"FINDING MEANING ::: MINDING ::: FEELING"
[28/9/2025]Some good friends of mine have suggested getting a book club up and running. My partner suggested something similar in the previous months - admittedly less a book "club" and more just both of us listening to the same audiobook while his work season separated us physically - so we could talk about something perhaps more intellectually stimulating than his terrible emotional dilemmas about work and my terrible physical dilemmas about moving while he was gone. This wouldn't ever come to fruition just due to how our schedules and emotional capacities panned out terribly, but it was something I still wanted to pursue - reading for fun, discussing for stimulation, and finding common ground in new perspective other than my own. So I've been quick to cling to this concept of a new book club, hopefully with some more people I don't see as often.
I'm still working on branching out here. Fuck, it is difficult though. I think I finally fell in love with this city, looking out from the bedroom window of the new place, seeing the lights of little cars scuttle across the one-way bridge and into the city like the beetles I always imagine them as from this high up. It's a nice view - a surprisingly nice one for the deal we got on the lease. On a slight hill, high up, facing the valley so as to draw the eye rolling down to the river. I used to only be able to see the valley at the old place if I stuck my head out from the balcony, looking beyond the main artery downtown into a sliver of the bend. I suppose I miss that balcony now. It was protected, at least - not from the smells of the bistro or the smells of the smokers, but at least from the elements. The only thing I don't like about the new place is that its balcony is unprotected and the wind frequently whips through it, wreaking havoc upon any and all potted plants that have the misfortune of being left out during a rolling thunderstorm. Can't have everything I guess. That's fine - the new place finally feels like home. Helps to have a management that doesn't terrorize its tenants with every possible injunction imaginable.
But even if I have the posters up now, I don't have many people to share the space with. It seems many of the tenants of this new building are college-aged, sure, but a lot of them on our floor seem to be... well, well-established. Comes with having things to do, places to be - at the very least I imagine some of them have been "local" for a while longer than I have. I suppose we're not yet ready as a society to have co-op housing and living quarters as a commonality, so for now, we must knock on doors bearing gifts in hopes of gaining entry to each others' private quarters just to see another face and grab a coffee with them some time. Reluctant or not, such is the nature of the beast - our selves are locked behind doors, normalcy of the other near us to be damned. The agoraphobic's mantra.
I traded one for the other. Unappreciative of what I had while I was healing early on in my current relationship led me to believe that the visual public of the cityscape would lend itself to a more social self. In a sense it has been nicer to gain my "being fine with being perceived" muscle back (after all, everyone else does it - it came free with my existence). But I surprisingly have begun to miss my old rickety Idaho home - not the should-have-been-temporary lean-to with no insulation, but the one I learned to love in with my fiance. Admittedly there was hardly much insulation in that one either, but it was home. It was probably the most "home" I've been in.
Yet I subjected myself to moving again, even if yes, I needed to. I willingly walked away from it all. I needed to live otherwise, taking steps towards... something grander. Something "other than this" back then. I knew I'd have to try and fall in love with a new city all over again, as I've been doing time and time again my whole life, even if the repeated act still does not lend to it being any less of a tumultuous task. Though it is not passionless, it can be droll. Walking through unrecognizable streets and wading through crowds of unrecognizable people to find whatever chair is somehow unoccupied. I find that typically, those empty spots are found between groups - a single chair between a line of old pals sharing popcorn and spilling beers. It ain't the best spot, but it's been where I find myself most often. I think when I was younger I would often flip-flop between loving the isolational comforts of self, to loathing the feeling (or maybe loathing the facsimile of fact) that I would become relegated to the cracks of the social body out of sheer neglect. But it comes with challenges regardless, whether I decide to get comfortable in my single-seat knowing that I could leave at any moment without obligation, or try and loosen up to resisting those formalities, instead tethering myself to the society that surrounds us all in some capacity by becoming a local too.
I needed to become more involved with people this year. I'd seriously would go crazy otherwise, and that's not an exaggeration by any stretch. I sincerely mean it - in January, I was baking black-bottom cupcakes like crazy just throwing them at apartment building neighbours in hopes they'd return the favour. The baking itself kept me going even if I fucked 'em up a few times, and I'd always get a treat out of it at least. Spending time hand-writing corny jokes on post-it notes with the allergens included to let people know I put in the damn work and gave them some damn consideration. It meant something to me and in doing so, I hoped it meant something to them. And it worked, kind of. I got a couple hits. A pretty lucky one, too. Life has been unkind to me but not so much as to keep things continually cruel - karma throws me enough of a bite every so often to keep me hooked on that line of punishment I frequent.
I think some would call me picky in my taste of peers. I say I am simply trying not to waste each others' time. But I don't know what switched in me - being back on social media certainly doesn't help my approach to consideration of others. In my January doldrums, I tried to put my best foot forward for people to consider me in that form first and foremost. But now I believe, in treating my little Bluesky page more akin to a Satyriconian vomitorium, I have put my worst foot forward in bouts of aggression and woe in order to ward off would-be wastes of time before I waste any of theirs. Declaring, "take me at my worst or not at all, for I frequently feel at my worst." A pestilent cycle begins, churning the toxic bile in circles when I see no interaction with my late-night worry-weaving and early morning manic episodes of catastrophizing, and it causes me to think I am better left alone.
I stick to my guns, my little pleasures and expensive hobbies. Frequently both involve music and the listening of it. I always found it a little funny that I like music the way I do when I have had no precedent for it. I never learned an instrument when I was young, though I did go to choir (which I loathed even as a young Mormon child). I never had many people in my life with good enough taste to spark a passion for the medium (my parents were "whatever's on the radio" fans, though my sibling did give me an iPod with some Gorillaz and Vampire Weekend on it when I was about ten years old). I also was never surrounded by peers who made music or knew about shows... though I never had very many peers to begin with, admittedly. Not ones that would be good enough conversation for me, anyways. I love to talk about music but I realize it's strange and often obtuse to talk about music itself. To me it is often solitary - reading the lyric sheet quietly as the band marches forward to their own tune. I think I thought I was learning about someone. Through their art, I found solace; knowing someone could make something of their worries and tell other people about them through a medium I could barely wrap my head around gave me something to invest my emotions into. In the few times I've smoked a joint and put on a record with someone else around, it becomes the emotional touchstone for the evening's improvisations, but I am unable to follow along with the distinct words, only feeling the vague shapes of emotions each stanza carries with it. So frequently unsocial as I am, I turn to my unsocial hobby - the cycle continues. With some shame I admit that I turn to my vices often.
My boredom has not been trained to the frequency of a creative like it used to be - instead of bleeding the bladder of misery onto a canvas, I tune myself to pain like a worn-out tune drowned under warm radio hiss. As I read from someone on the internet, "I'd probably drink more if there wasn't a recession" - cheap THC doesn't get me the same way booze does, doesn't give me a wonderful headache like booze does. But escapism rarely has the positive notes that it used to. It's all barrel in this bitter bourbon. The sharp and bitter has always had more appeal to me than the lasting warmths. This same philosophy I crave in my art too, though I know it hurts me. Terrible people with terrible opinions sometimes interest me more with their terrible art than the well-meaning ones.
"Fuck the world, it's Christmas / I'll survive / I was born to search my loneliness for any signs of life"
- lyrics from the song "Cartoons (Bridges Burning Forever)" by The Goin' Nowheres .
I suppose when I went into Alison Bechdel's "Fun Home," I was expecting something visceral, for some reason, or maybe I desired a visceral thing in its place. I'd known just about nothing of Bechdel's body of work going in other than the topic of the book noted above, and the first page. It was about familial trauma, in a sense, or I should say in retrospect more of a exploration into trying to understand better the world our parents were raised in and making sense of sympathy for them as family regardless of their actions. So, I suppose in that sense it was ultimately not for me. I hold no sympathy for my family. I have no longing to know their lives, no desire to garner understanding for them, nor do I have any interest in my blood at large. My blood runs rancid. "Fun Home" shows the world of her parents through the lens of her eyes - I feel she has a love for them in those eyes that I no longer have. I would feel ashamed to relate to children, mine or otherwise, what world beget them and what their heritage has taken pride in. I have scant desire to relate those violences in blog post, so I will not. Such has been my approach to these pains - run far, and forget. No warmth lasts, no home holds; the river runs and so must I.
The only occasion which I remember having a good time with my family - with no Mormon bullshit and no white-people family tension sprinkled with non-drama - was when we went on a hike together to a particular cave and monument. My grandmother suggested the trip - "a trip I'd like to make before I die" - and so her children obliged and set up an outing for all the siblings and cousins. We set out to a particular wind cave in Idaho, whereby sits a little stone monument with a little brass plaque, stating a dedication to all my grandmother's friends that were killed near that same cave. It was a long hike, and we all told stories and asked my grandmother for tales too - lots of stories about her girls' camps through church and all the fun she had with her friends, camp leaders, and the like. My grandmother was a trooper too - in her old age at that time, it basically being the last moment before her hips would give out leaving her unable to walk completely even with a cane, she hiked the whole way up herself. When we got to the monument, we stopped for a while. My grandmother told us again what had happened from her perspective: a storm rolled in, so her, her four friends, and a scout leader ran under a tree to protect themselves from the rain. Maybe this was before we knew a whole lot about lightning, or maybe the lightning hit before the sound made them think, or maybe it doesn't matter. All of them were killed except for my grandmother, who only lived because she was standing instead of sitting. Now she has a distinct trauma response to those rolling Idaho thunderstorms. And I think back, remembering my favourite musician Sam Ray saying something about his music long ago on Twitter - paraphrased, "I don't doubt that the drugs I did made me a better artist, but if I could go back and tell myself to never start doing that shit, I would throw away all my records in an instant."
I found some visceral meaning in Travis Alexander's "The Snake Continued to Eat Itself" in that sense, then. The one I was looking for. Despite some harsh subject matter, I found the writing to be refreshingly blunt compared to many of my readings lately. Lots of revolutionary rhetoric and oral histories sprinkled in with poetic fantasies by Le Guin. I suppose it was a bit strange then to turn to this book based only on a whim and the fact that the title was eerily similar to some manic mantra my good friends repeated to me. I'd been sitting on a copy since 2017, attempting a start only to peck at the first few pages then put it down. But I finally chewed through it over a month, in a few sittings, and found an odd solace in the diary-esque descriptions of what it's like to be in a New England hardcore band (spoilers: it's being a piece of shit mostly). Moving between ramshackle apartments, single rooms, and dealing with acquaintances that barely skirt the line between best friend and deathly enemy and never being able to tell which people erred on the side of. Made a lot of sense to me, especially when I consider my now ex-friend who lives in Allston who just stopped texting me back one day after eight years. I think I just needed someone to tell me about their shitty life to know that it's kind of okay that my life has been pretty shitty too, regardless of anyone I know or will know. Just how it goes, with beers or otherwise. Manic dreams fueled on a couple bucks a day - if he can do it, why can't I? Yet it seemed like his family still loved him and he found love in the end... kind of, I think, maybe, I don't really know how it panned out mostly but it seems like it's going pretty fine for the guy now. I wonder what my life would have been like if I stayed in New England longer than just being born, but I'm not sure I care enough to wonder beyond a fleeting "what-if.".
I still don't know how I feel about terms like "found family." I think, for better or worse, the concept of biological ties runs deep roots in my mind. I have made many attempts at weeding, but digging up any more than I already have I fear will leave an unconscionable hole in my brain where a parasite one called home. But weeds have a tendency to come back, tying choking knots around otherwise healthy plants. So I think to myself, ah yes, friends, peers, new faces and new perspectives, perhaps even a few that like me! What a wonderful idea! I think this, then weeds take root in healthy soil again. "Family" is a word of pain; no relief, no boundaries, no love - favours and niceties dangled overhead with transactional expectations tied to invisible line and cage trap. They choke the thoughtfulness out of a gift and replace it with suspicion instead. They starve the soil and yet they beg always for more. It's just what weeds do. They struggle for survival, though their method is frequently to choke out their competition for their ultimate gain and eventual ultimate decline. A horticultural community dominated only by individual guerilla warfare and domination of the monoculture; a terrible thing that should not last, will not last. But the weeds don't know this: they know violence. They were groomed over years to bear the single seed, to survive only by their ilk. White dandelions flying on the wind, choking the earth, knowing no love and having no need for it either. No wonder they're an allergen.
I suppose these things remind me at least again and again that I love my fiance very dearly, and I am thoroughly convinced that I would never find him in another person again if I tried. There's not another anarchist from the moon - I somehow got hitched to the only one. I got very lucky, or maybe my Christian suffering paid off grandly somehow, or maybe his karmic gains paid out their dues too (not to toot my own horn, but he seems to like me a lot likewise). Regardless, he is a gardener. His whole family has green thumbs; my family has continually tended to kill plants. Somehow, his green thumb overpowers my toxic soil often - he has cultivated love in our household and is patient with me as he teaches me to do the same. I frequently forget though, in my worst moments, but I get better at listening to the needs of the greenery, meeting them with love and care, and water too.
When I say I love my fiance, I suppose it's also a phrase I deliver with the knowledge of mutual understanding. We did go through trauma where we lived, but I think we each worked through our individual challenges in younger years on our own dimes, and we'd only convened again as partners near the tail-end of the worst of it. But we understand each other. We know how the other ticks. Conversation comes easy, even when difficult. Some lubricant made the process of knowing one another a natural dance, beyond what I could have ever thought possible. I don't need everyone to like me, nor to be like me, but it helps to have just one person on this earth whose values are near overlapping mine completely, and vice-versa, despite the differences in our persons, day-to-day routines, and neuroses. He knows I am still untraining myself to only speak when spoken to, to speak my mind without permission from surrounding authorities like I am subjecting them to my unreasonable social demands. He is helping me weed my garden; it takes time, but I value my partner for being patient as he helps me revitalize the soil, tweaking these projects with me. I don't want to walk away from this hole like it can't be saved - it will be filled in, and we'll pour the soil together.
I wish I could lean on him less than I do. He puts in the damn work, but not for lack of my trying. He's just a workaholic. In my fatigued body though, I wish to run on my own sometimes. I just don't have many places to run, nor many people to run with. I find myself running to people to lean on when I get tired. I don't have the privilege anymore of pretending like I can sustain myself. I'm getting old ,and this extrovert-in-denial would rot away unnoticed between the tall grass if I fell all alone in the forest without a sound. I've been a loner, willingly at first, now unwillingly. I am left keeping close to people I know, and I feel guilty for it. I don't know many people and everyone is having a hard enough time standing on their own as is. They don't need a dandelion on their heels too. But I can only carry myself far enough to the next person over, the closest one nearby. Making connections does not come easy to me; I tend to think most other people would buy weedkiller instead of letting me grow with them. I tend to think that would be a reasonable response to my being.
So when it comes to meeting new peers, making friends, meeting at book clubs, what's left? What's different? A pragmatic approach begins to feel lacking. Doing things for some abstract gain, meeting people for some missing piece that I don't even know the shape of, even thinking that I can meet people "for the connections" and leave it at that. Well, I know myself well enough by now to know well enough that that's some bullshit and I know it. I thought to myself if I forced people at the book club to read "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" like it were a revolutionaries' masturbatory circle, we'd all never convene for the next gathering. I couldn't stomach purely economic deconstructionism around peers if I tried; It's hard enough as-is doing it in my own time. I suppose I just want to talk, to hear from people I love. I want to see their faces and hear their voices, to appreciate them using their voices. I would like to facilitate and encourage that behavior of creating with words, dissecting with discussion to build something we can share that is beautiful because of our selves, and for ourselves. I do not want to talk at people. I despise when people talk at me. I need to talk with people; I want to understand a little better, to know a little more. Not for me, but I hope they would know I listen, because the people I surround myself with I feel worth listening to. I do take the words to heart. I use those words in my own experiments and recipes. Every one I have ever met is a co-author to my writings, even my comics I continue to put off writing. Maybe I'll actually tell people about them some day, if they'd let me.
And when people swap their daily playlist tunes, I send songs with consideration for their listener, but not without some vulnerability from myself. I tell myself, "I should go see a damn movie more often," in hopes that something new comes of it. I forget that I can just go see a damn movie just to have a good evening.