Thursday, September 6th, 2007

from myspace, two days before trevor's death and before I moved to the house by the river. Clear, calm day, the view over the courthouse lawn on the yellow buildings and the limestone library is clear. the cannon aimed at the Haymarket, vaguely feels like the south near the ocean.

"my car needs a new battery but i'm really not motivated to get one. i'm moving out of my apartment next week and i'm really not motivated to move. i'd like to be dating someone but i'm not motivated to go out and find someone.

it feels like most of my life has been dominated by a frantic animal-like searching, longing, wanting, craving. like i'm empty or starved and i need something, someone to fill me up. it's classic adult child of an alcoholic syndrome.

i want pizza and a nap. but i'd like to eat the pizza first and then take a nap. but i'd like someone to nap with me. do they have people who are hired to nap with you? i'd like two people to nap with me."

one way or another

Reality gets complicated living in a slow place, where 85 miles can be driven in two days going back and forth across town, which is beside the point but still impressive. Like the song by America, living in the desert can distort your sense of distant, perspective and scale. What was once far, is now "only" 3 hours away. What seemed average and unappealing before now becomes the glorious apparel found at Kmart, right next to the imitation buffalo plaid jackets. 

This afternoon, I was driving on "Main Street" which runs exactly north and south like an airstrip, directing traffic into the desert like a double ended line segment with arrows pointing north to Canada and south to Mexico like a math problem.  The sunroof open on my "northern car," a 1989 Mazda which has a spot of rust above the driver's side wheel well, my bleached hair pulled back by white sunglasses, it occured to me how lonely it really can be to be so removed from your familiar, greener and startlingly real past. Listening to Madonna tell me "Nothing Really Matters", which has become my mantra against falling into delusion longing for possible connection with one-night stands and missed chances, I felt a sense of control. Something along the lines of not knowing where I am going, but sure that I am not intentionally driving people away from myself, but rather selectively forcing them out with the unintentional and unarguable reality of physical distance. When money and time, the factors needed for travel become readily available and the desire to be somebody's fantasy dominates my imagination, what stops me from getting on that plane. To be that blond guy with a 2 day beard slowly walking out of the crowd at an airport with a white duffel slung over his shoulder and a half-cocked grin staring right at you, coming towards you like a chinook wind smelling of ginger and leather. 

The honest truth of being somebody's fantasy and defining yourself by that vision that somebody else might have (and probably won't) doesn't make the rest of your life on a daily basis make any more sense, or give you anything to go by when you alone. 

Where it's at

Fast times in slow places could be a metaphor for doing things in a meditative state. The zen of the everyday, or the ritualized living supported by books like The Artist's Way or A Big New Free Happy Unusual Life. From observation, it seems that there is a genetic pattern to the way we slow down to do our rituals and passions. 

My grandmother still lives on the family farm on an island in the river. She reads articles, cards, and the newspaper like they were coded text telling us the secret of life. Birthday cards and advertisements for magnetic bracelets both take on a spiritual tone and she emphasizes their cryptic seriousness by underlining each important word separetely with lines like shaky elongated rainbow arcs. 

My mother reads emails, websites and poetry the same way, with out the underlines but with long pauses, ellipcised sentences and a far off look in her eye as she asks retorical or half-developed questions about the meaning. Do you think this is true? Does this poem convey the connection between the moon and the dying forest? 

Grandma sits by a window doing word find puzzles and playing songs from the 30's on her organ. Her voice with an alto vibrato as she sings "In the Mood" and the wild, big blue open sky out the window behind her. She does these things in almost a trancelike state, unaware that you are watching her and unconcerned with how she appears. 

My mother goes into this same trancelike state when she paints or drives across the desert, Carly Simon playing on the radio or maybe Steely Dan, colors drifting into jewel tones and sounds fuzzing into a.m. frequency while she drips paint over canvas or watches the mountains blur by her white speeding car. 

And of course, me. My idiosyncratic fast times in slow places, crossword puzzles and half read books at every chance. Little notes scribbled in the uppercase cursive to myself with song titles, people's names, web addresses, and deep thoughts and questions that sound more like Jack Handey on SNL than existentialist musings.

My own trance like state occuring in tracing figures in magazines with an exact-o knife, creating paper dolls in a way, painting little portraits of celebrities and friends, clipping recipes and pasting them in a journal. Talking to friends but usually only quoting movies, songs and book jackets like they hold all the answer. Like the therapist who told me, quoting Janis Joplin: "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." 

 

non-stop partyfight

every night is in another 

one horse town two party fight. 

love breakup hate makeup. 

yeah. can't stop, won't stop,

 over gelled under paid 

at least the eyeliner spells it out. 

make you buy a drink

 talk about nothing- get your 

get your head against the wall.

 kissing dumpsters making love

 to bar stools, drop your marriage 

vows spread your hopes high.

going somewhere slow

I grew up slowly, observed myself in a hazy third person light. It wasn't until recently, that I realized that everything was out of focus. Memories grow ever more hazy as they get passed by for new and exciting events. Vision and self-identity gets hazy when priorities get cluttered. Elizabeth Gilbert spent a year traveling to three specific places, with 3 general goals and the objective of dealing with her own self.

My own journey was longer, less vast in destination and more desperate in finding the way back to myself. I didn't go through a messy divorce, I went through a string of failed and hilarious one night stands. For three years I spiraled into a lifestyle of partying and excess. Everything was booze, drugs, pills and fashion. And then I woke up. January 7th, 2008, a cold night. I was alone, another failed one night stand aborted, and my heart was racing. I surveyed the room: a pile of dirty designer skinny jeans, empty take-out containers, and a huge empty bed.

I called my best friend for help. I cut up my credit cards, quit my job, sold my furniture, gave away my clothes, and packed the rest of my belongings into my dirty white mazda.

On groundhogs day 2008, I began retracing my childhood. Starting with the place I left first: Sidney, Nebraska. Driving West, I was still operating with the same problematic demons. There were still chemicals swirling in my system.

The aperture of the camera lens, of my brain, was starting to open and shut on it's own. Every step of my life becoming a question of clarity- being able to focus the lens without tripping on my feet. Some things had to be constant in this quest. I wanted to revisit places I had already lived, or places that were formative in my childhood environment. The list was as follows: Sidney, Nebraska; Las Cruces, New Mexico; Roswell, New Mexico; Houston, Texas, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

I'm consider myself an adventurer, always willing to seek out a new experience. Many things are dictated by environment- the foods we eat, who we become friends with, and how we come to know ourselves. Changing environments changes who we are, I hope revisiting environments can revive who I am.

Being in a small place forces you to slow down, pass the time between major daily events. This can be done in two ways: noticing more small things and making them seem huge or remarking on the contrast of where you are not. It's not that small towns are boring, we become boring by letting the smallest parts of life pass us by. Walking down a busy street or down a dirt road are only as meaningful as the walker.

I love airports, temporary cities of strangers, they are starting blocks: the place of pause before jet propelled life begins. Small, slow places are like this too: places to figure out who you are, what you enjoy, where you are going before starting your own jet engine to find the next adventure. Options become epic- frozen yogurt or ice cream. Minneapolis or Denver. Bloody Mary mix or ginger ale. Wait or wander.

The Set-Up

I never understood the separation between "real life" and the stage. The whole world seems like a giant theatre- always a setting, a protagonist, a set of events- predictable in their chaos. Maybe all of this is because I grew up acting, sleeping in the back row of auditoriums while my parents rehearsed My Fair Lady and just about every piece Neil Simon ever wrote. 

I was not popular in school, but I was involved- every moment from 6 am to 10 pm was filled with extracurricular activities and classes- in fact, I would find ways to skip class in order to get more things done. 

As a freshman in college, I decided to reinvent myself. The problem was, I didn't really know who I wanted to be- so I tried everything and ditched my overly-enthusiastic perfectionist preppy image (I was Rachel Berry before Glee was on the air).  

 I wanted to experience everything, to be right in the center of everyone's world. Somewhere between method acting and the meisner technique- full-on investigative journalism but of my own life experiment. 

You can only go so far with an experiment that doesn't have an end goal. Social anthropologists would probably not condone my methods for exploring the subculture of college students but remaining objective is difficult when trying to blend in with the population.