My official last day in Memphis is February 1st. I’m getting a tattoo (I hope) and then flying home the next day. By the time I say goodbye to Memphis I need to have something to turn towards. I’m facing West now, but it still feels a lifetime away. When I get on a plane with my cats and I have no more reasons to be in Memphis… I’ll probably cry a little.
Triumphant, I will only celebrate when there is truly a reason to do so.
I’m still in Memphis.
Have to be.
Planned to be.
Fear stopped yesterday
Belongings I’m keeping
Outnumber the rest
For the first time in years.
Exes are crossed
Unnecessary dots eyed
Boxes, soulless cubes
Labeled vaguely
Companions for the trip
Semblance of order
Compartmentalization
Compartment syndrome
To ease the pain
Of a lonely journey.
My heart arrives in Seattle tomorrow.
Furniture leaves Friday
I doubt I’m far behind.
It all hit me at once last night. The stark reality of what I’m doing. Picking up and leaving a perfectly good situation. Traveling toward the unknown with no way to know if I can make anything of myself. I just started figuring out how to be me and now I’m turning the world upside down. It grips my heart with cold icy fingers. This might be the high point in my life. I could be hurtling along the downward slope to my demise on the West Coast. I don’t understand why I do this to myself.
Fortunately, I have a xanex script. I slept off the worst of the panic attack and spent the rest of today dealing with this knot of nauseating stress in my stomach. Moving things helped. Not having furniture makes all of the boxes look much smaller. Thanks to early training at Tetris I can visualize most of the car packing experience. I have the speakers, head unit, and record player in one corner. The records make a good line. Three rectangle suitcases. CPU, 2 monitors and accessories. The rest is just towels and boxes in alternating stacks. Like cement between bricks.
Then, the drive. I’m stuck on this Grand Canyon idea based on the idea of scenic. I’d rather drive for 45 hours than try to make it in 34 and get stuck at the pass. Stopping could be irreversible. And I have a flight out of Seattle scheduled for January 30th. I haven’t planned any going away party yet. I don’t want to make it that real. But I know I have to go. If I was gonna quit, it would have been yesterday.
I just now discovered which two voices in my head are the main characters in the story. A boy and a girl – obviously.
A Jennifer Aniston gem I never knew about. Star-packed supporting cast and snappy directing. Ah! Written/directed by the same guy that did I Love You Man. It feels way too dated to be from 2004 though. There’s a plot point based on *69. Reminds me of the 90s.
I did some serious cleaning and straightening. Made appointments with all the pertinent people. The final clean out is yet to be scheduled. Despite my desire to just throw everything away and start driving, there are people who want some of this shit. If I was an asshole I could just tell them to go fuck themselves. Problem is, I’m a nice person.
It’s not a choice, I just am. Even when I’m in a tight skirt. Even when I’m turning a guy down. Even when I’m desperately in love. I’m nice. It’s a personality flaw I developed while playing opossum in high school. I figured if I’m going to be miserable all the time anyway, might as well smile. That’s probably the same reason that guy at Juice smiled at me. Funny.
Last night I put a dream to rest. Continue reading Spilled
I pop zits. I know I’m not supposed to but I do anyway. Nothing makes me crazy like a bump. I’m not particularly vain, It’s a textural thing. Same compulsion that makes me pick at scabs. Unlike scab-picking (which hurts) zit-popping has a visceral element of relief. A gooey white glob of gunk erupting from the peak of a tiny, engorged pore. An effect I can only call gratifying. I’m not too concerned admitting this since I suspect facials are a Brazilian way of doing the same thing. Continue reading Porgasm
In yoga class my teacher brought up lila, a sanskrit word that expresses the inherent joy and playfulness necessary for creation. Something about the way she phrased it struck a chord in me. Willingness to play around with something leads to new creation. There’s a joy that comes with the act of creation. That’s why we do it. Most brilliance is perceived as as odd at first. Artists embrace the odd, seeking the joy of creation that only appears when you’re on the right track.
I’m essentially creating a new life across the country this month. Only taking what I can fit into my subcompact, I’m trying something completely different from what I was taught to do. It’s a massively serious undertaking that I’m approaching with capricious enthusiasm. I choose to believe that things will work out based on the fact that my true needs are simple. I don’t have a map but I know where I’m going – serenity from minimalism. Lila explains how I find the energy to do it. I don’t mind messing up. Even making mistakes is fulfilling when you’re on the right path.
Questions dealing with the soul are onerous but what would you do otherwise? The light of meaning calls to us. Even if you can’t see, it you know it’s there.
If you like to play games, check out this web series.
Deep down, we all love games in some respect but it’s easy to get lost in the frills of lights, color, marketing! From sports jerseys to quarters in a pool table, money spent on fun is often intrinsically linked to a game in some way. And money is only the surface cost of the recreational aids we choose. There’s the time and energy devoted to pastimes once considered only for “kids”. When MMORPGs emerged, full-grown adults lost jobs due to the siren’s call of DING. Games make us feel rewarded and satisfied with ourselves. Tangible goals and achievements used to brighten the barren landscape of daily living.
Most of what I understand of gaming as an industry is tempered through the lens of Tycho Brahe of Penny Arcade, an unconventional think tank of creativity and marketing based in Redmond, WA. Tycho’s way of phrasing things generally blows my mind about once or twice a year, on average. He provides consistently incisive perspectives that target the human element of gaming and amplify it for effect. Tycho, joined by his heterosexual life partner Gabe, also regularly appears in a PATV series called First 15 which I directed you to earlier.
Video games come in so many different formats it’s hard to like them all and yet Penny Arcade manages to play all the fields. Marketers of the marketers, they provide an environment that filters through all the nonsense and reduces all gaming to the fundamental question – is is fun? From innocent, easy games developed to help children with learning disabilities communicate are weighed on the same scale as the most recent megacorporate flagship release part IV. It’s a refreshing oasis in a world that is literally dedicated to horsing around.
If you don’t believe me, just watch this one video. It’s the First 15 for Crypt of the Necrodancer – a game I would never even glance at before but now I’m interested in playing. During the video you get to watch Gabe face something he admittedly sucks at and by the end he’s at least given it a fair chance. It blows my mind to watch human nature unfold like that. At the end, Gabe an Tycho summarize their opinions thusly:
“I think that’s something from a nightmare realm” – Gabe
“I want to invest some time in playing co-op by myself.” -Tycho
And yet the game itself is not crucified for not pleasing everybody. And trust me, some of the games they play are put on a cross and left to die – justly.