May 15, 2015 11:00 PM


Accidental long-exposure, MSHR at Life Changing Ministries, West Oakland

Things have bubbled up; spring seemed to have awaken countless dormant micro-organisms, spurning us bigger bodies to get a move on, to finish our long-overdue projects, or start too many new ones. I'm busy as ever with Internet work, so much so I need to make myself to-do lists just so I can keep track of them all. It's still not my favorite activity -- it taxes my body, and I would just as well do entirely without the Internet -- but I'm getting better with each new project anyway, in minor points of knowledge and efficiencies. It's a tiny, brittle kind of gratification, but at least it's that, and it pays reasonably.

It's been probably a month or so since I signed off Facebook. I'm beginning to remember what it was like to not habitually tune out, and pay attention to your surroundings, however meager they may be. Now that I'm not looking inwards, I've started to notice The Phone Look -- wobbly stares, chests aglow, with the occasional stray smile or giggle, each person streaming and dreaming on the street or in a train car, amongst all the other dreamers. I'm not sure if it's merely a coicidence, but I feel like I started sleeping better once I stopped using Facebook, as if the raw energies which normally would nurture my REM state were no longer being sapped.

I spent some quality letter writing time recently, too. I hope to keep it up. For all its superficial quaintness, contemplating and writing an idea or story long-hand remains valid, even vital. It's an act of imagination, patience, and balance no status update or smudgy hashtagged phone pic can provide. It doesn't matter how bad your handwriting is, or poorly constructed the packaging -- you worked out something, conceptualized, and invented.

As far as the Lady Interest goes: it just sort of faded out, like the repeated chorus of a song. I waited, to see if she would reach out; she didn't. It's okay. I was glad to see it that it was okay, that feelings could dissipate with grace. If we're healthy and honest with ourselves, we'll find there is no shortage of feelings, and in fact, we're outrageously outnumbered by them. You have to let the tenuous ones go to survive, to make room for the new ones to breathe and dance, and to strengthen and complexify the old.