Everything Old is New Again.

Home from seeing one of my oldest and bestest friends, SDJD, and kind of tripping out on time, love, distance, confrontation, and weirdly enough -- the suburbs. Amazing to see my friend again and remember how much I love about her; weird to see how different our lives are.

I've spent two nights in the suburbs in order to spend time with her while she was in town, and this 'vacation' from Portland has really helped me see how much I love my life, my town, and my own problems. People who appear as though they have it all have all the same problems that other people have, they just also have money and mansions and weird murals in their kitchens. And they are as unsure, uncertain, unhappy as anyone else, but they can't show it, because the well-off aren't allowed to be unhappy considering how much they have...

I'm relieved to be poor and in touch with myself. Remind me to never trade that for riches. Ever.

What a Day a Difference Makes. Or something like that. Ish.

I'm on day four of a battle with: the common cold.

Which, I'm not ashamed to say, SUCKS. After thirty-hmmmpphh-odd years of getting colds, they never get easier-- which is a funny thing, because they're not so difficult that you can't get on with your normal life. You're not in a hospital bed or worse-- you're just... less... of yourself. And if you had the energy to be infuriated with yourself for catching a cold, you would be. But really? I can't bother.

Earlier today, I uttered some words to a friend/colleague that I've been thinking about all day. It was one of those situations where I didn't know that I felt this way until I said it. It wasn't anything as important as, oh say, "be the change you wish to see in the world," but it was still kind of earth shattering to me that I said it out loud, unprovoked-ly...

I just want to work on cool projects. Not for any glory, just for myself. For my own personal CV.

See, nothing groundbreaking there. Except for the subtext, which is that I have a yearning to produce something. I've been flirting, perhaps, with a little existential depression lately-- but this is a sign that I might run the other way, I might avoid the horror of "none of this means anything" and instead embrace the freedom of "none of this means anything, therefore anything can mean everything."

A couple posts back I mentioned the fact that one of the things central to my life is having a hard time of letting go of moments (specifically, I believe, the Raggedy Ann & Andy show-- among other things) that mean a lot to me. This fall, I think I'll be facing up to that fear and trying to force myself to have a million moments that I don't want to let go of. Not that I'll get used to it. And not that practice will make perfect, for once. A lot of people and pop-psychologists talk a lot of shit about taking risks, about pushing yourself to try, regardless of your fear of failure.

They never talk about the fear of success.

"Fall-ing to Pieces... Somebody put me together."

$5 to you if you know that song.

Yep, it's fall. Irrevocably. I am usually sort of happy about the change in seasons, but this year-- I dunno, I feel scared of it. Of time passing. Of memories slipping through my fingers. Of trying to hold on to things. I think because right now, the sun is still shining through my front window-- acting brave and strong even though I know its waning, it runs away faster than it did a month ago, a week ago, yesterday... When the rains come, I'll kick into survival mode and will no longer have this crazy sentimentality that I'm both trying to protect and simultaneously destroy. I'm just in this in-between, this nether-land where I've left something amazing behind and am transitioning to something ahead. This might be my only chance to breathe for a while-- I should probably take it.

I've been daring myself to have a really good cry for quite some time... even encouraged a group of friends to start watching Six Feet Under-- which, if you didn't know, is the ultimate tool in forcing one's self to have a really good cry. Watched a couple episodes with them. I'll bawl as if I'm watching them for the first time, but I'll be watching them with a bunch of people I love, and that will make it better. And worse.

This year has been pretty fucking good to me so far. I don't want to be selfish, but I do want to be honest: I miss all the awesome stuff that has happened to me. I want to exist in this hyper-real state where amazing and exciting things just come crashing at me and I handle them all, experience them all, feel them all. (yes, there is irony in me wishing for a bunch of shit to come crashing at me as we are just on the eve of Cover Your Hearts and I'm about to get my wish)... I made a lot of the stuff happen myself, so it stands to reason that I might be able to make more of it, but what if I can't? And the awesome stuff that other people did for me? Well... thank you so fucking much. Each one of you. I just don't feel like I *can* top this year, but at the same time-- I HAVE TO. 

I HAVE to top this year. Next year my personal METRICS have to exceed this year's! BIGGER! FASTER! MORE PRODUCTIVE... 

I wish a blanket of snow would come right now, cover me, cover the city, stop everything for a minute. Stop my brain for a minute. Stop my heart for a second. I just need one second of peace.

You Can't Take a Picture, It's Already Gone.

The title of this blog post is a reference to something that will eternally haunt me in a gorgeous way, and that is the final episode of {SPOILER ALERT} Six Feet Under. I've been hearing that line in my head for days, and thinking about how the most amazing moments pop up in our lives and then disappear again, destined to live on only in memory (if your memory works very well) and possibly with supporting evidence if a photo has been taken... even though that picture can only capture the tiniest fraction of the moment.

I had a moment that came and went this week involving one of my very favorite artists of ALL TIME. When I say artists, I'm talking about musicians, painters, writers, photographers, sculptors, actors, you name it. Of all the artists who have touched my life, I have a serious fucking attachment to Melissa Auf der Maur.

Two things dawned on me recently: first, I've been a fan of Melissa's since 1994/5-- FIFTEEN years; second, I was a fan of hers before I could even begin to comprehend WHY I was a fan of hers. Sure, I liked Hole well enough, but I loved Hole after she joined the band. I loved Smashing Pumpkins, then I went lukewarm on Smashing Pumpkins, then my blood BOILED for Smashing Pumpkins after she joined the band. I tell myself that I had some kind of supernatural, preternatural, understanding about this woman and her future work-- that there was something about her that my subconscious connected to, and that if I had faith in her as an artist, it would be supremely rewarded. I can honestly say that I haven't listened to Hole and Smashing Pumpkins {combined!} even half as much as I've listened to Melissa's solo work over the years. So to my inner voice, or to my subconscious, or to my soul, or to my gut-- I say thank you so fucking much.

Fifteen years of faith. This week I was unexpectedly rewarded when Melissa came through the Pacific Northwest to show her film, Out of Our Minds, in Seattle and Portland. I was lucky enough to make her acquaintance online over the last year (as this NorthWest girl RARELY gets to the NorthEast, and vice versa!) and even luckier to make her physical acquaintance in Seattle. Luckiest of all to spend the best part of a day hanging out with her in Portland as she introduced OOOM  to P-town.

I can't begin to scratch the surface of the details of all the little moments I experienced, and why try? You can't take a picture, it's already gone. The important thing is that I emerged from the experience with even more respect and adoration for the woman, and more critically-- I emerged with a fire inside (not an AFI reference!). In full disclosure, I will admit that after dropping her off at the airport, I felt a sharp pain of depression-- that the moment had passed and I'd never regain it. The same feeling I feel after the conclusion of every Cover Your Hearts show; the same way I felt in college after our theater department's seasonal productions closed and we had to strike everything; the same way I felt at age 2 when the Raggedy Ann & Andy program came to an end-- I cried and whined "It's over!" in disbelief, unable to accept that something I treasured so dearly had come to an end and would never return to me in quite the same way. I'm certain that this is my earliest memory, proving perhaps that Pisces kids are pretty fucking in tune with themselves.

After my Madonna-overdose in 2008, it took me WEEKS to regain my normal life and outlook. I'm not sure that was a good thing. After the Madonna-overdose, I was determined to affect changes in the world. Face to face, tweet to tweet, song to ears-- I just wanted to be a part of the cycle of affecting one another... I wrote about fighting the habit of complacency, about not being too shy to TOUCH someone, to tell them something intimate, to put your heart on the line, to be whoever you are. The high I experienced-- the high of FEELING FEELINGS-- was amazing. I'm always looking for ways to sustain the high...

When you have a brush with greatness, how do you take a picture of it to keep it with you, to inspire your future actions, to inform your choices, to assist you in achieving total and utter awesome? This is the great question in my life right now-- how do I hang onto the things that electrify me? How do conduct that electricity into something that will electrify you? I'm on fire and I just want to pass it on...

Pass it on... Pass it on...