evolving (derogatory)
you're either fucking around or finding out
i’m embarrassed to admit i was dangerously close to beginning this paragraph with “during the pandemic…”, as if anyone in their right mind (which of course you all are!) would be enchanted by an intro of such traumatic caliber. remember when we were all making art about “hiding behind masks” and diligently washing our groceries? one of my biggest flexes is that i never did that.
in november 2020, i broke things off with my partner of three and a half years. i feel comfortable discussing the incident here because, four years later, i remain blocked on every platform including facebook. after moving out of our shared house in atlanta, i spent six months living at my parents’ house in north florida, foraging my way through what can barely be called winter and writing what i now consider to be reasonably good but relatively bad poems.
saturday morning was the sort of sunshiny perfection you fantasize about in january – cloudless, breezy, somewhere between 60 and 70 degrees. i scooped a massive glob of pesto into my eggs and drank three cups of coffee before 11. by noon we were walking through my favorite local nature preserve, my parents and me, hoping for herons; there were saw palmettos like bumpers on either side of the sandy trail. spanish moss hung in curly tresses from the oaks and we stood between them looking up through the sunlit branches, safe inside their weightless, undulating tentacles, a tiny room of the world i felt lucky to live inside, if only for a moment.
every moment ends and you walk on. we walked on, stopping to sit in the curved arm of another oak growing sort of diagonally toward nothing. toward everything i think naively is nothing. with the back of my head resting on rough bark my scalp hardly registered as unusual or uncomfortable i wanted to talk out loud about how i used to come here as a child, how i used to come here when i lived in town for those six feverish months, but something i’ve learned about nostalgic rambling is that it should be reserved mostly for new lovers and cocaine benders. otherwise it’s sort of like telling people about your weird dream: generally irrelevant and uninteresting to everyone but you.
does any amount of personal sharing indicate an irredeemable level of self-absorption? as someone who blogs about the trivial details of her life i want to believe this is not the case. but i fear that it is the case. i fear that we are heading towards a collective self-absorption so consequential that the very fabrics of our brains are evolving (derogatory) as we speak. this is not a novel concept but the WALL-E of it all never fails to disturb me. i believe we should all be thinking about it more often if only to think about something other than ourselves.
i’m in st. pete now and my sister is working at the hospital and i am at the best coffee shop i’ve been to in a long time, possibly the best in the world; i think we should bring back cozy coffee shops and stop pretending that any of us actually like those uninspired white boxes we keep pouring our money into like we have equity in them. they are about as enjoyable to exist inside as is the hospital. if i wanted to hang out at the hospital i would have gone to work with my sister.
i love when it’s obvious that someone was paid a large sum of money to design a place because it appears very much so cohesive and designed, but equally or perhaps more so i love when a place feels more like someone’s home, eclectic and reflective of the collective life being lived by all who spend time there.
on the walls here are bread and puppet posters surrounded by tender polaroids of both serious and smiling faces; the bulletin board is overflowing with local classifieds, business cards, event flyers, hyper-niche clubs that need joining. there is a guitar propped up against a cabinet i genuinely believe you would not get in trouble for playing. all the tables and chairs and couches are mismatched and all the soft sitting places have that beautiful little butt hollow, a tangible product of real life sitting.
it would not feel so good to be alone if i knew or felt that i was the only person in the world. i am uninterested in simulating an idealistic sterility, in real life nor online, because the truth about our lives together in this cauldron is that we are all very much contaminated by each other, constantly and always. you can wash your hands and avoid eye contact and sit on a backless metal stool and appear pointedly uninterested and still the essence of everyone and everything clings to you like lint. you are not above any of it because you are it, and i understand this might read like a post-acid revelation, but in reality it is a pretty simple fact; you could have gleaned it on your twelfth or perhaps thirteenth evening walk, which is actually pretty early on in the series of evening walks that spans your lifetime.
i’m not mad; i’m just disappointed. i watch a woman and her pitbull through the window; she’s talking to an older man who stopped to pet the dog, this neighborhood diorama, the row of old florida houses behind them a cinematic backdrop with their wrap-around verandas and their palm trees and the hot pink azaleas in ferocious bloom on this last day of november.
everywhere seems better than utah right now and i can’t tell if it’s just because i live in utah. in the sat-in seat of this chartreuse armchair i think of all that i have and i love it: what i have. i love my apartment even though every month they charge me over $400 in miscellaneous, increasingly creative fees. i love my job even though my screen time is through the roof and my eyes have taken on a potentially permanent sort of glaze. i love salt lake even though the air is poison and negronis are illegal. i love myself even though i betray myself. i love you even though you don’t or can’t love me.
chatting at the round table adjacent to me are three college students, a trio so noticeably diverse they appear cast by the coffee shop for PR purposes. i know they are in college because i’ve been eavesdropping on their conversations for the past two hours. the boy wants to change his major from history to english even though he’s a junior now and it’s probably too late. white sweater girl just got in a car accident so she was going to have to walk home but girl with braids insists on giving her a ride because it’s on her way, and besides, she won’t see her until january because she was planning on going back to india with her family for winter break but now they’re going to hawaii instead, so it’ll be nice to have the extra time together, even if it’s just five minutes.
the palm shadows are lengthening across the cobblestone street, the aesthetic temperature of everything turned up, the tactile temperature of everything turned down. because this place exists outside of my most up-to-date conception of autumn it surprises me that the sun should have to go down as early here as it does everywhere else. it seems i won’t have time for the evening walk i’d planned on, which is a shame, because i’m pretty sure i was due for a oneness revelation.
alone in the best way because i know i’m not, i’m driving my sister’s new honda civic across the bridge back to tampa to pick her up from her shift at the hospital. it’s sunset and i’m heading east, the sky a big orange smear in the rearview mirror. i am exhausted by this act of leaving, exhilarated by the simultaneous returning. i pick her up in the parking garage and she’s excited to announce no one died during her shift.
when we get back to H’s apartment we get changed to go out dancing at a rooftop bar downtown and while we’re putting our makeup on i say “i wonder what’s gonna happen” and don’t elaborate and this makes her laugh, the way no one can argue with this kind of vague ubiquity. i do wonder. and i love that i can say it and we just keep laughing, because it can always get worse in the same way it can always get better; like the dichotomy of awake vs. asleep you’re always either fucking around or finding out.
the next morning i’m driving her to the hospital again and not as hungover as i very well could be, holding in my hand like a small and beautiful bird my gratitude that i have never really had to drive to the hospital before, save the few times a year i go to the dermatologist or the obgyn or the eye doctor or whoever. it’s quiet for a while and then we pass a sign for the emergency room and i tell her i hope she has a good day and she says “i wonder what’s gonna happen.”
i laugh and the sound fills me up warm like whiskey and i don’t tell her about earlier in the ride when i could have ran the yellow light with seconds to spare but stopped instead and waited for it to turn red, because i knew she’d make it to her shift just fine, and besides, after tuesday it’ll be weeks before i see her again, returning to utah and my life i love despite all those things i said before, so it’s nice to have the extra time together, even if it’s just five minutes.
obsession of the week
my first ever okonomiyaki from chanko in tampa, which is without question one of the coolest eating establishments i’ve been to in years. this meal blew my mind and i did not want it to be over. chicken katsu, crepes, yakisoba noodles, cabbage, leeks, bean sprouts, fried egg, furikake, aonoriko, tempura crisps, house okonomi sauce, spicy japanese mayo, & japanese pickles.
Your writing is just so lovely; so easy to get enmeshed within the structures of it all. Certainly you achieved many things even just within this one piece - I did utterly think about - and through you - as I read this. Thank you <3
Where in north Florida is the nature trail? I’m from Florida and come back often and would love to go