A long time ago, but more like it was five years ago, I met you. I don't remember how I met you. How I got to you. There's no memory of it. Why? Well, there was a term the neuropsychologist I was seeing used. Irony is I can't remember it. Oh, the sweet irony.
I didn't like her. She was a nice person but she was more interested in telling me about the plight of girls at Albany High and how they spread rumors about each other and wasn't I glad that I didn't deal with that?
One minute I was fine, and then fear started to build. In the office I knew I would die. If I didn't get out I would die. I was deaf to everything but the high-pressure hum in my ears like a jet plane about to take off. I exploded out of the Victorian and rocketed down the steps to the street below. Safety? Not there. It wasn't the office that would kill me. It could be anything. Nothing but thoughts of fear and death and the End of Times came to mind. It was too much. And the fear and the panic and the terror, that's why I don't remember how I got there. To end up in a place, just like that.
I found the Lost City of Letters, myself equally lost.
Five years later, I'm in a better place. The Lost City of Letters is not so lost any more. The neuropsychologist's card I so carefully taped under my mousepad ("In case of emergency," she told me) was long shredded to pieces. The other psychologist I saw, that card also became confetti. Perhaps it was unwise to do so, but it seemed like the right way to move on.
somewhere along the line I started caring too much what other people think. Mostly about actions. Why this college, why this career track, oh you should stay with that.
Normally I wouldn't let them get to me. But now I see the cracks in that façade. I love photography but I don't want to be doing just that for the rest of my life. Yesterday I had a panic about seeing myself stuck with doing photoshoots for shit I hated. I don't want to be stuck with that. I want to do ad design. Unfortunately my college doesn't offer ad design. I can, however, cross register. I feel directionless.
I found a catalog from my second photography exhibition. It was a big deal and it still is. But for me, that's it. That is probably the most impressive thing I have to show. I was burnt out by the end of it, not because of all the work and preparation that went into it (I loved it, actually) but because of a couple disparaging comments from my ex's dad and a fight afterward with both. I gave up. I was defeated. I lost all passion and I wish I hadn't let it get to me, but when you place trust and vulnerability into someone, you expect a reasonable understanding.
I do the same shit every day. I don't go out because I feel like I could be doing more. Even though I now know that I can go out and do otherwise, I still feel like I can be more efficient and helpful if I'm at home. I'm tied to a dog who doesn't listen to me and one of four cats that, if left unsupervised, will eat all manner of inedible items. I feel like I need to save money because yes, for the third fucking year in a row, I'm incomeless. Unemployed. I feel like a shitbag. Yes, the market sucks, yes everyone's being extremely selective, but that doesn't matter to me because I'm still UNEMPLOYED.
I want to get out, but a lot of the things I want to do aren't that fun alone. Friends are traveling, friends are getting consumed by summer classes. But I need to get out. I don't need a repeat of what happened in 2005 when I blocked myself off from the world in a last-ditch effort to stop suffering from panic attacks.
I've made it four days. YAY! In editing my picture for today I made it too "hot" but the point is to take a picture a day. I need to keep my practice up. I learn.
"I'm reading over your shoul-derrr!" "AAGH!" Perhaps a glowing laptop screen gave me away. Up on the second floor was mom. Dad busts out of the kitchen door. "What?" "Nothing!" Upstairs. "What?" "NOTHING!" Dad: "What?!" "Mom's just messing with me." Mom: "WHAT? I can't hear you!" "NOTHING!"
So, now to recenter after that interruption. Writing outside. It's fun until your fingers go numb.
I used to do this a lot. Specifically in 2004. Here we go remembering that "perfect summer" again. There's something inspiring about the outside, the light pollution gently turning the fog orange. All I can hear is a low rumble from the freeway. It's comforting though. It's the same rumble I could hear in the morning before the chaos of a day starts. I enjoyed those times when especially towards the end of the school year I'd wake up refreshed and breathe in the morning air and listen to the white noise from the freeway. Tonight it's too overcast to see any stars, but every now and then a passing plane fools me.
I know that wishing for the past does nothing, but sometimes I can dream. 13 and feeling like a hotshot. I had a job, real payroll and lunch breaks and being sent on errands in San Francisco. I spent the summer cataloguing dreams and exploring their meanings. I learned the guitar. I played my balalaika. I typed on an old battered Dell Latitude laptop whose battery life eventually dwindled to five minutes maximum towards the end of its lifespan.
If I could go into the past, what would I change? Lots of things. But mostly I'd want to enjoy the old memories again. Escape from current stresses. To a time when I was 13 and the biggest worry on my mind was, well, nothing really. Perhaps I just want to go back to sleep and have those dreams again just to have them again.
I love to watch the sky change, to look at the stars. It really makes us remember how small we are in the grand scheme of things. Every day we walk around wrapped in our own worlds. We become so used to our surroundings that they seem so small. Consider our places of living. We confine ourselves to the building until one day we say that's it, I'm going outside. Ok, so we're outside. And staring at the sky. We say "that's where I want to be. Up on that cloud there."
I saw Powers of 10 when I was, appropriately enough, 10. It zooms all the way out until it reaches the size of the observable universe. Then it zooms all the way back in until it reaches the quarks in a man's hand.
We are TINY. Powers of 10 amazes me so much because of the scales it goes to.
Looking at the great dome of the sky makes me realize exactly how tiny I am, that no matter how hard I jump for the sky I can't reach it. I'm not supposed to. I remember watching the stars with my friends in Hungary. I watched the sky in the Czech Republic. In France. A sunrise in Healdsburg, a day I stayed up nearly 24 hours. And it was beautiful. I'm an all-hours kind of person. I hate waking up past 10 AM on my free days. 9:30 to 9:45 is perfect for me. Sleeping until 12, half the day is gone.
I wish that I could jump into the sky and fly. I remember being awed by flying over Massachusetts. I'd seen the curl of Cape Cod a million times before in my books but flying over it I saw that it really was that curly. I would rank it up there in the wow-factor with seeing the Mona Lisa for the first time.
I want to be the hills watching the world revolve. I want to have a different point of view than some little tiny thing on Earth. Maybe this is why I ascend Mount Tam for stargazing, just to try and get a little closer to the sky.
Now, at 11:11, I can see the stars, but only if I don't straight at them.
Driving home with my windows down, Poets of the Fall's Late Goodbye pumping out into the city.
Memories of Junior year, crippling depression, anger, frustration, academic probation, and amidst all of this, hope. Before that, Late Goodbye was the anthem of driving around Eastern Europe. A late night in Hungary singing along with Mitch. Good times.
I'm not sure why it decided to pop into my head tonight. I remembered one night I drove home from Marin in my thrifted Nine West leather jacket angry about something, but what wasn't I angry about? I pulled a Lucky Strike out of the pack bought in Austria and tugged the cigarette lighter out of my car as I sped down the Richmond Parkway. I fumbled it and dropped it. I watched the glowing red coils in the tube tumble down my battered jacket. Fearing a flaming end I picked it up quickly and sucked a drag off of the cigarette hard enough to make canyons in my cheeks. Even though it was a cold night I opened all of my windows and my roof.
And we keep driving into the night, It's a late goodbye, such a late goodbye...
Oh, the moment. It's worthless trying to explain it to someone who wasn't there, who wasn't feeling it. It was just... perfect. I was Max Payne, but replace the hardboiled detective with a 17 year old with shocking pink hair.
Bythe time I got homemy car had aired out and I felt better.
A long time ago, but more like it was five years ago, I met you. I don't remember how I met you. How I got to you. There's no memory of it.
