I keep at least two journals. One is this blog space. The other is a notebook that I carry with me when I intentionally set out for a park or a bench by the water with a book or two of poetry. This space, the blog, is mostly about my day to day activities and my thoughts on things like politics, or living in SF, or dating, or my emotional/spiritual evolution (perhaps devolution is an equally appropriate term). Because it’s public, it gives me more anxiety than my other space. Oddly, it’s much more confessional (and maybe more honest) than my other space.
The other journal, the physical one, is filled with observations of the physical world mixed with metaphor. It has a lot of disjointed thoughts. It has observations that might one day make their way into a poem, but will probably be forgotten until I pull the journal out and revisit/re-read it:
“The woman blessing the bottle brush tree on Fillmore is short and old and wears layers of ragged clothes. She knows a thing or two about loss and maybe even redemption”
“If the rowdy guys at the end of the bar were a law firm, they’d be drinker, drunker, hammered, and smashed.”
“I keep scanning this landscape for unmitigated beauty. White gulls circle overhead. The foghorn feels out of place in this blinding sunlight. Now I understand ‘smoke on the water, fire in the sky.'”
Because this space, the blog, is public, I often feel the need to tie things together – to be mildly coherent and articulate, to “make sense.” That said, I often fail at one one of my stated goals which has been to get better at following a train of thought… seeing an idea through to some logical conclusion. As such, I have a lot of drafts that float around on the back end of this site and/or get abandoned. I’ll revisit these drafts for a few days and if I can’t seem to do anything with them, I begin to loath them (or at least tire of them).
I’ve been doing that a lot lately – writing drafts and letting them sit. I’ve gotten tired of myself, my voice, this blog. Most of it could be summed up by: I love being in SF, dating is different than what I expected, I need a job, there are things I’m not so keen on here (an obsession with money and status), every failed attempt at dating makes me think of those few times it was easy or natural, I’m terrified by the current moment (politically and environmentally), I sometimes feel I’ve hit the limit of what I can do for myself in term of inspiration and novelty, I’m feeling stuck between thinking I have everything I need but also being acutely aware of entire worlds outside of my current experiences.
For weeks (and yes, years), I’ve been giving real consideration to pulling this whole site down, or methodically revisiting everything I’ve written with an eye towards only keeping what resonates beyond or above daily complaint… only keeping those things that reach beyond the personal towards ideas, feelings, or observations that approach some larger truth.
And then, just as quickly, I reverse course and double down on writing more of the personal and inconsequential.
This morning, after reading a few poems, writing in my other journal, and reading some history of SF (I’m in the middle of a history book), I wanted to revisit this space and what I’ve been writing these past few days. I couldn’t tie any of those things together and the child in my brain was blindly rattling its tin cup against the bars of its cage. So I figured I’d post them as they are – no real sequence and often unfinished. I added dates if I knew when it was written. They’ll probably reappear later when cohesion feels more within reach. Or maybe the whole thing will disappear – who knows.
I’m bored with myself. Or maybe I’m feeling pulled in too many directions? Or maybe it’s too few directions? Last week, I started to write about my frustrations with the current political landscape (national). I was frustrated with the media’s obsession over Biden’s age. Then yesterday (7/13/24) happened. Now, whatever I was writing seems even less relevant than my writing usually is. Different void, different screams.
A few weeks ago I went out with someone. We had enjoyable first and second dates. Then they left on a trip. I wished them safe travels. We didn’t text while they were away. I didn’t want to intrude and I assumed they were enjoying their trip. I texted when they were back, asked if they made it back safely. They did. Something in the conversation felt off – momentum felt lost. I said something along the lines of, “I’d suggest getting together, but I’m dealing with Covid.” A day later they replied and said they hope I feel better. That was on Friday (7/12/24). We haven’t texted since. Given that they didn’t bite on my mention of getting together and that I haven’t heard from them, I’m assuming it’s a dead-in-the-water situation. Maybe I’m misreading it. I’m not really one to give chase. Which is why I prefer the unequivocal “hell yes” beginnings – mutual enthusiasm as opposed to hoping something evolves and builds. This is, I think, a byproduct of the dating environment. It’s easy to shrug when there are 500 other people to chose from. It’s unfortunate, because in a lot of encounters, most of us (myself included) don’t take the time to figure out what is and what isn’t worth pursuing.
These hiccups and false starts are what drive me back to previous relationships – often trying to figure out how they got started or why they took off. These hiccups and false starts also make me feel slightly paranoid: did they read something that I wrote? Did my ex list me on that stupid Facebook group about guys to avoid? Did I say something offensive or unfunny?
Loving something also means seeing its flaws and weathering its disappointments. Not long ago, someone asked me if I enjoy what I do. I took the question in the bigger sense (the small and literal sense is that technically, I don’t do anything other than live a life of leisure – and I love that, but it’s unsustainable). I said I work in the nonprofit sector. I have a love/hate relationship with it. I like helping people and working on complex problems. I hate that our system of capitalism leaves so many people behind that my work is necessary, and that I basically have to beg the very people who have exploited our system for their personal gain and caused tremendous inequality to support the people I’m trying to help. I didn’t go into that much detail. It was a dating app conversation and I didn’t want to bust out my best killjoy, fist-shaking moves too early. If you give away the milk for free, whose gonna buy the cow.
I have similarly mixed feelings about where I live: the neighborhood, this city, the state, the country. In the nesting dolls of geography, I love where I live. It’s stunningly beautiful. It’s temperate. It’s routinely ranked as a safe neighborhood and inclusive city and state. It’s a free country. But, it’s not without its flaws and downsides. For all of its natural beauty and its abundant sunshine, where I live can be vapid and lacking in soul. Sure, there are swank bars and nice restaurants… but there are no music venues and very few art galleries. The shops are bougie – you won’t find a whole lot of vintage or second-hand shops in my neighborhood. As for the people… their mostly white, attractive, young, and focused on staying attractive and young and amassing wealth. I walk around a lot. I listen in on lots of conversations – so many of which focus on money and/or status. I find that shit boring. Yesterday I heard two guys talking about what sounded like a big real estate deal – all of the current owners/tenants are willing to sell at a discount – it’s going to be a steal. They seemed almost giddy in their assessment. I’m not made from that cloth. I’d feel bad if I got a good deal because others were forced to sell cheap.
I’m reading a book about the history of San Francisco. It’s a good book – well-written, very informative. I’m very early in the book – the gold rush. It’s providing me with some amazing perspective and some long history. This city has always been a marvel. It has always attracted characters. It has always had charlatans and cheats, visionaries and shamans. In boom times (during the gold rush) speculation was rampant – which isn’t terribly different from the various dot com and tech booms and busts of today. In 1849, the year of the gold rush one person reported wanting to rent an office and were shown “a cellar in the earth about twelve feet square and six feet deep, which he could have for $250 a month.” One website estimates that $250 would be over $10,000 today. The book quotes one visitor as saying “a perpetual carnival reigns,” and a detractor as calling it “a vast garbage heap… This is the most abhorrent place a man could live.” Pretty sure I heard that same assessment on Fox News not too long ago. It’s good to see that things haven’t change that much. A reporter from the New York Tribune wrote, “One knows not whether he is awake or in some wonderful dream. Never before have I had the difficulty in establishing satisfactorily to my own senses, the reality of what I saw and heard.”
There’s also a very personal connection to the stories I’m reading. The prospectors were called 49ers because the year was 1849 – I feel like a different 49er having moved here at the age of 49. I came for many of the same reasons generations of people have been coming here – sunshine (a land of gold), opportunity, a new start… an almost mythical land.
The other day, I had one of those days when I couldn’t settle. It was one of those days when I’d walk towards the bathroom thinking I should get a shower, but then remember I had re-filled my coffee and was going to read or write and so I’d walk back to get my coffee but instead of reading or writing I’d check the news and doom scroll. I think my morning got thrown off when I was trying to do laundry and my phone wouldn’t connect to my cell service (the machines use payment apps which require cell service). After about 15 minutes of trying to connect and login and rebooting my phone, I went old school and paid with quarters. But the frustration of my phone not connecting sent me to the shitternet looking to see if there were major service disruptions which pulled me out of my “I’m gonna get shit done” mood. Maybe I needed to make a list.
I’ve been preoccupied with following the news (the pile on) about Biden and the nomination. Our major media outlets seem determined to make age and stumbling in a debate the central focus of all of their reporting. Meanwhile, the other guy is a felon, has been linked to Project 2025 (John Oliver’s take on it here), constantly slurs his words, tells lies in nearly every sentence, and had close ties to sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein… but sure, let’s run a few more headlines about Biden’s age and chaos in the Democratic party.
This feels like the 2016 election cycle all over again. The media, for one reason or another, doesn’t hold Tr*mp accountable for half of what he does and says, yet they seem to focus on every detail with Biden. The fact of the matter is, both candidates are old and both are slower and may have cognitive issues (though numerous mental health professionals have publicly stated that they suspect Tr*mp has dementia). What we know about Biden is that for the past three years, he has a been leading a functioning government. His tenure, in terms of who he has in his cabinet (the people that get stuff done) has been steady and solid. In terms of cabinet and cabinet-level appointees, the Biden administration has an 87.5% retention rate compared to Tr*mp’s 20.8% retention rate.
It’s pretty clear where I stand politically. While, I’ve always been a lefty, this election, for me, transcends policy and party. Tr*mp has shown himself to be racist, misogynistic, a liar, a felon, a serial sexual abuser, and the list goes on and on… I honestly struggle to comprehend how the republican party has become this cult. A party that has traditionally been about family values and freedom and limited government has shifted to supporting limiting freedom (for women), having the government be more intrusive in our lives (again towards women), and supporting a serial philanderer. Unfortunately, outside of voting, I don’t feel as though I have much agency in terms of shifting the narrative. I can’t make the New York Times do their job better. The fact that the editorial board came out and said Biden should drop out of the race, while not suggesting Tr*mp (again, a felon and adjudicated rapist) shouldn’t drop out is maddening (this was written a few days before the NYT said Tr*mp is unfit to lead the country).
The whole situation has me glued to news sites and Twitter. It feels like one of those national catastrophes that needs to be watched in real time… except that the internet is such crap (especially Twitter), it takes me longer to find news and get information. I think I need to unplug (or get a hobby, a girlfriend, a job, or all three).
Perhaps because I haven’t figured it out, perhaps because my last serious attempt at this went down like the Hindenburg, I’m often curious about how people come together, merge lives, and decide to stay together. Often at unpredictable times during the day, I find myself contemplating what feel like small epiphanies. This happens when I’m brushing my teeth, putting my contact lenses in, or doing the dishes. Domestic, everyday things make me think about what a disruption (both good and bad) blending two lives can be. Just yesterday morning, I was looking at my mismatched towel, hand-towel, and washcloth situation and thinking (somewhat jokingly, somewhat not) this is why I’m single. With mismatched towels, I might as well be a barbarian. A linen-closet heathen.
Also yesterday, My neighbor moved out. I assumed he moved in with his girlfriend. My first thought was that I can’t imagine giving my place up – she must have a sweet place, or maybe they got one together, I wonder what neighborhood they’re in. Then I thought about Janet, a woman I know who goes to the local pub. She’s been in her place two blocks down from me for a decade, maybe two decades. I could see the quick slide from my current life to Janet’s life. Twenty years on, I’ll be single and living in the same place and drinking red wine at the local pub. While not what I had aspired to when I moved here, it didn’t seem awful. Janet seems pretty happy.
The moving out, the mismatched towels, visions of becoming Janet inched me towards yesterday’s epiphany: I doubt that there is any such thing as a seamless integration, but the first step is in wanting to try. How does one get there?
I’ve been poking at this for a few weeks. It’s been overt and covert in most of the things I’ve written. It’s been a part of the re-examining, re-building, and re-claiming process. Getting swagger back sometimes involves pushing on a previously sore tooth, testing the sturdiness of the foundation by jumping on the floorboards, kicking one’s own tires.
I see it on dating profiles a lot – it’s often some version of “I’m looking for someone who makes being together more attractive than being alone – because I got a pretty damn good life right now.”
But what I’ve really been trying to get at, what I’ve really been preoccupied with is how two people can like their individual lives enough but also be curious enough about another person’s habits or lifestyle to be willing to adopt/adapt, or try, or cede, or whatever it is we do when we decide to couple up. It’s not so much that the other person’s way of doing things is better (though sometimes it is) or that our way of doing things is deficient (though sometimes it is), but that there’s a level of tolerance, curiosity, appreciation, or intrigue that makes it worth the attempt. What is that magical thing that allows us to find the haphazard way someone loads the dishwasher to be endearing? that allows us to say, I love you and your mismatched towels? Because if you’re paying attention, I mean really paying attention, you’ll notice everything. How much has to be given up, what should be held close? Is adaptability a virtue or a vice?
It seems like one arrives at that decision (to co-mingle) from one of two vantage points: “I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you” or “this seems to be going ok, maybe we should move in together.”
That’s the brain dump. That’s the post that allows me to delete four or five drafts that I was bored with or lost on. Very little of it matters – especially when I consider what is happening in our country on a national stage. Yet somehow, it all feels tied together. I have moments when I feel like I’m watching current events unfold in slow motion like 9-11 and what I want is a distraction or a shared sense of commiseration or something that I can sense but can’t quite locate, much less grasp. Maybe it’s just a case of the Mondays.