Leftovers

My New Guru

So as I go into the next part of the trip I hope it will be more creative and more work involved and less talk and more doing, seeing, learning, being, loving, feeling, maybe less feeling, and just work my ass off, 'cause that, my friend, is where it's at!
                                                                                ––Keith Haring, Journals

Nebraska

A highlight of my Spring: a circuitous and protracted road trip across the Middish-west, a part of the country to which I have never really felt connected (Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota).  The vastness of the landscape––really even more desolate than the farmland in Illinois or Indiana I've driven through––was hypnotic.  In the middle of nowhere there was this abandoned building, a dilapidated dance hall with stray cats running through it, and total silence except for the wind whipping through the broken glass in the windows.  Then we found a piano still in tune, and our duet echoed through the space.

Nebraska dance hall

I'll Be Your Mirror

Dear P.W.,
I really hate how you've instated some sort of self-induced Facebook moratorium.  But truth be told, it was getting sort of blah anyway.  You're not really missing much.
The other day I saw Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, and she started crying when she lost her last best friend, her last link to the past, her last "memory bank."  I remember that C.W. and I used to call each other memory banks.  It's nice to know that somewhere out there, another person remembers parts of me––what I would even venture to call a totally other me––that would otherwise be totally lost maybe even to me.

Or, in other words, "Her death takes place in the shadow of new life.  She's not really dead if we find a way to remember her."  (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn)  Go to 4:25 below:

Seinfeld - Wrath of Khan

Anyway, not to dwell on the past.  What I'm really getting at is that the internet is awesome.  Now we have memory banks that don't even necessarily have to exist in other people's brains.  Though of course without the people to share the memories with the net versions would be less fun.

LYLAS!
C.W.

Home Stretch

Tonight I went out alone and it was nice not to go think about anybody else's schedule.  I visited A. and L. and my favorite child, B. came by and left, I dropped by a party held by some old high school friends who I hadn't seen in over a decade, had some great conversations, took part in a spontaneous wedding toast, left when I wanted to, dropped by The Nick and ran into some people, saw some cute random band play, then walked away.  As I was leaving D. (who had intended to see me more than we actually saw each other; it was circumstantial and not for lack of trying) said to me, "Well I guess this is it."  I said, "Yeah but remember how I always come back? How I've been here for months?"  He replied, "Remember how it was supposed to be?"  I walked away and called over my shoulder, "It's never supposed to be anything. It always just is what it is."  He gave me a big grin.

I wrote a poem too.

Encore

All we have to do is scream and yell
and you come back.

What have we learned, Charlie Brown?

Last night I went to set my alarm clock, and I noticed that the last wake-up time I had entered had been 4:15 am.  This means that I had not used that clock since last semester, when I had been teaching and so stressed out that I felt the need to wake up that early to prepare for my 11am class.  Seems like a million years ago.  Sometimes I like to say that I have a really bad memory and that is why I tend to stay so optimistic (some would say naive, including myself when I'm feeling self-deprecating)––I don't remember to hold grudges or to stay angry or upset for too long.  But I guess the flip side of that is that I can forget that I do in fact have a strong work ethic and a capacity for determination and discipline, especially after months of practicing little of either.  K. reminded me last night that I have in fact come pretty far in graduate school.  I have worked my ass off, and I can do it again.

So it's time to put the summer to bed.  I'm getting this in just under the wire, as is my m.o.  And I'll do it in list form.  Much of the list I made at the beginning of the summer didn't work out at all.  Still, I don't much care because this is what happened instead.  Some of this will be discursive, and some items seem to make no sense, but they are meant to be indexes to the experiences, the things that would take too long to explain and to which I would never really be able to do justice anyway.

Titles for the summer: Summer of Second Adolescence, Feel My Feelings Summer, Summer of Stevie
Fleetwood Mac as Soundtrack
Becoming Native Americans
moonhowling
potsmoking
nightswimming
flask drinking
queer friendship
turning 30
2nd chances to myself
moving out of my house
rootlessness
Chicago
living in groups
Austin
housesitting
Birmingham
the hangover room
spazz is the new smooth
empathy as superpower
being scared for morning
August is the Sunday of Summer
August is the Hangover of Summer
hangover days
homemade ginger ale
fig brandy
80s dancing followed by golf course
the moon
cava
micheladas
astrology
Emily and Katie
attachment clamp
Hotel San Jose
jumping in the pool at SanJo
Austin Cave and Mountain Tour
Katie's onesie
monochromatic swimming outfit (yellow)
pool-to-eveningwear
letter writing
Mike Woo
"whatever works!"
janky solutions
"Gold Dust Woman" day
not seeing the forest for the trees
Scotch to Irish whiskey
being on notice
feeling as thinking and vice versa
porch swings
swimming holes
cut-off shorts
iphone debates/douchebag symbol
ripasso
coffee spritzer
topo chico
being poor
pukelipse
Der-b-q
the Mirage album cover
titles like Comptroller, House Speaker, Alderman, Señor, and Officer
the drum circle / the recorder changing our sound
washing dishes in swimsuits
"People are responsible for their own fun."
"We're just too awesome."
banana splits
Tyra as sage:
"This is you.  This is me smiling with my eyes."
"It's better to have to rein it in than coax it out."
Katie: "Can we just stop for a minute and think about the person who owned this onesie before me?"
scooting to the springs
Mondays with Emily
group dumb & group smart
the meteor shower

That's Enough for Me

"When shall we live, if not now?" asked Seneca before a table laid for his pleasure and his friends'.  It is a question whose answer is almost too easily precluded.  When indeed?  We are alive, and now.  When else live, and how more pleasantly than supping with sweet comrades?

                                                                               –– M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating

Fleetwood Mac as Aura

It's hot as fuck, and it's going to our heads.  Swimming multiple times a day is not only permissible, but practically compulsory.  Whoever finds a new way to wear even less clothing in public and still feel like they are within the bounds of propriety is lauded as a hero.  It gets easier and easier to walk into any public place with bikini water marks bleeding through my tank top as if it's just a matter of course.  And––to make all this a moot point––it is a matter of course.  It doesn't matter, because it's August and everybody has given up trying even to act like there is a proper way to go about doing anything.

There are some phrases that keep resonating over and over in conversation:

1. "Whatever works!"  This is courtesy of Woody Allen.  This movie, Whatever Works, was so ridiculous and based on the premise that you can't plan anything––shit happens and if something good happens you better grab it and do what you can with it.  (At the end of the film, curmudgeony Larry David tries to commit suicide by jumping out a window, and he lands on a woman.  She breaks his fall, saves his life, and they get married.)  You get your happiness where it appears.  So if that means we better stop into this bar and order a michelada at 3 in the afternoon because we just tried to buy some turquoise jewelry from some vendors who think working under tents is going to make the air stagnant and therefore cooler (which is a fallacy), then we better go.  Hey, Whatever works!  (It's best to say this in with a self-deprecating smirk and a shrug, even with a drink already in hand.)

2. "Do the best you can."  This one has been around since we were kids, right?  But when was the last time you used it as a philosophy for life?  In Fredericksburg E.W.'s mom's kitchen sink was backed up so we called her and asked her what we should do about washing the dishes.  She told us, "just do the best you can."  So we put on our bathing suits, carried everything into the backyard, and started a dishwashing line with the hose and some soap and towels.

3. "ripasso"  The second pressing of wine grapes.  My cut-off shorts are ripasso.  This is where the economy comes in.  We're recessed.  And also I was never not broke.  Is it possible that thinking about making do with what you have has actually become not only acceptable, but fun, and funny?

So what, dear reader, does this have to do with Fleetwood Mac?  In a nutshell, this:

Oh, Christine McVie and your sweet contralto, when I was a kid I thought you were just a guy with a high voice, but now I know that your androgyny is part of why your songs are so complex.  When I first started listening to your tracks, particularly "Say You Love Me" and "You Make Lovin Fun," I typecast you as a happy-go-lucky foil to Stevie Nicks.  How could you be so damn positive, I wondered?  I found it charming.  Oh, but how devious!  Turns out "Say You Love Me" is all about some guy who is so amazing in bed that she can't say no, even though he is a total dick.  And "You Make Lovin Fun" was written for the dude she was cheating on her husband with.  Then she made the band play it and back her up.  And I'm pretty sure that caused some drama.  Then, take for instance the song "Sugar Daddy":

well i need a sugar daddy
he could be my friend
and if i needed money
i know he would lend me a hand
but when it comes to loving
he'd better leave me alone
'cause i've got you baby
and you give me all the love i need
yes, you give me all the love i need

Basically, the message here is you take what you can where you can get it.  It is the ultimate janky solution.  It is the anti-romanticism of recession-mired 1975.  It's a love song that says basically, Well, you're fucking awesome but I am still going to take this dude's money.  Hey, Whatever works, right?

What I love about this, really all these ways of thinking about the world, is that I feel like in the past, maybe eight or ten or even like two years ago (6 months ago?  What day is this?), I would have considered approaches like this to be a cop-out––as a lowering of standards.  But now I think it's liberating.  I mean, I don't think I'm going to go out and look for a sugar daddy or anything, but I feel less deterred by unconventional scenarios.  The "right" way to do something is fine, and for the most part it's only necessity that leads people to depart from their routines and worldviews.  But sometimes the janky solutions are more fun and they lead to unexpected events.  And is that not really the best?  Is that not really what we're all trying to do anyway, to get at something a little more special than just that which is expected of us? 

Is She the Kind of Person Who Buys Eggs?

Sunday, Daytime:  73 and sunny.  Amazing amazing.  Staying indoors would be criminal.  Walk with K. to Dolce Vita, sip cappuccino outside and talk about how we wish we had a time machine so we could party in New York in the 60s 70s and 80s.  Talk about turning 30 (“If I knew then what I know now…”).  

                                                                    Me, on Our Lost and Found Weekend, January 2009

Dear Katie,

Your 30th birthday is on Wednesday, and man, has it been a crazy year!  Last year around this time I was writing about mint juleps.  You were wearing a fantastic Jessica Rabbit dress that required only your cleavage as an accessory, and we were drunk before the fried chicken was even out of the skillet.  That fall was intense and we were internet pen pals in a major way––I think that is when our friendship really took off... 

And then there was January '09, the first month of one of the craziest/awesomest years in memory.  I want to take this moment, in this semi-public forum, to thank you for being such a great friend, especially during that time when I was stuck in the 4th dimension.  I don't know what I would have done without all our talks and giggling.  May we enter this new decade of our lives more secure in the knowing that we are, in fact, the kind of people who buy eggs.

Love love love,

Chelsea

Playtime

Austin Cave and Mountain Tour

I guess the rate at which Austin is becoming less "weird" and more gentrified has been rapid for a few years now.  And I know people get up in arms about it, but the other night when Michael and his intern Cindy took us on a tour of the Lady Bird Lake area of town, I decided that yes, these condos will soon be filled with yuppie douchebags, but that does not mean that Austin cannot be a fun and meaningful place to live.  I was reminded of one of the main lessons I learned from watching and talking about Jacques Tati's film Playtime, which basically is that you make do with what you have.  Change and growth and the development of things like high rise luxury living spaces does not necessarily preclude humor.  So I want to thank the proprietors of the Austin Cave and Mountain Tour for giving me a bunch of new reasons to love my town, and all its environs.