Swing State Syndrome and Why This Writer Guy can Piss Off

For those of you just catching up, I recently moved from Cleveland, Ohio to Wilmington, North Carolina to go back to school for creative writing. This has, therefore, been an extremely painful yet cynically entertaining  election cycle for me. One swing state to another, not much changes. I registered to vote here in NC as soon as the campus drives started, and since then I've been bombarded with fliers, phone calls, Hulu ads. I've had an Obama volunteer knocking on my door looking for me every day for the past two weeks. I live in a predominantly black neighborhood, so the Romney volunteers have been noticeably absent.

The only people who cared more about early voting than Ohio were North Carolinians. I'm one of those perverts who enjoys going to the community center on Election Day and making a whole ritual of it, and it got to the point where I was lying to the volunteers and telling them I had already voted, just so they would stop trying to give me directions to the library.

This morning I was laying in bed, contemplating my very non-political thoughts, and as I hopped on Twitter to post my deep musings about the correlation between my vibrator and my teddy bear, I saw THIS ESSAY linked to by my friend Angie. I have a lot to say about this, so you'd better go read it first, even though I absolutely hate to give this guy the page views.

First of all, fuck you. Just had to get that out there.
Alright. Let's try this again.

First of all, Ohio didn't choose to be the lynch pin of the electoral process. It's not like years ago, we somehow bid on it, somehow lobbied to be the place where every four years campaign strategists cum on our faces with 300 political ads a day and tie up our cellphones with blocked numbers just because one time we decided to sign that Move On petition. Oh yes, Ohio has email, can you believe it? No wait, actually some parts of Ohio DON'T have DSL, because not a single one of these candidates blowing their coffer loads here comes back in between elections to help us out with real issues - like accessibility of internet services, alternative energy sources, or a governor that's trying to frack us all into a giant hell pit. We are not rubes, we are very well aware of the disparity and the abuse we suffer at the hands of these invaders. There are not a bunch of Ohioans walking around going "Oh man, I'm so special and important, I'm the future of America." No, instead we're sitting in our finished basements, being pissed off that we can't watch our Black Key's youtube video without first having to sit through our 17th Romney ad of the hour.

Second, let's address this idea you posit that all human beings of vitality and vision leave Ohio as soon as they are able to crawl. It's painfully obvious that you consider yourself one of these visionaries. Let me assure you, your style is mediocre David Foster Wallace rip off at best, so tone it down a bit Chump. I mean, I sympathize, because I am obviously one of these glowing talents as well, and yes, I too ran far away from Ohio. To an even smaller town, in the Bible Belt, where grown men regularly call me honey and the job market is so slow I've been considering selling "used" underwear on Craiglist just to make rent. Look, I grew up in Revitalized Cleveland, so I'm well aware of the concept of "Ohio good", and I am not a fan of the legions of cheerleaders whose sole mission in life seems to be to convince me that Ohio is the very best place to live in the entire world because we have a restaurant with weird grilled cheese sandwiches.

But, and I'm going to go ahead and siphon off some of your ego here, I'm a good writer. The reason I am a good writer is not because I somehow had the far reaching vision to escape Ohio, but because I stayed there. I lived there for my entire formative twenties. That means I had to find jobs in Ohio, entertainment in Ohio, love in Ohio, and confidence in Ohio. In order to accomplish any of that, I was required to learn perspective.  You dismissively call Ohio "our republic in a can", and that's right. A lot of rednecks, some lone outposts of urban minorities, a thin icing of college educated professionals. That's absolutely correct, that's our country. Growing up in that microcosm, I am now able to live wherever I want in the country, even this weird little coastal town full of Republicans, and get along with people. I can even genuinely like them. I am capable of having an opinion about people with opposing viewpoints that doesn't involve degrading or vilifying  them. Those famous writers you cite, Anderson and Thurber and Crane, you know what they had that you don't have? They LIKED people. They were INTERESTED in people. They didn't just immediately dismiss anyone who didn't go to Princeton as intellectually inferior to them, or maybe if they did, they understood that intellect isn't necessarily the mark of a good man.

I was going to write a snarky little paragraph here about how you must have come from some beige little suburb town, and how the deeper subject of your essay is obviously your own unresolved bitterness towards your hometown. But then I tried googling your biography, and there wasn't much to find, except maybe you converted to Mormonism as a teenager once? Here's what being an Ohioan has done for me - I read that and immediately felt this pang of sympathy for your childhood. In my head those sugars converted to "oh, he probably just doesn't know any better" and now I've completely lost steam to make fun of you because I just feel bad that you think of your country as someplace to escape from, instead of the unending weird and interesting place it actually is. I mean, if you've made a career out of non-fiction writing, you must know this too, at least intellectually if not viscerally.

Here's what you did in this essay. You saw a week of the country crowing about the Impressive Mediocrity of Ohio, the Breadbasket of the Boring Modern Man, and you somehow felt compelled to scream against it. Nevermind that it only happens once every four years, and it isn't fooling anyone. You said to yourself "Stupid Ohio thinks it's so fucking special, it's time I remind the rest of this high school who the real cool kids are" and then you tried to pants us. So good for you, you reminded your peers that Ohio is fat and unemployed and stupid, that's awesome. We totally deserved that right? Cause god forbid, anyone pay attention to an entire section of the country that needs jobs and education and love. That isn't what politics is about at all, right? No, politics is about proving you're smarter than everyone else. Way to be a visionary there. And I hope, when Ohio goes blue tomorrow, you have a follow up essay prepared about how that doesn't really matter, because being a normal mediocre person still sucks. That will for sure help the effort to convince the "rednecks" here that they should vote with compassion towards their fellow man.

Why We're All Actually Pretty Scared of Zombies

You are either one of two things: a vampire person or a zombie person.

If you are a vampire person, please get up from your computer right now, feed your three cats, go outside and get in your car, drive to the nearest bridge, and throw yourself off it.

Vampires have only ever stood for shame and sin associated with sex and sluttiness. Vampires are the AIDS of the monster world.

Also they're not real. If all you ever drank was blood, you would get scurvy and your body would die off from malnutrition, not live forever.

But zombies are real. Because all you need for zombies are lots of bodies and a virus, and those two things already exist. It's only a matter of time before something like human rabies or human mad cow appears. I mean, I'm not entirely convinced we're not already eating things containing people. I don't *really* think so, but *if* that story broke, I wouldn't be, like, *shocked*. And geez, we can't even CURE viruses yet, so we're just like helpless against that. It's a magical, inevitable combination, and those of us not too busy jacking off to True Blood trailers have already figured that out.

Let's look at the conditions needed to be present for a zombie apocalypse:
1) overcrowding - done
2) high transient population that can spread quickly without notice- homeless, mentally ill, etc - done
3) low access to immediate healthcare and therefore early warnings or at least early tracking - done
4) low international regulation on genetic alteration of foods and medicines - done
5) corporations with the ability to keep the regulations that way through buy-offs and elections - done

AND THEN my friend Louis made THIS point: it's even more likely that the government will at some point just use the Zombie Infection as an excuse to cull thousands of people to decrease the economic pressure of overpopulation. Like, we know you crazies won't approve any sane population control measures, so we'll just fake outbreaks on TV, and then kill lots of people and claim they were zombies.

So that could totally happen.

The point is, zombies are the sane monster, if sanity means seeing the perversion of reality around you and understanding that we are completely and totally fucked, and just hoping it doesn't get too bad in your own lifetime so you can keep enjoying cable and iced mochas until someone shoots you in the head with a rifle and you're off screen.  We're not scared of the ocean, or volcanoes, or ghosts. Aliens maybe a little, but aliens aren't really monsters, they're a different kind of inevitability. We're not scared of sex, or at least we shouldn't be, unless we're deliberately keeping our understanding of science in the dark ages because someone promises us acceptance if we do, *ahem*. But zombies make sense to be afraid of. They represent what's really left in the unknown - the future of ourselves as a species.

Zombies as an idea were created by cultures that had been invaded and enslaved - South Africa, Haiti. Places where society had been replaced with Society - the corporate empire - the railroad, the coffee plantation, the tobacco farms, the mines. The very basis of the fear is that you can somehow be made not in control of yourself. It used to be through death and sorcery, now we've adapted it to the much more modern idea of disease and law. Look! These people can do this thing to you and you will be out of your mind! You will do anything they tell you! You will buy that detergent and attack and kill your loved ones! Not even death will be able to save you! The brainwashing will follow you beyond death! Heaven is a Starbucks serving brains, where you don't have to even make the decision of what you want, it's just all brains.

I mean, it's not a coincidence that the soul-less victims of Society are hungering for the mental capacities of the uninfected. Romero did that on purpose. That man was a genius. Why did none of us ever start a weird Scientology-like religion off of him? Dibs.

So we joke, a lot, about being prepared for the zombie apocalypse. But we're not really joking. When I say I'm hightailing it back to the Great Lakes and holing up in a salt mine, because a) fresh water b)food preservation and trade-friendly natural mineral, and c) easily defensible one point of entry....I am not joking. I'm sorta joking. But I'm not joking. This is what we're doing, you're either with me or against me, and that's why so many people have their Survive the Zombie Apocalypse plans posted on their OK Cupid profiles. Do I think it's likely that having a mate who knows how to hunt and owns several firearms is going to really be integral to my survival? I mean, probably not? But...I mean, that sort of thing is always useful right? I'm just being prepared.

We're joking, but really what we're doing is mentally preparing ourselves. That's what a population does when they realize they are trapped, cornered, and there's no way out except chewing our way out of the shackles and getting to the nearest cave with a weapon. One that doesn't require ammunition because that shit will run out eventually. (Arrows are good.) We are bristling our hackles, and laughing it nervously off.

So...you know...pretty TENSE time to have an election huh? When we're all just starting to go fucking insane with the realization we are no longer in control of our lives? That should put us just a little bit back on the track to unity as a nation, united in our fear, only seriously? Fuck unity as a nation, that's how the fucking zombie apocalypse happens. Also wars. Where people develop biochemical agents? Right?

Anyway, Happy Halloween, and you should still vote for Obama cause I want school loans and birth control.

The Awkward Sex Show Marches On

So we did the first show and it was tons of fun, but the audio was awful and me trying to clean up background noise did not make it better.

 But then Scene did a write up of us, and I had to make a blog and a twitter feed and a facebook page, and so then it was basically a thing.

 So we did it again, and the second time it was just as much fun with fewer people, and easier to listen to for sure, but I was really sick and people got really drunk and the conversation got away from us pretty good towards the end. I did some creative editing. Editing in the sense of taking the digital equivalent of a broadsword to the hour and 45 minutes of nonsense.

I like that this is just not a comedy show. I'm not entirely sure what it is, but I like that I'm not expected to be funny. Also it turns out I like my own voice a whole lot more than I used to when I was a kid.

 Anyway, you should go listen to it. Unless you're our parents. I cannot stress how much our parents should not listen to it.


 

In Which I Tell You What Is Wrong With that Missed Connection You Posted on Craigslist

  parma mcdonalds - m4w - 43 (pearl rd) Hi...you-cute blonde girl with two younger girls...we connected eyes when u walked in...i was with my young daughter. not bold enough to have walked up and introduce myself... 

No one should ever hit on anyone in a McDonalds ever. Aside from the fact that you were both bringing small children in there, which you should never do because its kinda the moral equivalent of taking them to a bar and feeding them Schnapps, ASIDE from that, there is absolutely nothing sexy about a McDonalds. Groceries stores - okay sure, there's this whole pursuit thing, a meandering eye contact thing. But nobody makes eye contact at McDonalds unless they are a serial killer. The shame of being there should push any self confidence you have in your own sexy time abilities out in the street to be run over repeatedly by people you know driving by and seeing your car in the McDonalds parking lot. The shame is so overwhelming, I actually blushed the last time I went through the drive-thru to get a sausage biscuit. Which was yesterday. Because I had to wake up early to go to the office and I was starving and also I was mad I had to drive anywhere. See, McDonalds is like smoking or drinking, it's a vice. But no one is ever going to look down the counter at you and think "I really respect that he ordered a 10 piece instead of a 20 piece and it makes me want to fuck him."


  Monsters Game "Waitress" Thursday Night - m4w - 26 (The Q) You were the beverage girl and were amazingly beautiful. I think you caught me looking at you and I gave a smile as you turned away. Hope you see this and what section were we in so I know if's not a fake. 

The first part of this is fine. You identify where, when, and you compliment her. Fine. The problem starts in that second line there "I gave a smile as you turned away". No mention of holding eye contact, her smiling back. As far as we can tell, basically what happened is this girl didn't notice you at all. But then you set the expectation that this girl who works at this huge sports Arena, and probably served "beverages" to at least 2,000 drunk leering men, she is supposed to remember what section you were in. Or who you were. I sort of get it, you're assuming it's the only section she worked, so you'll know it's her, and not one of the other hot 23 yr old bartenders working there. Cause lord forbid one of those OTHER girls contacts you.



Parking Garage - m4w - 25 (Downtown ) I saw you in the parking garage. You had blonde hair, and looked like you wrote something in the back windshield from all the steam that was inside the car. You were parked on the 7th floor and just had this look in your eye like you wanted it. I should have made my move then, but I wanted to wait for Thursday. I hope you find me

....before I find you. I find this one horrible and creepy and wonder if possibly I should call the police to prevent a rape? No, I'm serious.

 Just don't ever write anything like this ever.


  Young sample woman Heinens Lander Circle - m4w - 53 (Pepper Pike) You gave me a sample of a special kind of orange at Heinen's this afternoon...do you remember me? 

You are 53 years old. I would have thought that would be enough times to grow some balls. But I'm guessing you weren't at liberty to speak to Young Sample Woman at the time, because you were with your wife, or daughter who was actually older than YSW, or girlfriend that you cheated on your second wife with. My out of town readers are not going to be able to properly conjure up the right image from the word combinations of Heinens and Pepper Pike, but have you ever had to deal with a small to mid sized business owner who an ex-salesman and owns 2 Audis and a Tahoe? Remember how he was the most ego driven paranoid insecure blowhard prick you ever met? That's who I picture this guy to be.

 What the hell is a "special" kind of orange? Valencia? Clementine? Tangerine? I thought we had most of the orange categories set.


  Marc's Kamms Corner - m4w - 38 (Cleveland) Hope you read these! You were in Marc's at Kamms corner today and we kept running into each other in every aisle. You were in pink pants and had a gentleman with you(I think maybe your dad). We exchanged smiles and eye contact, and even a few words, including talking of alcohol abuse...lol. I thought you were really cute and should have asked you for your number, but wasn't sure if the guy with you was WITH you. If you see this and are interested, send me an email and tell me what I was wearing. 

A bunny suit? I don't know how else you would expect some random girl in a low budget grocery store to remember what you were wearing. Don't guys realize that most of their clothes look exactly the same? This is coincidentally the same grocery store I use, so believe me when I tell you that finding yourself talking about alcohol abuse with a complete stranger is not that far fetched.

I wonder if she were to write back, and it said "hey, I don't remember what you were wearing exactly, but you seemed nice. Let's talk!", he would reply "nope sorry, that can't be you. The girl I met would remember my shirt."


  Stephanie - Ride Home Early Rainy May Morning - m4w - 29 (Middleburg Heights - Holland Road) Looking for Stephanie, the girl I gave a ride home back at the end of May. It was late night / early morning and she was walking home during one of those few major downpours we had. You kept worrying about getting my car wet. Don't worry it dried out just fine. You were tall, slim and athletic with long slightly curly or wavy brunette hair. You were wearing red Ohio State shorts or possibly cut off sweat pants and black high heel sandals. Your legs looked amazing and you had a beautiful smile. I was brave enough to offer you a ride, but still too shy to make much conversation with you. Wish I could have got your number or email address or something. I am not sure where you were coming from, but I assumed maybe a bar or a party. You said you were walking because you didn't want to get a ride from some drunk guy. I was driving home from work and still think about you sometimes on my way home. I have been hoping to maybe run into you again some day, but obviously that hasn't happened yet. If by some miracle you do see this you should know my name, what I was driving and where I work. I know it was a while ago and I probably didn't make much of an impression on you so I'll settle for 1 of the 3 :) 

I just want to recap this scenario here. It's early morning, let's say 3 or 4 or 5am. It's raining and dark. This girl is walking down Holland Rd in Middleburg Heights (which if I remember correctly is mostly residential, but if I'm wrong, either way picture the most suburban street you can think of), wearing red jersey cut offs with the OSU logo on her ass, and black high heels. She stops and accepts a ride from a complete stranger in the middle of the night, because she is drunk and didn't want to go home with one of the other drunk guys whose company she just left.

 Let me tell you dude, in that scenario, you did exactly the right thing not asking for her information or giving her yours. Her father would be really happy about both those things. But otherwise, I hope this works out for you.

I Hate Every Title I Come Up With For This

I read this last night at an event. Or rather, I made everyone else read it out loud, paragraph by paragraph, and that was fantastic. I might make that my thing, making audience members read for me, I'm terrible at reading my own stuff and it's pretty fantastic to hear your words in other people's mouths.

I am incapable of change.
I long for it. I look around at my house, my car, my job, at my body in the bathroom mirror getting out of the shower and I want it all to be different. But when I concentrate hard, when I try to gather up motivations, to suction out the fog in my head and replace it with cold hard strategy, those motivations and strategies and plans are slowly eaten away by my brain’s naturally produced poison of staying put. They are eroded until there is nothing left but a lacey shadow on my brain of what I intended to do. An xray memory. A blot on an otherwise smooth surface.

I live in a city that is as poisoned as my brain.
I drive to work in the early morning hours, when the molecules of the City are still and quiet, and the only movements are the sparse cars gliding along grey empty highways, and the buzzing from street lamps and gas station signs. I drive past monstrous hunks of architecture that have been killed in the battle between industry and flight, the remains of wealth and power. These rotting buildings are the physical incarnations of my shadows, proof positive that no willpower can exist for very long in the Wasteland. Nobody knocks them down. Nobody fixes them. Nobody remembers what they used to be for. We hardly see them anymore, they lay invisible in the background of our lives, full of power but cold and dead.

This is what I think about as I’m at the gas station, the sun rising behind the Citgo sign, (listening to the man on his cellphone at the pump next to me who apparently doesn’t care if we blow up) - Before we had horizons and linear perspective, art had hierachy, an aristocracy. A character’s size was based on his or her’s importance to the story of the painting. This was called vertical perspective. It was left behind in the dust of the modern centuries, because it was illogical, and the concept of abstract art wasn’t due to be reborn on the scene for another hundred thousand million light years. The Horizon was invented and stabilized and everyone started using it, not just sailors on their little toy wooden boats, but writers and artists and soldiers. Like when people who weren’t lawyers first started using cell phones. The Horizon was at one point a modern technological miracle. A shining beacon of what humanity could accomplish - the Horizon!

It comes first from the Horizon. I am driving to work one morning, listening to the same CD I’ve had in the car for a year, when on the edge of my vision I catch a light. Not a flickering street light, or rushing lights of another car, but a gleaming glow coming from the mouth of the river, on the horizon of the large cold block of grey that is the Lake. It is pulsing a silent gold, which reflects on my windshield and shines against the concrete walls of the old City. This light, coming from an unknown awe inspiring enigmatic far far away point on the Horizon, gets stronger and stronger throughout the day. It turns the winter sky pink and silver. It transforms the dirty windows of the warehouses to twinkling prisms.

By the time we are all driving home, during what would normally be a pitch black rush hour, the entire City is lit up like a spotlight. But this light does not just reflect, it sticks, like gold dust settling on the streets. Our car tires turn up storms of sparkles like snow. It settles on our hair and eyelashes and clothes as glitter. It absorbs into the asphalt and turns the soot covered bricks, black with a century of manufacturing coughs, into jewels and shingles into irridescent shells. Those old dinosaur buildings, they become living breathing animals, snuggled in their nests.

The best part though is what happens when you breathe in the gold light. First you choke a little, with the tingling of it down your throat. Then you feel a warmth settle in your chest, as if you had just sipped a glass of bronzed whiskey. Next you feel it spreading through your veins, and up into your head. You want to lie down in grass and stare spinning at the sky, only it’s January in Cleveland so there is no grass. Instead you sit in your car with the heat blasting, and close your eyes, feel the light reaching up your spine behind your eyeballs, and into your corneas, and out through your lashes. I hadn’t realized how slow my heart was beating before, but I notice now in retrospect, as my heart beats faster and faster.

I am dizzy with a kind of universal caffeine. I open my eyes, and everything seems cleaner. The snow is whiter and the brown sludgey ice around the edges is gone. The sky is no longer grey, but shades of mauve and cream and violet. The siding on the houses is newer, the cars nicer, the people better dressed. The City has been gilded through and through. Everyone is happier. I am happier. All my memories are scrubbed clean. I barely remember my disgust with the never ending sameness, instead that familiarity seems to be a power, something that makes me strong, knowing where everything comes from and everything goes. Being “stuck here” is suddenly “ideal cost of living” “affordable amenities” “friends and family.”

There are lots of words thrown around the next few months, and I hear them all the time, online and on the radio, from the mouths of my friends. Revitilization. Civic Rebirth. Renaissance. There are not more jobs suddenly, people are no less poor and miserable, everyone is still bored. But now that the light has made everything seem prettier, nobody seems to mind those other things as much. The mysterious dust is gone, has absorbed into the groundwater and steel, but the euphoria remains. I know deep inside my head, beyond the reach of the Light, that this is not a Golden Age. This is the last huzzah before the end. This is the revenge of all those rotting brick husk buildings, the forgotten schools and masonic temples, the sprawling abandoned factories, they are gasping out their last boomtown breaths. But I just can’t bring myself to protest.

My thoughts on this whole Boosterism Debacle I Just Witnessed

I just came from a thing at the hipster hot dog bar set up by Ohio City Writers, a new group that I'm excited to see start holding events in town. Mostly because I've never been in a room with so many writers before, and I even got a card from someone offering some freelance work, and it's nice to get that sense of community without having to subject myself to an open mic in Willoughby. Tonight was a panel pitched as a discussion of the prickly topic of writing about Cleveland, which is another way to say "hey, let's get some pro-Booster people versus some anti-Booster people in the same room and have them duke it out." There are plenty of vocal Cleveland cheerleaders out there, and plenty of people who get annoyed by the cheerleaders. This is situation that lots of small to mid-size cities face, a turf war of social media. I even talked to people in Huntington WV once who had Booster- Anti Booster opinions, they exist even there Folks, in a town that is mostly known for a mediocre college and the time their entire football team died on a bus.

 The discussion itself was too loose, it quickly devolved into a back and forth between those who wanted to scream how great Cleveland is to everyone and those who want everyone to calm the fuck down and look at the facts and stop being so happy. Because here's the thing about trying to argue with people who are bristling with enthusiastic emotion, you can't. They want you to yell back, they want to get into a fight about it. Like an avid sports fan, all they want is a chance to beat you  up over the very wrongness of your own emotion which is contrary to theirs.

 It turns out that I feel the same way about the Boosters that I do about God. As in, maybe they exist, maybe they don't, it doesn't affect my life one way or the other, so who cares? That's oversimplifying it, but I wonder if maybe the better discussion should have been, why do we care if Cleveland Cheerleaders exist or what they do? The whole thing is too personal, too entrenched in individual insults and negative experiences. The Boosters are mad because they think everyone should agree with them, and the anti-Boosters are mad because they feel like anytime they try to say anything realistic about Cleveland, they are subjected to very over the top criticism for their negativity. They are told if they don't like it, they should move. In fact I heard "Leave, get out, move" shouted several times at panelists tonight. Which, no matter what it was in response to, was ridiculous and stupid. All the panelists, without exception, were people who contribute positively to Cleveland culture, and if that's who you are looking to run out of town just because they want you to acknowledge the actual poverty level in your city, your idea of how to help Cleveland grow is fucked.

 The kernel of the problem here, I think, is perception. Ohio City, Tremont, Downtown, they all have these tightly knit communities of social media savvy 30 yr olds with expendable income and iphones, and what that has led to is a type of civic blindness. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and contribute all the fault for this rift to Facebook. We are overexposed to each other. Before FB and twitter and everyone in the world having a blog, there were still people who worked hard on making Cleveland a better place, and some of them were annoyingly positive at parties when you ran into them there, but like any social circle, you picked and chose who you were going to interact with and the serious people kept to themselves and their projects, and the Boosters worked for their marketing firms or CDCs, and people talked about each other individually behind their backs like always, but that was it. Now we, but especially nonprofit or social networkers, we are all over each other. We are friends with all the same people. When any one positive or negative press item comes out about Cleveland, we get to see it retweeted and reposted a thousand times in front of us, replete with every person in the world's comment about it. Events, outrages, opinions are all spouted off like second nature, having an opinion is like breathing to us.

 On one hand, the Boosters have understood this better than the rest of us. In their social media based world, it is important to stay on message, that's how all good and effective propaganda works. You pick the message, in this case how awesome Cleveland is, and you pound it into people's brains ad nauseum until it becomes unacceptable to believe anything else. The Boosters, by and large, are marketing people. They have a product, and they are pushing it. It's not frank intellectual discussion, it's not nuanced civic strategy. It is just straight up emotional reaction, and they want you to have it. The world has over and over again proved the effectiveness of propaganda. Most recently, let's all think back to a certain recent Presidential election that had those Hope posters plastered on every rusty bridge and alley from coast to coast. Hope is not the way you run a government, but it is a way to get people emotionally involved. It breeds a feeling of us versus them, of camaraderie. It is true that lots of Clevelanders feel stupid telling people out of town where they are from. It can't hurt to seed some civic pride. We're a fucked up city, but lots of cities are, and the Boosters' main mission is to convince other young people with expendable income to either move here or stay here because really it isn't so bad. And for that particular population, it really isn't so bad. Speaking from that class level, it's pretty okay here.

( However, when you decide to bully people on their own blogs about their suspected lack of devotion to your message because they point out other people live here too, or when you yell at someone to leave town? That's trolling. )

 Which brings us to the anti-Boosters. Most of the people I know who are staunchly against the Boosters are very smart educated individuals, who sincerely want to make Cleveland a better place. None of these people have given up, because the ones who have really given up don't go to panel discussions about this sort of thing. They just feel that the best way to improve our city is to face the facts, and acknowledge that the population of the city is much more than a select minority of middle class single folk. Cleveland is a very poor town with a horrible school system. It is known across the country for being ground zero of the national foreclosure crisis. Environmentally, decades of industry and a fear of more jobs leaving has left us dirty and gross. Lots of people who live here devote their careers to trying to fix these problems. They deal with the disturbing reality of what living in the Rustbelt means every day, that it is an ongoing struggle to provide education and paychecks and housing to a population which has been steadily leaving for greener pastures or staying put and getting poorer and poorer. So when they face these realities every day in addition to their own personal struggle to pay their bills and be happy, and then are bombarded online with "Cleveland is Amazing and Awesome and Wonderful" sentiments, there is bound to be bitterness. It makes them feel that everyone else is out of touch, that if all these Boosters were really aware of how fucked up everything was, if they had to be on food stamps and couldn't get a job without a car because the bus lines don't run out regularly to the suburbs, then their enthusiasm would wane immediately. In other words, covering a beat up Chevy Van with pretty paint isn't going to make it a Rolls Royce. You can't reinvent a city just by making a very small middle class population believe it's going to be okay.

 That is a little bit of a killjoy attitude, but I share it. Cause yeah, I'm tired of seeing all this Cleveland fluff on my facebook wall too.

I wonder if the real problem the Anti-Boosters have with the Boosters is that they see all this energy and enthusiasm, and they want to direct it towards another purpose? In which case, don't you understand that all that energy and enthusiasm self-perpetuates BECAUSE they aren't dealing with the rest of Cleveland's issues? You can't redirect that, it only exists because it is centered around a very simple and easily followed concept. You bring heating bills and taxes into the mix, that souffle is going to fall flat. To write a blog post about heating costs rising requires more research than regurgitating the press release for a new restaurant. That's mostly why I don't write those kind of posts myself. It is much easier and way more fun to be a cheerleader than it is to be an activist.

 The whole thing reminds me very much of the fighting words that came out between the Detroit Boosters and the Ruin Porn photographers. Boosters in Detroit were claiming that photographers were only showing the bad decaying side of Detroit, and photographers were shrugging and responding with "But it IS there. We didn't PUT it there. If you don't like it, get RID of it." Honestly, that should probably be the response of the Anti-Boosters. "Hey, we didn't create these problems, if you don't like us talking about them, then fix them." And then to promptly ignore them. Take them off your facebook list. Take them off your twitter. Because this isn't a "we have to win them over" disagreement. It doesn't matter. At all. If the Boosters convince a couple people to move here, or stay here, good, that's more tax money. You don't have to be friends with them. And if it is all a waste of their time, then it was their time wasted. Who cares? If a few of them are going to be rude and pushy and leave insulting stupid comments on the internet, well, it's not like we're strangers to that. Don't you have tea party relatives that you've blocked on FB? They don't have the market cornered on internet bullying. But we need to stop treating this like an actual civic issue, cause it's not. It is, at it's very root, just cheerleaders versus nerds, and it's about hurt feelings and being shouted over when you are trying to make a point, or being insulted by being told your way is wrong. Also, the rest of the school is wondering what the big deal is.

 Here are my conclusions:

 1) If you don't like the Boosters, stay away from them. They are not actually preventing you from doing anything, or affecting your life in any meaningful way unless you let them. Just because the people who agree with you don't use Facebook as much doesn't mean you are alone.

2) If you are a Booster, stop trying to get validation of your own righteousness. Yours is not a movement that is going to convert anyone already entrenched in this fight, you should only focus on new converts. Unless you really want to just battle.

 3) If Boosters or Anti-Boosters won't stay away from you, ignore them. There are not as many of them out there as Facebook would have you believe, and the majority of this city (the majority which doesn't have the kind of money to go out drinking every other night on the W.25th strip or even own a smartphone) well, they don't even know that this discussion exists at all. If you care about people listening to you, make your focus the people who aren't involved at all.

 4) Working on trying to import a solid middle class to certain urban neighborhoods is not a bad thing. It's good to have people live here who are happy. Happiness and optimism, sense of community, these are important necessary things. But good luck trying to get any of them to stay once they start popping out kids, is all I'm saying.

5) For god sakes, everyone stop taking this personally. It is so meaningless to actual change, the real pity is we waste our time talking about this rather than actual development issues. Don't let the other faction (who is still on your general side) control the conversation. They aren't the law. They can't stop you from talking about things just because they disapprove of them. You just keep doing what you're doing, and they will keep doing their thing, and we will all continue to go to different parties.

January in Cleveland

There is, or there was, or there will be a full moon, I can't keep track, but the moon has been huge and sitting heavy on the clouds. The lake tides have been unnaturally high all week. That's not actual, that's a metaphor. People have been tapping on the glass. Also a metaphor.

So of course we tapped back, and they tapped back, and it became a game, and then a code, and then we all went outside. I'm not good with codes. I need things spelled out, in black and white large clear font, with footnotes. I have just started wandering around blissfully self involved, ignoring the tapping, letting others figure it all out. There are all sorts of emotions swimming behind my eyes, and I don't give a crap. I spend my mornings wishing for bread to dip into tea, that's how weird things have been lately. It's probably because I've started reading again, it makes me a weirdo.

In celebration, January became a month of sobriety and sunshine. It's not January I'm worried about, it's all those other months waiting in the wings. February. March. They are using January to soften us up. We melted like margarine at first but I want to be wrapped up and protected now, I want to sleep in warm places, with warm things. This weather sets off sprinkled pricklings in my spine of storms to come. It is beautiful and calm and threatening. How unprepared I am, to be put away for winter.

Between the sunshine and the deadlines and the full moon, I feel like this year is going to take forever and a week. We were all quiet that day, and I think we were all tired.

I will change my last name to Jameson and inherit millions!

Friday night I got off work and painted myself up in unicorn spit, fake diamonds, and the scales from a Mongolian Ice Lizard. I had to make myself look as little like a virgin as possible, because that night was the Annual Sacrifice to The Gods of the Coal Elevators and Cargo Ships, and at midnight they always throw a virgin hipster off the bridge, so the trick is to stay in the shadows and be old. I filled up two flasks and sparkled my way into the crowds. All the citizens were there, and I think I said hi to all of them, all ten million dark faces coming into focus, one after another. I needed to be drunk to smile that long, to say hi for five hours straight, to walk back and forth over the bridge, over and over again, hitching along to different wandering groups like a small fish trying to ride the wake behind a shark so big it can only be seen in focus from a distance. The entire social scene of one midsized midwest city gathered in one long parade. By hour three, I was trying to explain to people how exhausting it was to not be able to walk 200 feet without having to stop and talk to someone else, to do that shallow quick come up with conversation quick remember their name quick say hi to everyone they are with. It wasn't bragging, it was me trying to drunkenly express how overwhelming it can be to try and hang out with everyone all at once, how I wanted to sit and have real conversations with 58 of you but not all at once, the pressure to know how much small talk has been required and when to let flow of traffic take over again, how to not ignore anyone, how to not be rude or clingy or aloof. It was a lot of fun to glisten, but when it stopped being fun I happily left with my friend from Chicago to go outside to the rest of Cleveland.

We stumbled a few blocks to the bar, and thankfully ordered coffee and a hookah, watching a middle eastern quinceanera, 17 yr old girls in tight club dresses, their mothers looking on in tight club dresses, their boyfriends all in bright colored polo shirts their hair dripping with grease. The dj playing all top 40 until every once in a while he played something foreign and Eastern, and all the boys would dance wildly in a circle with themselves, stomping and throwing hands and feet everywhere, being the first children of immigrants and knowing how to do the folk dances from weddings and birthdays. We drank our coffee gratefully and watched the dancers in half mocking half admiring awe. Then I followed the group of stand up comedians I had thrown my lot in with, because of the one I knew from out of town, and we went to the Hot Dog bar for close, and later to another guys house to hang out. I don't know if you've ever hung out with 9 stand up comedians at once? It's fucked up. They know it's fucked up too, the way they are constantly trying to riff on something and throw out one liners and sacrifice each other one by one to the quick laugh. Someone told me once stand up comedians are the most broken kind of people, because they have to take all their issues and throw them out to the public for consumption, are basically in the process of being eaten alive all the time. Striving to be a funny Prometheus. They are odd nice people to be around at 4am. It is like being wasted around 9 little brothers who are also perverts and also actually teddy bears.


Saturday night I was pretty broken, physically and emotionally from things not related to here, so I stayed home and drank more whiskey and watched a lot of tv scifi. I do that sometimes. My cats appreciate it. Saturday pretty much did not exist.

Sunday I woke up with absolutely nothing to do, nothing at all. That means I could have been cleaning, there is always cleaning, there is always writing and filling out applications and a bunch of responsible things, but that kind of stuff doesn't count on the first day you wake up and don't have to work. I met my sister on the east side for brunch, and headed back to the bridge to watch some free music. I called no one. I made plans with no one. I wore something shadowy. I wanted to see no one I knew and just walk around and sit and be there. Nate was there, also doing the same thing, so we sat together and watched the bands. I never go to local bands, because my tolerance for mediocrity is old like me, and finally I saw a local band I love and would go see again, and that was nice. That was hopeful and inclusive, like this winter would be good too, which I was worried about, that my lovely awesome amazing summer would fade out to Cleveland bitterness again. It was lovely to be able to walk along the length of the bridge now cleared of people, and have a total and complete and ongoing conversation with a friend. We left when they kicked us out, and went back to his house, and finished the whiskey. His girlfriend showed us photos she had taken for her sister's Save the Date, a hip pretty couple I didn't know at all in fields and on fences and with flowers in their hair, and then we all talked about bands, and it was reassuringly normal and nice and not fake or hustled at all. So I left there and drove around the highways and some old neighborhoods I like to see every once in a while, and the sun was setting beautiful and gold, as if the whole weekend had been one long sparkling night and now it was the morning when you hadn't slept at all and it was rising as you headed home.

The Night That Every Concert Came to Cleveland

I had this whole thing I was going to write about when I got home tonight, like I had planned in my head that I would compose this whole funny fantasy show, where I pretended that Britney Spears (who was in town) sat in with the Decemberists, and she and Colin did a whole duet for Red Right Ankle, and then she had a spontaneous folk dance off with Pat Benatar (who was also in town), and Frightened Rabbit (WHO WAS ALSO IN TOWN) played back up while Colin sang Legionnaire. And like, probably in this fantasy, Britney also revealed she knew how to play the harmonica.

But instead what happened is I went to the Decemberists show in a red dress, which was at Nautica, this venue that seems great cause it's right on the river, and outside and stuff, but in fact ends up sucking a lot of energy out of shows because they are so strict about you staying in your seat. Which is some bullshit during a rock show, who stays in their seat? You cannot possibly expect me to sit in a certain place. You fucking stay in one place, somewhere else, awful yellow shirted uniformed person. Also you need to be able to dance, which is hard to do in bleachers, as in pretty impossible and also sort of dangerous. So the first part of the show was eh, was very serious and quiet, and no one was dancing at all. I was bouncing, but mostly everyone sat in their seat appreciatively tapping their knees, and that was some bullshit. It made me mad and antsy and gave me all sort of thoughts about trouble making, mostly involving the long ladders that led up from the bleachers into the lighting decks. But also then they played July July, which is MY song, and Architect and We Both Go Down Together, so pretty much all my favorite songs. I was happy enough. But I wasn't Happy. The band was trying, but the security guards had killed the crowd.

Then during the encore, they played Mariner's Revenge, and just as Mr. Meloy was getting done explaining how we all needed to make the whale sound, a giant cargo ship came around the curve of the river. A huge golden glowing monster of a thing, cranes and all, and corners and levels and mechanics. Silently coming around the bend, directly behind the stage, the music echoing off the bulwarks, and there were a few men out on the decks watching us, and everyone in the theater was watching them with their jaw open, and for the entire length of this glorious dancing clapping stomping Spanish skirt of a song the ship passed prehistorically behind us. until it was gone, and the song was over in a roar, and everyone poured into the aisles.

That was the magic moment everyone had been waiting for, that unknown thing that is the difference between a night and a Night, and so we all went home relieved and full of wonder and in love again.

The Ass, the Angel, and the Lawyer

The triune brain (our brain in three parts - reptilian, paleo mammalian, proto mammalian) is a concept that will get me yelled at, cause it's what? Outdated and not true, at least as far as physical structural evolution of the brain goes. Oh we've all got the same basal ganglia, they say. And mammals don't get to have all the limbic fun. But you know what, sometimes concepts that aren't scientifically true are still good for your narrative. After all, there aren't really wizards either. Sometimes when you do something that makes no sense, you need a basal ganglia to blame.

My reptilian system, which we will call the worst and best parts, kept me out in the sun for days this weekend, in an exploding Mercurian sort of sun. I basked in it, I let the UV rays mutate me, I gloried in my baked scent. I had no other thought except to be in the water and to be burned by unfiltered starlight. It was extremely irresponsible. Lizards are not known for their common sense. The next morning I had turned into a bright pink alien, sick with longing for the home world. The sun had infected me, and I was really and truly ill. Turns out even though part of my brain is reptilian, the rest of me is still very vulnerably mammalian, and I slept cocooned in sun sickness for two straight days while my largest organ tried to either heal me or kill me quick. Did you know if you broil your skin, it also affects your immune system? Yeah, turns out that's true. Fever, chills, weakness, dizzyness, swollen throat, migraine. Fuck you too skin. Why do you have to be so fucking Irish skin? What's that ever gotten anybody?

So, feeling the sickness coming up on me, I tried to wander outside in the newly wet and gray thunder soaked Monday world, to cool down a little, since a giant tub of cherry jello was not available. I'm pretty sure I had a fever, and I wanted the rain to substitute for my lake, which I'm not allowed to go back into until I've healed my exoskeleton. We tried all the proven methods to make me feel better - ice cream from Scoops, walks in the Metroparks, standing under train tracks and holding onto the steel beams to feel the vibrations from up above. I believe train vibrations are just as effective as magnets, at something.

If the paleo mammalian limbic system dictates our parenting instincts, our connectivity to community and that weird little emotion called love, is it possible to have a reverse limbic system? Like, I just need to be taken care of myself, to be eternally the child who just wants a pair of arms to fall asleep in? And then when I'm really sick, when I've reached the point where I'm feverishly texting my friend about sequenced images planted in my brain as code, and this dream I had where we were on different security patrol, one by air one by water, trying to destroy an invading animal/fungus/threat to humanity, well then there's two opposing forces. There's the desire to be held, but also the stronger desire to crawl under the dark cool porch and die alone, where no predators can find me and take me out early. I love that when my immune system is at war, I dream of fighting.

Then of course, what you've got left is the neocortex, the New Mammal, designed to bring you back from the edge of your Stanley Kowalski conversion, back into the world of engineering and architecture and paying bills and planning for the future. The responsible part that took me over to Urgent Care to make sure I wasn't actually mutating into a lizard or dying from sturgeon flu, which is apparently as much Not a thing as sun poisoning Is a thing. They say. I don't know. Is it weird that I feel like Urgent Care doctors know less than hospital doctors? Like, I feel the reason he kept me waiting is he was looking up my symptoms on WebMD. Anyway, I think the train vibrations were far more helpful at bringing me back to neocortex level, whereas the doctors office just made me wish my jaw unhinged so I could start attacking.

I wonder also if since the Triune Brain is no longer a scientific concept, but solely a cultural one, if we should add a fourth brain in there - The Cloud. Everyone's all in a tizzy about Google+ because privacy! Only, you don't really want privacy. Privacy is an Old World concept darlings. What you want is recognition, and not just from your already known and encircled friends, but from the world. What you should really be mad at is that our economic system didn't catch up to communism at the same time as our intellectual system. The Cloud - the part of our brain which allows us to plug in. The USB port of our soul.

"Dante organized people he knew into circles, too." Pheezy

There's This Whole Speech About America in My Head and We're Going to Leave It There, Because I am America Too

It was one of those weekends that flew by but was also full of momentous and sparkling things. I guess, really, when you think about it every weekend is like that. I was going to say "in the summer", but then I considered what this past winter was like. So every weekend is full of momentous, brilliant, shiny, or dark and intense things. Every moment that you're not at work is. Maybe they don't seem momentous, or maybe they don't stay that way, but at some point in the timeline between something happening and your memory of it, each event or conversation has it's brief important meaning. That's perhaps a side effect of constantly being on the look out for the next thing to tell people about. I hadn't anticipated that. Is it happiness? I don't know, seems like a risky conclusion. But it's out there. It exists. It's pretty fun.

Friday night I had a weird night. The concert was fantastic and heartbreaking. The Elected were amazing, and I couldn't stop smiling despite myself. Saturday I went to a party in a very nice house with a bunch of nicely dressed people, and stood in like one or two spots in the backyard like the whole time while faces came by, stopped, said hi, got moved off by the natural wave through the space. Strangers and I just had weird random conversations in that way you do when you don't know anyone but you're in the mood to talk. This one guy came over to talk and I don't know how it happened, but in like 5 minutes we were talking about, like, life goals and marriage and plans for like ten minutes. Suddenly I was like "oh man, wait, I don't know how this got so deep." And he took a swig of his beer and said "yeah, and like I have to go to the bathroom, but I don't want to seem like a dick." And we parted pretty quickly. The next time we found ourselves standing by each other, we talked about kickball and stand-up while people tried to light sparklers, and it was that kind of night, each person had their set of topics that had seemingly no relation. You just took up where you walked in. The wind picked up beautifully, and then it poured and drenched the streets. I left and met up with my sister and this group of 22 yr old girls she somehow knew. They were all so unworn and new. Later we had hot dogs, quickly and with drunken determination. Later again, at home, my downstairs neighbors were still up from their party that night, and we stayed up till 5am talking about god knows what, skanks and jobs and motorcycle lights, I was already home by then and they gave me more whiskey. We sat in the driveway under their tents with red cups lying dead all over the wet concrete. Nobody got in any fights until after I finally stopped leaning on their car hood and went to bed. I lay there upstairs listening to them screaming at each other, and bottles being broken, the sounds of people who have been drunk around each other for way too many hours.

Sunday, well we're going to talk about Sunday in another post. There are many pictures and thoughts about my mom and thoughts about Ohio. It doesn't belong here. It was actually too daunting for me to try tonight. The really long hours of working in front of a computer, on job stuff and personal stuff, is starting to kill me in the heat. 12 hours a day I feel swollen and inflated and languid. My body longs to be in other positions. Dancing, swimming, fucking. Any movement at all. I wander aimlessly around my house, trying to feel my muscles and bones back into being. Also my tattoo is starting to itch. I think it's peeling, finally. I'm sunburned. Today at the grocery store I bought only bananas, chopped dates, pears, a little cheese, some bread, two bottles of rose to drink over ice. Espresso roast to make an entire jug of iced coffee which I've done already, mixed with half a gallon of soy milk, because it was so imperative I have it. There are four full trays of ice in my fridge. I guess what I'm trying to tell you is my body is starting to enter summer lockdown. It took a minute to figure out what was going on, and then it was like "fuck this shit, hydrate me and cook nothing."

Ever since I got the tattoo, which by the way I still like very very much except for the itching, friends have been asking when I'm getting the next one. In that funny way everyone claims tattoos are addictive. Frankly, I'm still getting used to the fact that my arm is permanently changed, I'm still sort of in awe of that. I look at it and think, there is the passage of time. I have marked myself in the point of my life and it will always be there. There is another tattoo I want, wanted first in fact, but I can't afford it and I don't know if I could find someone around here I trust to pull it off, since the girl who does this style is in NYC, and 300/hour. Someday maybe? The only other one I would get would be if they could somehow take a square of my skin, and paint it completely pitch night black, and then illustrate fireworks on it, but in some sort of paint that glowed iridescent and also smelled like explosives and small patches of trees and brush under streetlights by the river. I would get that immediately.

On the 4th, I went to the beach. The water was perfect, but I had to keep holding my arm out of the water, so I lay in the sun and read southern gothic short stories and the feathers in my hair blew around in the breeze. We met the lifeguard's wife, and the lifeguard told me about how last time we saw him, he was glad I had said goodbye to him in front of his regional manager, because it made him look good. I love that beach so much. After a few hours, we reluctantly got up and went to my friend's house besides the bridge, where the girls were all in sundresses and the dogs digging holes in the new yard, and I drank pear cider and peach beer and felt the sun burning through my skin from earlier. Matt was there, back from L.A., and he had developed this odd veneer, this sort of glossy exoskeleton, that looked good on him but also very different. He was no longer cute goofy faced Matt the music student. He looked like a Spaniard, in catalog clothes. It was hot, in a sort of expensive way, but it just made me want to break him down and get him really fucked up so that he became old Matt again. I'm not being fair to him, he was really tired and had been out at family things all day. He may very well still be old Matt and he just wasn't on that day. But there was something...anyway, it was very nice seeing Matt. I hadn't realized I missed him, but I did.

The boys lit off their fireworks in the backyard among the tomatoes, and the neighbors on the street lit off theirs, and all the houses around for blocks and blocks were full of people and the skies full of noise and light. My friend's dog got so scared by the first firework, he peed on her mom's foot. I myself may have yelped and then screamed with joy. The other little rag dog in the bandanna barked and barked and barked at the sky, long after the lights had fallen down, as if he could scare that horrible noise into not coming back. Or maybe he would hold back invaders from space with his teeth. We all walked down to the Bridge to watch the city show over the river. There were people everywhere, all along it's mile long stretch, leaning against the concrete balustrade with kids on shoulders and dogs on leashes. A group on the other side of the bridge kept lighting up these great paper lanterns, that would fly up into the sky and away past the giant guardian statues at either end, as if it were an actual festival of lights. One man had his dog in his arms, so that he wasn't on the sidewalk, but held him like a child who also wanted to see the show but was too short. I was mildly drunk, and held the button of my camera down on continuous shot, taking over 300 pictures of fireworks for no good reason. There is absolutely no reason at all to ever have that many pictures of anything unless it is to map a planet. But I whittled them down to ten, and if I hadn't taken 300 maybe I wouldn't have these.

The thing I love most about fireworks, the reason they cause me to feel joyful and light and amazing, is they enhance every environment they are in. There is no place on earth that chemically colored gunpowder can't make prettier. I look at these pictures, and squint my eyes, and the fact that it's a city at all goes away. Instead it's just swathes of color and light, abstract patterns across a dark backdrop. Art and jewels and aurora borealis rolled together in a giant glittering mass, throwing light into the backs of my corneas, and then maybe I take those signals and interpret them as a cityscape, but maybe also they are alien cities, or a flotilla, or the universe just exploding piece by piece in slow motion.

This is Disjointed, because I'm slowly taking all the screws out

I was going to write a post about how great my dad is. Because, of course he is. But then I spent the weekend taking pictures of Jamison bottles, and turning down strange men in bathrooms, and watching a bridal party dance to the Pixies in Akron, and seeing great movies, and talking about writing. So let's just take that all as proof that my father was/is a fantastic father, because my life was pretty fantastic this weekend.

It didn't start off as fantastic. It started off with me working my ass off, and then vowing to get wasted that night because of work, stress drinking, and having a messy night where I got "maudlin" and vented out all the relationship/marriage/getting old poison that's been batting around in my head all week. It was like lancing a boil, and watching all the thick yellow pus well out. In the end, I passed out in the backseat while my sister and Jere argued about ridiculous things like the Magna Carta and shit, and when I woke up we were still driving and it was light out, because they had argued themselves almost to Pennsylvania before realizing the mistake and turning back around in the right direction. And after waking up like that, the infection had passed and I was once again content and happy and appreciative. So I slept for three hours in a real bed, and then went back to the beach.

Are you sick yet of beach pictures? I'm not, so deal. Also, who sleeps in the summer? Vampires, that's who. Are you a vampire? I mean, maybe you are. And if so, let me tell you, eternal life isn't worth the price of never getting to be in the sun again. Also, vampires are assholes. So you are an asshole.

On Friday, we saw Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, and it was wonderful and slow and magical and kind of terrifying if you let yourself stare straight into the jungle and you are the sort of person who knows how real and horrible fairy tales can be.

On Saturday, getting drunk in Akron proved again to be the cure all for being Too Cleveland. Which was apt, because it happened after hanging out with Erin, and pretty much talking a lot about Cleveland. But being Too Cleveland is a thing, because the largest part of life is not where you are exactly, but how well you're doing it, and you can't do it well enough if you expect the place you live to do it for you. I'm not an expert at living, but I think I do know that.

On Sunday, the beach was overcast and dark but warm and breezy, and when I stood in the water I wanted to bottle Ohio Blue and sell it. Is it a paint color already? It should be. Maybe it can't be. When I was a little girl in the backseat of my parents car, I would look at sunsets and try to decide what color out of the sky would I want a dress of the most. I decided I am going to be friends with the lifeguard. Then, later in the afternoon while it was pouring sheets of corrugated metal, we took our atmosphere soaked bodies for coffee, and talked with the girl at the cafe about neighborhoods and gardening. Later still I went to see Midnight in Paris, the trailer of which does absolutely nothing to show you what the movie is actually about, but it's ridiculous and delightful and I laughed a lot and when I laughed, I could feel my leg muscles were just a little sore from the dancing and the waves, but sore in a hot water bottle of my soul kind of way. It was all very relaxed and easy.

The dog next door barks at everything. Since it's been nice out, his owners, who are very elderly for having such a young lab, just let him out in the backyard all day, and he stands on the picnic table and barks for eight hours at squirrels and people walking by and cars. Then the dog who lives below me will go outside and they will bark at each other (the dog downstairs has a weird half bark he does as well that sounds a little like a monkey, so it's very similiar to how I think a monkey/dog fight would sound). Then people will come home from work and let their dogs out in their yards, and all the dogs will bark at each other. Since I work from home, this has been incredibly annoying. But writing it down makes it sound charming.

When we were finally packing up to leave the beach on Sunday, because the thunder told us to, we ran into the lifeguard Mike walking back to the car. He had run to grab a raincoat and I asked if he had to stay on the beach when it stormed? He answered that he didn't really know, because no one had told him, and he didn't really know who to ask. So maybe he sat out there by himself in the storm. I don't know, we left.

So now today it's back to the beach. My Monday adventure partner got a job while schools out, and I'm back to asking around for companions for exploring since little girls aren't supposed to wander around by themselves, but really I'm just giving up because you all work on Mondays and finding someone who is down for the sort of rambling I like to do the most is hard, there are requirements conversational and motivational. The thing that happens is this: everyone wants to go exploring, everyone wants to go to movies, everyone wants to go to the beach. They see me out at places, and they tell me how much they want to do these things too, how great it is that I do them, how much fun it looks like, and then I invite them, but it always falls through. I don't think you guys understand that there is a decision you have to make to have these kind of days. And I just really believe, deep far down in my chest, that everyone I know would be happier if they came along. But I can't keep giving you opportunities. You have to make the call.

There is an idea that you are supposed to be aloof to be cool, that you are supposed to just let people come to you. I'm the worst at that. If I meet someone I want to hang out with, I'm filled with enthusiasm and motivation. I'm the puppy who jumps on you and wags her tail furiously, and then if you don't take me up on it, I quickly forget when the next new person comes in the door.


And so I wonder if I'm fickle, or flighty, or just really smart, or just really irresponsible. I mean, the most important thing is to rage against the rising of bitterness or disappointment, right? To fight it. To really really enjoy what you are doing, to put your head entirely in the moment and focus on the hour and be conscious of how long that hour is and what is happening in each minute, to feel with toes and the little hairs on your arms the little whoosh of that minute degrading and crumbling and passing. Also to get out in the fucking sun, which is also degrading and crumbling and passing. I'm only 31 for another 20 days, and then I will never be 31 again.

Summer came late and already drunk to the party, screaming at us all to catch up

There are three things I'm fairly sure of this week:

1) My cats are actively trying to take down every window covering in the house. I'm down to only three blinds up still. I've lost the motivation to fight them. I walk around at night with the lights off so the neighbors won't see me half dressed. I suspect I am going to have to nail the curtains to the actual window frames but even then I'm sure they will just rip them down. Maybe they have the right idea though. It's much nicer in the apartment when all the windows are open and uncovered.

2)When they say "get a tan" they mean "your skin will molt the same way a Martian fire lizard does when it sheds it's youthful shell and develops it's hard impenetrable exoskeleton." Right now my skin is in the tender pink tore off a fingernail stage. Next week I will be bullet proof.

3)I need to move someplace where you can go to the beach for much longer periods of the year. For instance, Uruguay. I wonder how someone even begins to find a job in Uruguay. Probably by learning Spanish.



I left work Thursday and went to meet Colleen at the beach. It was 6 when I got there, but the sun refused to go down, and when I got home at 9, it was still hanging on, refusing to get with the horizon. Maybe the horizon said something mean. The beach is an odd place when you live in the Midwest. It's always a strange and alien land, because we don't see it for 8 months a year, so you never get quite used to all the little nooks and crannies. Foreign. Then there's the city issue. Depending on what filter you want to adopt in your head, the beach can either be this great lip of the giant glacial lake, or it can be this burning wasteland with dead trees washed up like bones and occasional trash and people baking themselves like dry breadcrumbs. I do sorta like both filters, but I'm a child of the Wasteland after all, not the farmland. Some people might be turned off by looking down the waterfront and seeing smokestacks and loading docks. What's funny to think about it is that smokestacks have a shorter lifespan than sequoias. They come tumbling down all the time.

The other thing that is important about the beach is that it forces everyone to be half naked in public, which is a useful exercise in realigning your priorities. Especially in Ohio, you are not allowed to let other people's judgements about your body keep you covered up. I say especially Ohio because we are all pale and fat here. Everyone is a chubby white little worm shedding it's chrysalis, even the pretty people. But the sun and the water are such precious sensations, the desire to experience them overcomes modesty or shame. I mean, I look absolutely terrible in a bathing suit. There are parts of my body that shouldn't be allowed to exist. But I don't give a shit. I'm not trying to have sex with anyone there, or make them look at me. I just want to left alone to wriggle my fat little worm body in the water and have fun and smell like burning flesh and think about things like murderous fanged sturgeon waiting on the sea floor amid mussel covered shipwrecks.

The beach reminds me to be a person, not just a girl.


On Friday, it was Asian Liquor/hookah night at Andrew's. We hung out in the backyard while the boys grilled chicken and peppers, and learned things like black licorice makes your baby dumb, what neighborhood meetings in Euclid might be like for history majors, and how to drink soju in a way that respects your elders. Andrew made some joke about the girls having to reveal their ages, but here is one thing I love about the girls I am friends with at this particular stage of my life - I know all their ages. Because they will tell you, willingly and without pause.

Soren taught us the etiquette for hookahs, and how to burn them correctly. The coffee one was the best of course. The coffee one is always the best and I don't know why anyone pretends that it could ever be anything else. I suppose you might think otherwise if you are one of those lame human beings who have never inhaled any type of smoke into their lungs. I mean, not once? Not even out of curiosity? I refuse to believe such a person exists, but theoretically if they did, they may not understand the allure of coffee.





Jason and I took a trip to the grocery store to buy bug spray for the night, and he bought a package of dryer sheets to rub ourselves down with, which pretty much worked. I walked out of the backyard that night with only one bite. However the dryer sheets got left in my car, as many items are indeed, because my car is a hoarder. Not me, I'm not a hoarder. But my fucking car is for sure. When I got into the car the next day, it was stifling hot and smelled exactly as if I were in the dryer myself. Thank god we went with "fresh linen" and not "lavender and vanilla".

The Indian whiskey was awful, tasting of flash frozen peat. The Japanese whiskey was great, but probably mostly because of the writing on the label. The Turkish Arak, which was like sucking on a Good and Plenty, was my favorite. All my babies will be dumb.

Saturday night I went with Knut and Soren to a Phish show. I don't listen to Phish. I used to listen to hippy crap all the time though, true, and I used to wear beads in my hair. I used to do a lot of things. But you know, a Phish show, why the fuck not. I am not a hater. I have nothing against people wanting to have a good time. I like hippie music. I mean, when the suns out.

The thing I don't like is Blossom Outdoor Amphitheatre, being this large and sprawling and hilly mass of inconvenience. Far to drive. Horrible traffic jams. 45 minute walks between drinking at your car and getting in the door. But it's sort of like Blossom heard me hating on it, and was determined to prove me wrong. Cause there was no traffic getting there, Knut completely by luck picked the direction to come that no one else did. We parked right away. We got fucked up right away. Sure there was an incredibly long hot walk. But I hadn't been to a gathering of hippies in a while, I had forgotten about the sporadic villages that spring up, the multiple glass sellers and knitters and painters and men with baskets yelling loudly that they have shroom chocolates available. Plus the 6 or 7 people we encountered selling water on the way to the gate - "It's 6 dollars inside folks, it's 3 dollars here! Just don't open it, you can take it inside!" That part was like leveling up in a video game, beating the hustle, knowing just when to take advantage of it. Like when we bought our waters from the last guy, who was right in front of the gate, and his waters were only a dollar. The hustle! Some people got it.

I spent the first set sitting on the grass amid a forest of legs, people watching and sky watching, and in addition to looking the same and both being very tall, Knut and Soren also dance the same. So with one on either side of me standing, it was like passing through statues at a port entrance in a tiny dinghy, but like, if the statues were those giant inflatable wind dancers you see at car dealerships. The second set the sun had gone done completely and I got up and danced too, and the light show was, as one would expect from Phish, phenomenal, and I had a really good time. People kept throwing handfuls of glowstick straws up in the air, everyone did it, they were multi colored meteor showers in the blue gray gloom. Being in crowds is fun. Hearing crowds scream and sing together and hearing the noises die out against the clouds is fun. Walking back to the car in a huge menacing centipede is not as much fun, but we got home okay, and I only bled a little from my heel which was my fault for not wearing proper shoes.

Sunday we all went to the beach again. I now have a half moon serious burn on my right breast, which means that probably for the rest of the summer, even after it heals, that will be the darkest spot on my whole body.