In brief. I’ve lived to see the ripe old age of 29. My mom has been having a lovely visit. The Country Soul Carmival Speakeasy was flawless victory (pictures a-plenty, for a change), and they have Jalapino Poppers on the menu at Larrupin, where I took the momster for her special day (poppers wrapped in bacon, natch).
Exhausted now, but in a very good and soul-satisfied way.
New tag. Drupal set message “Power dating.” Backstory on that is here, and I’ll elaborate with new thoughts now.
Well, actually, first I start with self-quote, to illustrate just how sisyphusian this feels at time. From my report back from Baja, which feels like another lifetime:
I realized, for instance, just how blatantly I’ve been keeping myself out of range of romance out of fear more than anything else. Sex and love have always been intertwined in my experience, and avoiding one is a pretty good way to skirt the other. Much as I bemoan my lonely state, it’s my own choices and habits of action that render it so. I’ve been rationalizing this to myself as a kind of jaded maturity, but now I think that’s just bluster.The truth is I’m afraid of what might happen: of getting hurt, of hurting someone else, of getting into unknown territory where the possibility of both those things just gets greater. It’s weak sauce, really, because this is what life is all about; but as they say the first step towards finding a solution is admitting you have a problem. So there’s that.
I also realized in conjunction with the above that I’ve been looking backwards a lot, for similar reasons, when really I should be looking forward. The possibilities of the future are almost literally endless, and when I begin to entertain them I feel a real true gut-level sense of trepidation — “don’t make plans; don’t invest; shit doesn’t pan out, remember?” — and it feels like it might be that good kind of Allen Ginsburg brand of fear. The kind I know I should pursue.
That was nine months ago. Today I remain in almost exactly the same position. The Girth sort of confronted me with this last night — in the good way that friends do — as we were getting ourselves fired up to go out in Berkeley. Because it’s true. I am afraid, and even as I can feel my whole being becoming increasingly energized, I have nervousness and trepidation in my heart. I have performance anxiety, concerns about failing to meet my own high standards. More than any of this, I have layered defense mechanisms which are used to rationalize and obfuscate the whole situation under the auspices of reducing hassle.
This is childish. It is time this ended.
So we went out to a nice little drinking establishment where they have ginger beer (great with gin) and soothing live jazz music. I rode my new Mission Bicycle down just for kicks. After a little seat adjustment it feels like god’s own chariot, and I’m actually kinda bummed to be leaving it here for a while. Doesn’t do me much good in the HC though (or doesn’t it…).
Anyway, the speedy ride and sparksplus get me well-primed to hit the scene. Not that we’re doing anything crazy, just having a couple cocktails and looking at pretty girls of a Saturday evening. There are two such behind the bar, and as a sign of how high I feel I’m riding of late, I skip on past the Girth’s worldly wisdom of not attempting to engage such creatures — to wit: pretty women who wait tables, sling coffee or pour drinks are virtually un-flirtable owing to their massive overexposure — I give the one a little friendly sass while ordering our beverages.
Conversation turns to the increasingly bourgeoisie nature of our lives, and my man is nice enough to humor me with some flattering words about how I’m going to be successful without losing my humanity, and to let me spin out my faux philosophical ramblings on our first-world problems. I invent a good bit about Maslow’s pyramid of human needs as a series of mechanisms for social control, and the ascending of said pyramid as the sweet road to freedom. We talk about the general fuckedupness of the world. The evils of the prison system. The gradual stripping away of the fourth, fifth and sixth amendments (only true checks against a police state), and the strong chances that we will get a Democratic president and congress, but not universal health care.
The revolution misses us, and we miss it. Part of my feeling better and better about life makes me think once again that there’s something good to be done with our cultural capital and freedom to work outside institutional structures. There’s a lot of injustice, especially when you’re not a financially comfortable, physically fit, straight white male American. What to do with all that dumb luck, you know?
By and by we get another chance to make friendly with the bartender since the gentleman to our left is being a bit of a prick. Common enemies are good at producing solidarity. Her shift finishes at about midnight and she takes a seat next to my buddy, and I think suddenly this has potential, though she spends a good amount of time talking to the handsome long-haired fellow further to the right and at some point a very skinny man with a very trendy haircut enters and exerts some signs of social ownership.
It’s at this point that I disengage, and upon reflection I’m a little disappointed. She was obviously at least somewhat interested in me/us, initiating small-talk and asking to try on my hat, etc. She introduced herself, and when we did finally roll out she put her hand on my chest and told me it was nice to have met me. Her skinny/trendy companion could easily have been an affectionate homosexual friend, but I used the pretense of a putative boyfriend to ignore the fact that this girl, who I legitimately thought was attractive, seemed to think I was attractive as well. And this is a move borne of fear, or perhaps even cowardice.
So yeah, baby steps. I’ve been making some progress. Getting it up to flirt in the first place, and I did an ok job talking to a cute girl down at Coachella, and with a couple of shiny local faces in the elevator at work, and having nice correspondences and the like. But the killer instinct is lacking. As my brothers at Wu-Tang Financial remind me, you gotta play this game rough: in, out, grab, get, bonk. Coffee’s for closers.
To that end, I think the next logical step for the plan of Power Dating is Operation Get Real Hot, which involves improving my personal grooming routines and getting into a healthy gym habit for the next three weeks I’m up north. After that it’s Operation Get Out There And Mix It Up, which is a little more of an unknown.
So, this is woefully incomplete; In fact, it covers only the up-to-the-event story... I almost don't want to post it but I think it's good to get the first part out there. More likely I'll write the rest. I have a few photos which I'll add once I get back to the HC and can get 'em off my camera, and for the latter part of the story I can lean on Stephanie and Andy for graphics. Indeed, the above is an Andy Smith original (some rights reserved). In very brief: I had a great time, and it was actually semi-Important for me to get out of my routine and mix it up. All work and not play is not a pragmatic plan.
Travelling from SFO, Cheney drops me off at the airport, ran into the Girth’s lawyerly friend Eric at the terminal. He’s delayed on the way to San Diego so we have a beer. It’s a little hard to make small talk since we’ve only met a couple times, but there’s basketball, Cavs getting trounced by the Wizards, and that’s en entre, and he’s a good guy so we pass 45 minutes like that.
Flight in to LA is fast. Julia picks me up. New haircut. We talk about the important things first, how our respective love lives are going. You already know my scene (nada). She’s got a man-friend who’s got a moustache he likes to wax (to good effect, IMHO) but also says she’s really mostly interested in “good sex and working on myself.” I tell her that’s very LA, but I also think it’s great, and tell her that too.
We go out to her neighborhood bar for a couple beers and to catch up. It’s the former haunt of the Girth, the Lost and Found. In a strip mall — like all things there — but also dark, mirrored, with old-school-classy leather upholstry and a crowd of semi-feral regulars. Things are good, taking family news and the times, being close to thirty years old and still searching, etc.
I like Los Angeles. It’s popular and easy to hate, and true there’s a lot there to loathe, but this is true of everyplace. I think the thing that gets to people like me is that all the reasons we love LA are difficult to own. They seem cheap, weak, materialistic. The weather is nice. People are beautiful. It pulses with the certain energy and power that only a major global culture node can possess. Reeks of ambition.
Anyway, I sleep on a big old couch, and in the morning we do Starbucks, gossip about college people, and then it’s time to pack up and roll. We do a quick stop for me to get some swim trunks at Ross, then to acquire amazing Italian sandwiches involving a long wait for our number to be called, then pick up Julia’s friend Heather, a shining example of humanity. She has a pink scooter, a vintage 1945 map of the USSR, a tiny tv that she watches infrequently (much to the derision of the TiVo-praising Julia) and is allergic to sunlight and ibuprophen, which is a rough hand to be dealt. She wrangles an office full of world-class architects (Frank Gehry). We discover much common ground on the theories of human organization, power, and the virtues of being houseless “for a time” and living off the fat of the land.
The last stop out of town is Leonardo’s, the afformentioned man-friend. Among many other things, Leonardo drives a FedEx truck so we were picking him up after he wrapped his shift. He’s a LA native, a legitimate Lakers fan, and he really does wax his moustache to give it a jaunty point. The effect his that his face looks a fair bit like the Eric from Vagabond Opera, though as a man he’s less operatic and more folksy in bearing.
Anyway, we all pile in and eat as Julia fights our way through traffic; downtown LA, into the burbs, a million “Babies ‘R’ Us”s, a roadside brushfire, the windmills, and finally into the Greater Indeo Area and the festival scene. Several defining things happen almost immediately:
1) We put on sunscreen. The “group lube session.”
2) We observe egregious and utterly shameless littering on the part of festival-goers.
3) We begin receiving VIP treatment.
These three things encapsulate much of the experience I ended up having for the first couple days.
Comparisons to Burning Man are inevitable to me. It’s pretty brutal out there in the heat of the day, and even though it’s not the Black Rock Desert, and it’s just April, it’s still 90+ degrees and savagely sunny. The desert setting, various ravish overtones, and the presense of several art installations I recognize from the Playa make it all seem familiar. But it’s full of kids (Burning Man skeiws older overall) and has a kind of Spring Break vibe at times, which can be unfortunate. And there’s the massive amount of littering, which is omnipresent and frankly saps my hope for humanity.
We’re also Very Important People for this thing. Via a connection, we’re rolling in under the auspices of the owners of the festival grounds — the Empire Polo Field, which is exactly what it says it is — and so we park real close and roll in the back way along with a lot of pretty people and Steven Tyler, etc. There’s a general “VIP” area of the festival which just takes a more expensive ticket to access, but has some amenities (couches, liquor in addition to beer for sale, etc), and then there’s a “Tiki Hut Area” which we have special wristbands for, and also backstage etc.
It’s sort of ridiculous. Waiting in a traffic line in the car before we arrive I read aloud the strongly-worded-letter Julia received concerning the access and expected behavior of all parties within the Tiki Hut Area (consistently capitalized as such). Basically they’re saying don’t be an asshole, so we’ve got it covered, but it’s still kind of funny that they have to write that out in a strongly worded letter. The aforementioned Area itself is a big (15’ x 30’ maybe) tiki hut with a thatched roof, and professionally-staffed open bar. This is some kind of clubhouse for the Polo grounds, it seems, and is situated in a garden area featuring several large lilly padded pools, lush grass, shady trees, sculptures, etc. It’s about 7 degrees cooler than everywhere else. The whole thing is behind a gate and several security dudes, and there’s a “viewing area” where you can watch the mainstage, as well as all the people who you are lording it over. Like I said, ridiculous. But definitely nice. This is a feature of the weekend.
We arrive on the scene just in time to catch The Breeders, which Julia’s happy about. It feels sort of trippy, being out in the warmest air I’ve felt in months, big soundsystem going with giant video monitors on the side. There are five big stages there — two outdoor, three ginormous tents — and by 4pm on Friday things are in swing. Partytime.
More to come.
Well, in spite of getting a mild cold, possibly from dancing until 1am in a sweaty tent full of candy ravers (everyone kept asking me for pills), I’m feeling pretty dang good. After a little bit of a rocky start getting back into the grove with work — it’s still a tenuous thing for me to take a vacation — I’m riding higher than before, in large part thanks to getting the fuck out of my routine, shifting gears. I be riding my new Mission Bike fixie any day now, but I still think this is important: gearing lets us tackle bigger hills, and also go faster.
It’s a wild world out there. I forget that a lot these days, and it’s important to remember, to know in yr bones. Praxis is hard, but dancing helps. Driving fast helps. Getting a lusty little crush going helps. All these things that tap into feelings and challenge our notions of control, they’re important to keep up. I realized this past weekend that I haven’t been doing enough emotional exercise, and the result isn’t pretty. I’ve been feeling bland most of the time, nervous-to-terrified the rest, and it’s getting worse. This ain’t no way to be, so I figure I better stop.
People have been telling me for years to get out of my comfort zone, and they’re right. It’s hard though. I’m pretty good at getting comfortable wherever (benefits of a big limber brain, y’see) and there’s a certain innate conflict between pushing ones boundaries for the sake of rut-jumping, and pushing ones limits for the sake of getting worldly things accomplished, a pull of internal/external focus.
I was talking about this stuff w/Julia down in LA, before we went to Coachella, and her response was “yeah, these days I’m more about really good sex and working on myself.” It’s a refreshing perspective to consider, as I’ve been about neither for quite some time now.
And maybe, as always, it’s not a zero-sum thing. Maybe I don’t need to think of it as a question of personal sacrifice for external ends. Maybe there’s a way to spin up, shift, and make the whole thing work faster, in a higher gear. Maybe I should put aside my fears and newfound risk-averse tendencies and see what happens if I let things go. Hang on tightly let go lightly. Maybe I can handle it. Maybe even if I crash I can handle it.
This is a somewhat frightening line of thought, in the good Allen Ginsburg poetry way: that animal fear that comes from vulnerability, from knowing your heart is opening up, that you could get hurt, is perhaps the most and only reliable indicator that whatever you’re into is something good. I’ll have to consider it.
I decided to take a peek at my google analytics the other day, and I discovered that by far and away the most popular post on my site over the year to date is one I’m actually rather proud of: Me And Maslow’s Pyramid of Human Needs Down By The Schoolyard. Almost 1000 people have seen that so far this year. Even assuming half of them were robots (and hey, robots need philosophy too), that’s still immensely gratifying.
Its no secret I’ve been burning the candle at both ends lately. When I come down to SF it tends to get worse, feeding my workaholism. Even though this is ostensibly a thriving cosmopolitan metro area, I really have no life here, and with an office it’s easy to stay at work to the point where coming home is just a trip you make to sleep before getting up to do it again. It reminds me of the MFA days in a way, or college. Any of those times when I was doing stuff for 16+ hours a day and having no sex.
Not that I’m complaining. Coming home late and hungry and unable to find a can-opener to make myself some tuna salad notwithstanding, I’m a ways away from the point where this pattern really generates any kind of meaningful irritation or negative response. Indeed, for as long as things can be kept in the power curve — never forever, but what is? — this isn’t a bad way to exist. It makes me productive and relatively happy w/feelings of accomplishment, etc, and possibly even provides good grist for later milling when time is less tight.
And still, I can’t help but feel like something is slipping past me here. I mean, the impending birthday is probably driving these feelings, sure, but I can’t shake the sensation that I’m whistling into oblivion. I can’t help but note the toll my current pace of activity (and past times of uber-business) put on my existing relationships, the massive impediment it poses to forming new connections.
To put it another way, I’ve never fallen in love in the midst of a workaholic bender. I’ve never even come close, to the best of my recollection. I’ve generally been frustrated and lonesome. It’s a startling and embarrassing admission of mortality, but apparently my own tender human flower needs time and space to unfold. Who would have thunk it.
Back in March in Boston, I shared a meal with my friend Kate, and she told me about a dinner party at which the initially-suspect hostess (a psychiatrist or psychologist or some other consciousness manipulator) orchestrated the initial chit-chat around a series of questions designed to lead to meaningful table conversation. It turned out to be quite a winning program. One of the questions asked — and one we discussed as quite an illuminating query if one takes it seriously — is that of “what is it really that gets you out of bed in the morning?”
Whether you’re one who’d rather stay in bed, but you’re coaxed/driven out by some feeling, or the type who just can’t stay put, or even someone who’s depressed and feels like they’d just rather call it off for a day, we all rise and meet the world at some point. Why? What is it that prompts or provokes us to expend that human effort? What is it that fuels our first conscious acts? It’s a fascinating question to ponder, and a revealing one to share.
For me the gut reaction, and one I don’t love to be honest, is that there are things and people that count on me. Shit will get fucked up if I don’t get out of bed. There are many other amazing reasons to love being alive, some of which I feel from time to time, but that’s what that causes me to rise and meet the day: responsibility and obligation.
Now, I can spin this as a positive thing, and it’s arguably not a bad character trait to be responsible, to feel a sense obligation, noblesse oblige even. Still, in my heart of hearts I feel this is evidence of a huge problem for me. While I clearly do have a sense of obligation, and it works, and I can appreciate how responsibility figures large into the larger arcs of life, I don’t really believe that this is a sustainable state of things for me personally.
For as long as I’ve known myself, I’ve been motivated by my passions and ambitions. While those are clearly still in play, I feel they’re increasingly dulled, sublimated, subsumed under various auspices. My starry eyes are all but extinguished, my grand sense of ambition whittled down to positive fiscal growth. That’s no way to be. It’s rather sad, actually.
In any event, the conclusion I came to whilst pondering this on the BART is that I should probably do some things for myself. I have no idea what those things might be, but it seems necessary (if not necessarily right) to root around inside for some purely selfish motivations, and see if they can’t be satisfied.
So, it’s this kind of head-space that I take with me to the deserts of SoCal, for a bonafide vacation weekend. It’s good timing, really. I’m hoping that a change of scenery and company will help jog my thinking further.
Rocking a little free underground internet here at the Embarcaderro. I got royally soaked riding down from the office at 10:30pm when I finally arranged my exodus. Such is life in the KoneZone of late.
It actually felt good to ride in the rain. Really good. It’s not ideal over the long haul, and I hope it clears up by tomorrow, but it’s been quite some time since I felt the spatter of cool spring water on my face; swishing down slick glinty city streets flickering with yellow orange sodium vapor light… It made me feel young at heart, free and easy, like projing on home to Brooklyn back in the day.
I used to be much more rugged and rough, much more obviously confident, risk-inclined. If my train went off the track I picked it up, picked it up, picked it up. Those were glory days. Not the glory days oh ye of the nostalgia police, but a set of days glorious and undeniable. Their memory is worth keeping alive, the better for their spirit to live again.
Flashing through the accumulated images of the past week, it’s a heady mixed bag. Trying to work my way from being a direct-actor to a manager. Trying to get ahead of the curve. Trying to continue my studious avoidance of all feminine diversions. Trying not to get boring as I get old. Trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Trying to communicate. Trying to love. Trying to speak correctly. Trying to listen. Trying.
And a few things occur to me.
In the smear of pint-night down at Everett’s, veterans of the military and Gillman st telling stories early, Kelly and Zya creating interpretive dances to Neil Diamond, then the kids coming in as the evening sets in; there emerges a ray of light in shiny blue tights, sheer brilliance, such as to make me avert my eyes. She looks pretty good at the coffeeshop usually, but this is another level, enough to make a man reexamine his beliefs. It occurs to me that my “my head’s not in it” excuse for studious avoidance of such is a self-fulfilling prophecy with real limits in its utility. Something’s got to change, but for the moment, hey, at least you’ve got a collectable pint glass to duck into.
And from this, a potential remedy for my romantic listlessness, a possible self-concept, an avenue of habitual action. How does “power-dating” sound? It’s more applicable than my retired manslut persona non grata, and it could be useful to get me out there in some way. It ties in with ambition and other shadowy forces that need outlets. I don’t know how it squares with living half-n-half between here and the Bay — where exactly do I set my sites? both? — but it seems worth trying.
The general premise is that, hey, I’m a single successful guy. I’m trying to make something of my life and managing some success. Why shouldn’t I be aiming high, perhaps absurdly and intentionally so, in my pursuit of companionship? Why shouldn’t I try to find someone who wants to be part of a power couple? It’s unlikely that my ambitions are going to cool off anytime soon, and I like powerful women, so why not make that my new thing?
I’m not sure yet, but this still seems like a halfway decent idea in the morning.
Finally, on another note, a chance for adventure. My great friend Julia has some free tickets to Coachella, and I’m going to try and pull off a little last-minute trip action. It’ll be good to get a change of scenery. I’ll take some photos or something.
In a New York City, and presumably other big cities, one builds a vital sense of community out of the people with whom you have regular pattern overlaps: fellow commuters, the workers at the coffeeshop when you like to go, the corner deli staff, one or two people in your building you see often. Otherwise, you’re awash in strangers, and points of familiarity tend to be a welcome surprise and a comfort, even when they’re discovered through the mediation of customer service.
In the HC, you’ve probably seen everyone before, several times, possibly even picking up enough information along the way to form opinions about these people even if you don’t know their names. Unfamiliar faces are rare and precious, and people often use the mediation of social roles — again customer service comes to mind, but there are other examples — as a means of creating pseudonymity where none actually exists, a way of escaping omnipresent social information or obligation.
Clearly these are generalizations, and deeply colored by my own bias. Still, kind of interesting.
The taxman cometh. I just forked over about 52% of my total take-home income from the past year to the federal government and state of California. This is where having a business that works out becomes painful, though I can’t help but think that a more devious accountant (yes, more devious than a ninja) could have done at least a little bit better.
In many ways the deck is stacked against us entrepreneurial types. We’re taking advantage of the simplest and most flexible business structure, the LLC. We still pay self-employment tax, and our desire to build up the business and hire people means we’re leaving money in the bank that we could be taking for ourselves, yet the IRS considers that as profit from a business and personal income whether we draw it or not.
So in an effort to expand we knock ourselves up a couple tax brackets without increasing our take-home pay a cent. I’ve been saving for it since last fall, but it still feels mightily deflating. No refund for me.
Oh well. First-world problems. If you’re on the other side of the great class divide and wondering what to do with your Bush Money, here are some neat ideas.
It’s a fantabulous day here in the HC, going beyond the beauty of sping and offering a legitimate preview of what we enjoy come Summer. The sun is hot and the breeze is fresh. I spent the first half of the afternoon lazing about the plaza at the farmers market. I was hoping to score some organic cucumbers (for to make deliciously infused gin) but it’s too early. Most people are just selling plant sprouts, herbs and gourds and leeks and salad greens.
But it’s still a good place to hang out, to see and be seen. For instance, I ran into Aaron from Green Wheels, who’s sort of a socially entrepreneurial peer for me here. He put a quote from me into his quarterly newsletter. I may try and help them out with the Drups on their website, etc. It’s all part of putting down my own roots locally.
Farmers market is also a nice place to people-watch; solar power demos and pretty ladies. Nothing much happening there, just some hippy guy catching paper on fire and me lurking around, watching for beauty. Pretty cool though, and important for me to get out in the world. It’s gotten to the point where people in #drupal tell me to “go meet real girls” (I’d said I had “a date with some javascript this weekend”), and it feels a bit like I’ve entered into a situation comedy based on how often people seem to want to fix me up. Not that I mind that, but it’s definitely a new phenomena. New can be good though.
Anyway, I’m not stressing it. Someday I’ll find a nice girl who’ll talk nerdy to me and things will just click. The flutter will return. I feel pretty confident in that, even if the meantime is a tad lonely.
Well, I’d better get back to that javascript date, and my taxes. I want to wrap it all up and go see a play!
(Photo by Hamed Saber)
