. I have to believe they didn't mean to leave it there, whether I decide to say something or not.

Sometimes I state my process and it sounds like a thing I have accomplished, and sometimes it is but sometimes I'm just striving. Doing my best. 

memory souls

The heat came on yesterday. It's August. I have some opinions about that. One of which is: WTF. 

 

Sometimes I feel like I'm wasting my life, or specifically that I'm wasting my summers, working and reading shit online, but then I think: What was I planning to do? Is it a shame that I didn't spend time reading a book under a tree? It is. But then how much of a shame? Not enough to make me prioritize that, clearly. I like my job most of the time. And I like being a person who does what she says she will. And thus I sometimes spend summertime indoors doing projects I should not have agreed to do, and the clouds shift and the cool air rolls in and the shadows lengthen under the tree. Shiver. Existential dread of winter in August. It's not my best look. 

 

But I didn't stay inside the whole summer! I spent six weeks in the US soaking in all the things I love: art, friendship, oysters, cocktails, hard laughter, road trips, the very specific pleasure of knowing someone for a long time. I cried (because I persist in being myself, including one day that I literally flung myself across a bed and howled into a pillow), but MOSTLY I was happy. 

 

And I went to Prague twice to perform, and once went well and once did not. Performance is interesting because you're often saying very personal things to a room full of people who then think they know you, that you've shared something with them individually, and it's intense. Well at my level of fame ("fame") it's totally fine, because there can be connections; I'm still just a person. But I see more famous people trying to continue with that "we are equals" narrative long after they have ceased to be equals with their audience, and it's just... it doesn't work. Back when there were blogs, some blogs got popular and then those writers were only reading other writers of a similar level of popularity, and yet they wanted the people they didn't read to keep reading them. It stopped being sharing and started being performing, competing. They wanted to be adored as equals (ah, we're all just friends!) but they also wanted the power ("power") that came with being popular. [This is also, I believe, the root of a lot of sexual harassment cases: One person wants the pretense of being equals; the other person is keenly aware that they're not really equals. So when the first one takes something or even asks for something from the second one, that's messy].

 

Having never been particularly "in group" OR "out group", please forgive me while I work through observations that possibly were old news to you in high school. 

 

I wouldn't want to be a mean girl. It seems like there's a lot of insecurity involved. It IS true that I didn't get invited to something recently that I felt that I absolutely should have been invited to and I 100% stomped around my living room for almost a week over it. I didn't write a burn book or anything though. I just did some stomping. 

 

I have also been thinking, regarding performance, that I have the very softest space in my heart for things that are amateur, clunky, brave, vulnerable. And I also have a huge amount of available affection for things that are professional, thoroughly considered, perfectly executed. In between, it's a lot about what I ascribe your intent to be and I have found that I have much less patience for things that present as being professional and then fuck it up. And yet is it not at some point cloying to pretend to be less good at something, to play "whoops this guitar just fell into my hands here and I just did a little van Halen thing on it." And even if you're not that good, public self-deprecation requires too much assurance from the audience as a form of participation. Still, I prefer people to err on the side of underestimating themselves, just a bit. 

 

My mind wants to go into a little digression about differences between men and women but I'm pulling it back by the scruff of the neck.

 

Another thing I am thinking about, which probably ties back into performance but was actually related to art, was the difference between invitation to narrative and invitation to dialogue. Like, some art just raises so much thinking in me. Where does that path lead? Why is she sad? Some artists seem to invite you to think about it on your own, but some artists, for some people, it feels like an invitation to dialogue. And I wonder why that is. Like why people felt the need to hunt down J.D. Salinger but maybe not Harper Lee. I would say that both invite narrative (the reader wants to write or paint or think new thoughts after reading) but Salinger (despite, I think, his intentions) invites dialogue: people wanted to talk with him afterwards. Whereas I think people wrote to Harper Lee but not with the same need to be seen? I'm thinking on it. 

 

I ordered a new pair of shoes online, always so tricky to figure out how they'll look from a photo. They just came in the mail today. They have memory soles. Maybe fall won't be so bad. 

13 Ways of Looking at Meow Wolf

Don't get your hopes up. Get your hopes up. Don't want it to be more than it is; don't think too much about what it is; research it and find out as much as you can. 

Maybe it's just a store, maybe it's just the gift shop you exit through, maybe it's a carefully crafted and curated mockery of capitalism. Maybe that's enough. Is it overpriced? Don't think about that. There's a store in San Francisco that sells pirate gear, there's a store in New York that sells superhero stuff, this is a store that sells pareidolia peppers and that's the same thing, except what goes on behind the curtain is different. Well, it's not a curtain. For you it's a gardening section; for your sister it was strangely melted soda in a refrigerator door, and behind that an office full of clues. You forgot to ask your son and your parents where they came through. Later you went out through the refrigerator and up through a t-shirt display that  reminded you of a story (or possibly a thing that happened?) of hiding behind a clothes rack. Probably it was something you read in a book. You climbed the stairs and emerged through a file cabinet and started again.

There's a story that starts in the produce department of a man whose daughter is sending messages from a cornfield except it's not his daughter, it's a manifestation of his wishes. The story continues (after the gardening department) as an older woman (your age) meeting a younger woman in something that looks like a music video or actually more like a Jodorowsky film. There are no words. You want to watch it all, but it is very long and you feel like you'll never see everything if you look at anything too long.

Once you spent 30 of your 120 Scottish minutes very happily puttering about in empty rooms on the wrong floor, wondering vaguely where everyone had gone, enjoying yourself very much but kind of missing the point. No regrets because you had another 120 minutes later and however you spend your time you usually have a good time except when you don't, and this was a good time. This feels like that. A vagueness, a sense that there's more that you should be doing but an overall contentment with what you have. There was a pharmacy with herbs in jars there, and you stole a piece of candy.

There are projections. There's a teenager's bedroom with pictures of cute boys on the wall and through the wall a passageway with a rope you use to climb up the rocks. There's a hut with herbs in it and this also reminds you of that wrong floor. There's a factory worker with a flashlight who tells you there's a knock knock joke with seven parts. Well that happened later. There's a room with a strobe light that takes your picture and you remember one of the last times you saw John and there was a strobe light, you were throwing water and watching the droplets caught in the air although of course they fell to the ground in puddles and you slid and danced in them. You stay alone in the room, disconnected with memory for a minute, and a woman comes in and dances and it feels like someone's reading your mind but of course everything is coincidence. Later you think she may have worried about you. Later you think you should have danced. There's a room where you can make music by interrupting light.

There are places where you can converse with a program and you type questions but you know they're the wrong questions. Someone before you has written FARTS FARTS FARTS and that is also the wrong question but worse. There are more and more people and it's stressful. There's hand sanitizer dispensers at every doorway and you put your hand under all of them, rubbing your hands together like a hopeful minion as you move from room to room. A henchman. A particular kind of supervillain.

There are letters to read and you read them with the same mild anxiety that you watch the films, with the pleasure of enjoying a particular medium and the concern that you're maybe supposed to be doing something more interactive. It seems like there's a story being told and you can get the point just by paying attention to the right text, the right visual images. It's possible you're missing the point. This seems like a pretty solid metaphor for how you live.

You run into your sister, who is on a quest to find someone who is missing. Your son is on a quest to find out how to be part of a corporation, or maybe destroy a corporation. This also seems like a metaphor. You meet your parents in the bar because you agreed to do so, but it is not enough and you leave again. They also have missed the part about interaction. A man handed your father a clue and your father handed it back. The amount that you are overthinking this is impressive. There is so much to think about though. 

Once a woman tore out a chunk of her hair and threw it at your feet and you couldn't speak. Once a woman held your hands and made you pour poison down her throat, and her eyes rolled back in her head and still you felt like you couldn't speak. Once a man touched your cheek and went through a doorway with someone else because you didn't know to push for what you wanted. People speak here, and this is somehow more disturbing. You still don't know how to get what you want, or what you want, and whether that's more than what you have. You leave when you can't take any more.

Back at the bar, you drink gin and chew on acmella oleracea and it is numb and wonderful, you feel numb and wonderful, stunned beyond sensation. Four hours of beauty and creativity, beyond what you had expected, and now you can admit that you expected a lot. What more could you want? When you walk outside, it is like walking out of a matinee, the shock of the sunshine, except more so: the sun is hotter than it has ever been, and brighter, and still the shadows of what you wanted and what you got cling to you, days later.

my brains

I actually started making notes of things I wanted to write about which is the saddest way to write I know. And yet here we are. I'm leaving for the US next week and I probably won't write what I want to write before then and past experience shows I'll collect a whole basket of new things to write about after. Going off my notes and the top of my head, let's do a little brain dump for 30 minutes. Break in the ol typity fingers.

I want to write about "fear of missing out" or "FOMO" and how I don't have it and how I wonder whether that makes life easier or harder. I want to write about the levels of discomfort I will endure before I realize I am uncomfortable and launch myself at apparently insane speeds towards comfort. How that has to do with FOMO and not. I am afraid of being forgotten or unwanted but that's different. I'm not afraid there's a better party somewhere than the one I'm at.

I've been thinking a little about my arrogance but I'm not sure it's arrogance.

I took a personality test that was interesting in that it was presented like a Likert scale but instead of opposites it was like "On a scale from 0 to 5, would you rather be alone (0) or eat ice cream (5)?" I gotta say the results seemed pretty accurate for me and in a real way, not a horoscope-y way.

There's a thing you do where you answer increasingly personal questions and stare deeply into the other person's eyes and then you're supposed to be in love; I first heard of this 5 years ago and despite my enthusiasm and curiosity nobody's wanted to do it with me which I guess is one way to keep from falling in love, to not even try. I try not to take it personally. Sometimes I take it personally.

What else? I had an idea for a short story that I really liked (the idea) and then I overthought it and overthought it until it was a rough thing I had sanded to fineness and then into nothingness. I have dreams that people are telling me what they really think of it and they don't like it. And I have to keep going back to the idea of it, how much I liked that rough wood. 

I asked for some things from one client and I got them so easily that it felt like maybe I should have asked for more (even while I am very happy to have gotten what I asked for; that moment of wondering whether that was the right thing to ask). I asked for some other things from a different client and was ignored and that made me pretty unhappy or if we're being honest angry. I'm glad I am self-employed and can now go forward deciding to work with the people who give me what I want and not with the people who don't, but I wish we could all just agree to do things my way all the time since I'd be happier and so would most of the people who deserve to be. 

What's funny is that if you know what I'm talking about you know I'm being completely honest and that I'm also completely right. This is what I mean about the arrogance. I know it comes off like that but it's really not. I know truth is often subjective. I believe there's multiple true ways to look at a blackbird. 

I probably spend two hours a week thinking about people I don't know at all and wondering why they behave in ways I don't understand. I spend more than that thinking about people I do know but that seems reasonable. I think that I will never cure cancer or do anything particularly remarkable so figuring out why people do things and trying to fill the part of the world I inhabit with a little more understanding seems like a "leave only footprints" way to be, I mean it doesn't seem like a waste of time. But the people I don't know at all, there's no justification. 

Although I love people physically, their bodies and how they move, the curves and angles, the way they smell, I cannot imagine loving someone separate from their mind; I can barely imagine feeling a connection to someone's body without their thoughts being there somehow. It's interesting to me that this is cultural, learned. It feels beyond logic; it feels like instinct. 

Good poems. Art painted from joy. Art painted from darkness, reaching towards joy. Days with no or few clouds when it's warm enough to sit on the ground. The perfect drinkable temperature of coffee. How it feels when I remember to take care of my body. Marking things off "to do" lists. Making "to do" lists. The kindness of strangers. There are some people who are so incredibly unreasonably kind to me and I don't thank them enough but when I'm dark and sad and have to count reasons to live they're on my list. That's probably enough for now.

teeniest touch of burnout

I have probably mentioned that I love my job. I do! I like working from home, I like being my own boss, I like having a schedule that waxes and wanes. For a while I wanted to focus more on medical editing and stop doing academic editing altogether, and I wrote to I think every teaching hospital in Europe and got exactly two responses and that made me sad. But then I started doing some more academic editing that I enjoyed and I am grateful for the variety. Like, I am really interested in neurology and Alzheimer's disease and almost anything involving parts of the brain that sound funny, but I also like getting to do the history of puppetry in Central Europe.

I also really like doing voice work -- dubbing and audiobooks. I remember a time when I did not love the sound of my own voice but uh I got over it. It does not sound as good as it does in my head so you'll never get to hear it as beautifully as I do, but I no longer recoil in horror when I hear a recording of myself. I sound pretty good.

It's therefore kind of sad for me that the last month has been frustrating. I assume part of it is COVID burnout. It's also that usually I just work and do what's asked of me and take joy in finding typos and fixing them, and in finding more significant mistakes and fixing them, and in taking a sentence and massaging it into a thing of beauty, and in snipping off the fat, and in reading something incredibly difficult and then reading it again and understanding it. I like doing what I do so much that I don't need praise, so when I do get it, it's like: ahhhh, nice. But the project I've been working on for the last month, in addition to being full of grammar/ spelling/ syntax/ style errors, which is fine, that's what they pay me for... it just seems pointless. And sometimes that happens; sometimes the work I do feels like the author wasn't interested at all. It's hard, but I get through it; work isn't fun all the time. But this is nearing 400 pages and the amount of nnnnnaaargggh is taking me to dark places in terms of questioning my own self worth, why I accept things I don't want, can I do this for seven more years, etc etc.

More humorously, I was asked to do the voice over for an ad that the client wanted to sound "like Galadriel in the Lord of the Rings" movie. Which seemed odd, as it was an ad for a tech thing, but you know people can be weird so ok. So I did that, and then the client was like "Ooh, that's lovely, but it sounds too much like a fairy tale. Can you do it like that, but less so?" and we went a few rounds before we landed on a crisp, businesslike voice that was about the furthest from Galadriel as whatever the other end of Cate Blanchett's spectrum is, but without the Australian accent. This would have been frustrating except that the engineer mixing the tape was more perplexed than I was so it was merely funny and in the end I got paid which is the happy ending for all work stories, isn't it.

We've passed the anniversary of the first lockdown, but since we had the "eye of the pandemic" (like the eye of the storm, not like the eye of Sauron) all summer here I can't really say it's been a year of my life sucked away or anything. I'm working hard now so that if there's a chance to travel safely I can jump at it with no regrets. I might maybe take a weekend off soon though, cause nobody loves me when I'm whining, especially not when I actually have it pretty good. I know.

reaping the just deserts of what you cooked up

In the course of my life I've had a number of people tell me that I should improve my appearance. This ranges from people I was dating telling me that I'd be attractive if I'd lose a little weight to complete strangers approaching me on the street to ask me why I don't wear makeup when I'd be so very pretty with just a little effort (sometimes I was wearing makeup at the time, but that's not the point). I've had friends offer to take me shopping so I could get some advice. Sometimes I think: well what's wrong with me? Am I so hideous you can't date me, or is it more probable that if I were hotter I would be dating someone hotter than you? Is my actual bare skin interfering with your ability to get through your day somehow? Are my clothes so unbearably unflattering that you can't be seen with me in public? 

Usually I think those people are kind, are only trying to help, believe in and value beauty to a degree I do not and because they find me so close to their idea of what physical attractiveness is, they want to help me be as pretty on the outside as I am on the inside (and I must be pretty on the inside, I guess, because I get waaaay fewer unsolicited offers on ways to improve my personality).

Anyway I'm using this as an attempt to understand why people who write things don't think they need an editor. Because when I say "that needed an editor" I almost never mean that it was hideous beyond bearing, that I was unable to even look at the text, or that spelling is more important than your very important story. And I AM trying to help, and I believe in and value good writing to a degree that you clearly do not, and I find the text worth reading and it would be much better if it were pleasant to read.

HOWEVER. I do have to go out into the world. It's my choice to go out mostly the way I am -- maybe with extra kilos, maybe with less concealer than you'd like, maybe dressed as a stagehand. But ... like, no offense, but very few papers have to be written, very few stories are so compelling that they must be told in printed form. So if you feel that your idea, your story really must go into the world... why not put it into the world as beautiful on the page as it can be, as beautiful in print as it was in your head? Why not make your ideas as easy to enjoy for others as they were for you to have? Why not hire me or someone like me to help you? WHY.

I don't feel this way about casual writing generally so don't get all huffy. But if you're at the point where you've hired a graphic designer, a translator, a marketing specialist, please for the love of font, hire an editor. 

dentists and frogs

I have never had fantastic luck with dentists, and it got worse when I moved here. I had a dentist in 1994 who, when drilling my tooth, hit a nerve and told me it shouldn't have been there and when I cried told me that Americans were babies. The dentist who (horrified) fixed that was great, then she left the practice. The next one I found was incredible, private practice and worth it; she emigrated with her husband. The person who took over her practice told me that a good way to lose weight was if you had to have your jaw wired shut and I should think about that. The dentist after her was clearly comparably better, because that was a pretty low bar, and also just a pleasant person.

But after about a decade of perfectly acceptable care, she got... sloppy? The nurse who had been with her since the beginning left a couple years ago, and it was a different one the next time, and the next time again. And I know that's a sign, but I just really couldn't bear to look for a dentist again. I got some fillings that didn't feel quite right, but I thought: maybe this is part of the aging process, that your teeth just start to fall apart. She fixed a cavity and when I told her I felt like the filling was too small, she drilled on the other side to make it match. And it did match, then, and I thought well maybe the previous tooth's filling had been too big? I can't see inside my mouth, and I don't have x-ray vision. I'm not a dentist; I have to trust she knows what she's doing. Before the first lockdown I had an appointment because I thought I needed a filling; I got there and told her my tooth felt really wrong, like the filling was loose in the hole, she refused to x-ray it and told me we'd get it next time because she was busy. It broke during lockdown.

So anyway I got a new dentist. They did an x-ray, which I obviously appreciated, and showed me that my last three fillings had not been exactly full, more like about halfway into the cavity. So those had to be pulled out and done again, plus I had a new cavity. In the last six months I have been to the new dentist I think six times and spent I don't even know how much on getting my teeth back to where they were three years ago. When I close my mouth, all my molars line up, my jaw sits comfortably without my having to jut it into place. And I remember that my teeth used to do that, but it had been such incremental shifts away from normal from that I hadn't noticed how far it had shifted (in fact, it was seeing myself talking on a zoom call when I realized how much my jaw was off).

Despite what you may have heard, if a frog is placed in a pan that is gradually heated until it reaches boiling, the frog will jump out at the point that the water becomes uncomfortably hot. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, the extent to which I adjust to situations. I don't want to be difficult, I don't want to be overly fussy, and I recognize that some things that matter to me don't matter to other people and sometimes we just need to get along with each other and with living. On the other hand, the point at which I jump out of the water, I turn around and stare at the pan, dumbfounded.  The feeling that I have been experiencing is threefold: one, I did not realize that the problem I had was possible to fix or worthy of being fixed; two, how the hell did I think not being able to close my mouth on both sides was a thing I should adjust to? What took me so long? How long could I have been comfortable, if I'd just acknowledged even to myself that I was uncomfortable?; and three, I am so happy to be able to chew properly again. And so now: is this a thing I have learned about dentists, or can I perhaps I apply it to other things?

Bye 2020

It's 8:15 pm, New Year's Eve. It sounds like a war outside already, all the fireworks. I admit that I've somewhat lost my taste for small fireworks in the last few years (I still like the huge ones overhead, though I feel sorry about the damage they cause, now that I know. I still like them, it's just not unmitigated joy). Still, I'm glad that people are celebrating, however it brings them happiness. Supposedly at 9 pm we should all be safe in our houses, breathing only the air of the people we already live with. We'll see.

Strange year, no? I had a glorious vacation in California in January, loved up on my family and friends, had adventures on planes, trains, and automobiles. I felt loved. Then I came home for about five minutes, turned around and went back to the other side of the US for my aunt's funeral. She was important to me in my childhood and it was nice to see her husband, sons, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, cousins, all gathered. I still have a peppermint lifesaver to remember her by, but my memories are solid anyway.

Then I came home, Czech Theater put on a play, and the next week the whole country locked down in response to the pandemic. It was ... I don't want to say "funny" but that's the word I have. I was so absolutely exhausted, like exhausted in my soul, and I needed a break. I didn't mean for the whole world to have a pandemic, I would have just stayed home quietly alone! I did not need existential dread for people in general while simultaneously being personally glad for the time out, and then the whiplash of guilt for that feeling.

People kept saying that Now We Have Learned and Now We Know and When This Is Over We Will Be Different. Will we? I think that some of us already knew that about half of the people around us, many in positions of power, are selfish and horrible. Let's say a third. Maybe some of us learned that another third already understand deeply and intrinsically what community means, the needs of the many are entwined with the needs of the one. I don't think I learned anything I hadn't learned four years ago. I'm glad if somebody did. When this is over, we will go back to how we were before, is what I think, though I'd be delighted to be wrong on that.

In the summer there was a moment where it seemed like this country had made it through by shutting down early and hard. I took a lovely vacation in Greece, where I ate my body weight in feta cheese and swam in the ocean and read and slept and laughed until my sides hurt.

Then we came back and schools reopened and we went back to something like normal and now we're shut down again. If I knew I had a week, a month, a year, it would be easier to just buckle in and sit, see where we go. I try to guess but nobody really knows.

What have I processed this year? I am afraid of being unwanted and of being useless. I've seen how I respond to situations where I feel that way and it's not how I want to be; I've seen it before but now maybe with greater clarity. It feels like I may eventually get to the point where I respond in a way that pleases me; I'm not there but it's a thing I can imagine. I think I've gotten better at accepting people where they are and arranging myself accordingly. I find it difficult to say what's changed when a lot of the things that were hard for me (social gatherings, for example) haven't been a presence, but I think I've gotten a little better at being in the moments I am in, whatever they are. 

I worked a lot. I meditated more. I watched a ton of movies, which mostly made me happy. I slept more than usual but still not as much as I would like. I remember in my 20s if I could sleep I did, for hours, I would spend a day in bed drifting between books and thoughts and writing and dreams. I can't seem to do that anymore. Still, I slept more than usual. My cooking got a little better. Squire and I settled into a pretty pleasant roommate routine. I got better at standup and did ok with shifting to online. I adapted and performed a play with some friends. I increased contact with some people, regular phone calls or longer letters, knowing that we wouldn't see each other in person for who knows. I am sometimes profoundly lonely, but that was always true.

Anyway, it's 8:45. I'm going to go stand on the balcony and look at the moon. It's midnight somewhere. Happy New Year. 

fallacies of morning rose

Today would have been your birthday. I don't want to say I think about you every day because that would be a lie. I didn't think about you every day when you were alive, though probably every week at least, because that's when we talked, when we were talking. I think about you in passing probably once or twice a month, and intensely (and with longing for the good parts of you, which I miss) maybe every other month now. Ten years. 

I remember a lot. I remember good things. I realize that, as is my way, I shut a lot of sad things in a room that I try not to visit but I do try to remember that they're there. Not to make anybody better than they really were. Sometimes you were cruel, sometimes you came very close to hurting me. I usually didn't let you close enough to risk that, and there was a reason I held back, and I try to remember that. When you died I wasn't sure whether I had the right to mourn you, because we were never tangled and messy and I didn't know whether twenty years of visits and letters and phone calls was enough. I tried to talk myself out of my tears.

I've been thinking lately about pain and about how if we numb ourselves to it or remove it from our lives we feel considerably stronger, but it leaves us incredibly vulnerable to any pain that gets past those barriers. I think about the pain you were in, and your glorious anger, and how much I learned about pushing through pain from you. Only to watch you become someone who numbed yourself into a stupor from which you only sometimes emerged. You were hardly ever angry anymore, which was good in some ways, though it made you sloppy in other ways. You were much less alive. And then you were dead.

I mourn you at your most alive, man who made me laugh so hard it hurt. I mourn who you were when you became a person who couldn't keep up with me half the time, your once-quicksilver wit flashing out to remind me of what it was like to be in the presence of someone that sharp, then fading back into tarnish. I mourn who you might be now, the person I'll never know, who would have been one of the few who knew me then. What would you think of that? What would you think of this?

Ten years. I'll always love you. I'll always be angry that you're gone.