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Jeffrey said in the beat- and just like that, a week has gone. What are the moments worth remembering?
Sunday evening we got tacos and cervezas at some chain in condesa after getting in late from our flights. walked back marveling at the empty nighttime streets, wet from an earlier rain...
Monday we lunched at rosetta, beet mole and freeze-dried hoja santa. i got a loaf and we walked around roma, got a coffee in north egg. we dined at comida herencia and then checked out hip mezcal bar la clandestina- red and indigo mood, music well-curated.
Tuesday amy and i went to coyoacan- foiled in every attempt to do something useful, we went to the church and got churros and pulpo tostadas and talked about dating. Later in the day we went to arena mexico for lucha libre in the rain, then a late dinner at paramo.
Wednesday jeff and i had a big day out in polancoā i grabbed a yuppie coffee in condesa. after checking out museo soumaya (out of breath walking up the stairsābc of the altitude) and jumex (urs fischer was kinda bad) we got sushi and sake at a bougie bar, pastries and carajillos, and then got our nails done on massage chairs. Then we dined at quintonil, went back to reeds to play games.
Thursday we ventured out to teotihuacan, commandeered our uber, after some cappucinos in condesa. Our tour guide told us about cave restaurants so we went to one. We came back then went out to a group dinner at sartoria, then we split and went to a bar where we resolved to not talk about being hip and boys. We went out at funk club and claudia hued her boy. I somehow got way too drunk (altitude).
Friday we brunched at superette and were soo late to barragan, then got mixto at micheviche. Went to michaels to play games and then i met them at first fifty mils after a nap. Then le tachonami desu, then xaman, then we tried yuyu but the cover was too expensive. Jeff and i went to orinoco and disgruntled by the yuppies instead migrated across the street to some random food stands.
Thinking of amy thinking about love, and how michael said my downfall is self-sabotage. I wonder why I have such trouble with intimacy, despite its natural and obvious originsāchildhood trauma, discomfort with the self, abandonment issues. I find it strangely easy to ice my brain, numb it from the idea of Jason, someone Iām so excited about, while we are apart. I could attribute this to a healthy sense of independence, but wouldnāt it be nicer to pine? The other end of the spectrum is codependence, an obsession, a missing which I have experienced to be wholly unpleasant, if purportedly romantic. Surely there must be some Aristotelian mean? When I look at the pictures he sent me that I took of him at the festival, about to take off for my flight, I feel a sort of tenderness return to me, a reminder of my body. I texted him, āpictures are so dangerous,ā as if to remember sitting with him on the mattress in the trailer park, eating a PBJ while i recovered from what was perhaps a shroom-induced stomachache, is akin to a treacherous voyage, and maybe it is. But Charese says isnāt taking risks in line with the philosophy of your life? And I have understood that to be true, a response to my overbearing and restrictive upbringing, a rejection of my dad and an assertion of my agency. Intimacy is so scary; to conceive of myself as someone who could deserve or be in any sort of healthy and mutual partnership is foreign and strange. I believe that many of my friends, in their eccentricities, have felt similar. But like Juan Villoro notes in Horizontal Vertigo, explanations are postmortem and retrospectiveā we invent a myth to make sense of the mystery of what has happened. This rings true to me, and puts me also at ease: no sense needs to be made of us laying under three fuzzy blankets in the back of my car watching the sunset at ocean beach, where it was easier to talk freely because I had an excuse to not make eye contact. No sense needs to be made of playing speed on a rickety table upstairs in Frontiersville, him fulfilling my ironic cowboy fantasy. I told Jason it feels so good to be around him because I couldnāt think about it if I wanted to, so enraptured I was by the sheer multidimensional experience of attraction. Maybe to have time to think (ruminate, worry) is the biggest risk. My brain invents a fiction that maybe the intimacy is contrived: Iām just a rebound, itās a short-lived infatuation based on nothing, Iām interpreting or remembering things incorrectly. These anxieties are not just annoyances but could prove fatal to my burgeoning ārelationship.ā Is it best to just turn my brain off and surrender to the ride?
Eating breakfast at 4pm at the kitchen table, listening to the Grateful Dead on the couch, showing up to the concert just in time for the encore. Fucking in the tent in the waning desert light, illuminated from ahead by a soft blue glow, such a special light. Playing scattergories with the randos in the trailer park. Sitting on a tapestry at baker beach, eating at that strange quirky diner in Malibu, watching the drum circle at Hippie Hill, laying under the Tree in the park on shrooms. Standing in the kitchen and listening to Wilcoā¦
It was so much fun to dance with him at the Dead, to realize one of my dreams and that too alongside someone who makes me feel so many positive emotions: hope, gratitude, joy, care. It was so much fun to go with him to LIB, I was so geeked off the fact that heās crazy, just like me. It was so much fun to spend the whole weekend with him, bouncing between activities and spaces, trying to make sense of him in different lights. At the same time, none of these experiences really feel to me like they were with the same person, but if they did, would I feel bored? I guess it just takes time to create a true intimacy, one where you feel like you really know a person. On the couch, we talked about feeling and knowing someone, and understanding them. I said it was nice to close my eyes and explore him, tracing his hands; experiencing physically someone who you feel emotionally connected to is a real rush, and kind of like a drug, in that I just want more, deeper, faster. Iām not even talking about sex, just that I want to feel the entire them, not just their body, and to get there is obviously not actually a race, but feels like one. Maybe Iām too predisposed for a whirlwind romance, like I talked about with Claudiaā Iām flexible, willing to put my life on hold for some requited love, thrilled by the sensation of being out of controlā¦maybe heās like that too, time is a hoax, and anyway with him it feels like weāre jumping around timelines minute by minute, day by day, ātime soup.ā I told him I think eating those confusing hippie skewers at the picnic table watching the sunset with him was the end of the timeline, that feels like it happened right before we were supposed to die, not at the relative outset of whatever this thing is. (āMurder suicide,ā he clarified, not double suicide.) I wonder if I will ever regret giving him so much real estate on my worm; I think not, so indulgent it is to be on the precipice of love. . .
I had to toss my pocketknife at the TSA checkpoint, the one that Josh engraved for me back in high school. I decided to take a Zen approach and not feel too upset about itāthought maybe itās a sign, new times ahead and best not to be attached to things, and besides, isnāt everything a cycle anyway?
to be enthralled by the goodness of life. . .
I drove from Jason's to fremont down 280 with the sunroof open, the rays beaming on my forearms, on the edge of sunburn. I arrived at my childhood home in the morning as my mausi (who just got in from India) and my mom are on their way out to the post office and Costco. my mom tells me to microwave the sabudana for 30 seconds, add in the roasted peanuts, and go sit with my dadi for a bit, who is "sad these days"āher son (the alive one) is maybe on the verge of divorce, and they are mired in property disputes, 8000+ miles away. while I sat with my grandma she told me about missionaries, and her grandparents. she said they were probably farmers, but she could not really remember; her dad was in the military, her mom a teacher. I fell asleep on her bed with the indian soaps playing on TV.
i awoke to my mom calling me for lunch, freshly made dal, roti, and bhindi, something I would have despised eating when i was a kid but now is oddly comforting in its simplicity. i never gave my mom credit for being an excellent cook back then, but i make up for lost time now. a steaming bowl of yellow arhar dal with cumin melted ghee and fried garlicā nothing better. . .
after eating i fell asleep again, but later awoke to my cousin and mausi on the bed with my mom and other mausi, laying and chatting. we drank chai in the bed despite the fact that it was 70 degrees outside, accompanied by random indian snacks my mausi brought from delhi. some sort of spicy chaat flavored potato chips, and slightly sweet biscuits.
we decided to go on a walk and circled the neighborhood, went down the creek trail in the afternoon light. megha was done with her mcat prep so we went to theirs and sat in the backyard until it got cold. inside i ate pav bhaji for dinnerā mini mausi makes it the best, the perfect consistency and flavor, with an egregious amount of butter. after i stuffed myself we walked home with a bunch of random things: extra tampons, a hoodie nikku wanted fixed, a rainjacket for mexico. later we all smoked a j at mine, megha made pancakes, and we played set until i was too tired to stay awake.
the next couple days, we swam in the neighborhood pool, biked to niles, got coffee at devout, drank meghaās extremely gingery chai, played dominion, exchanged nikkuās Aās on her report card for krispy kreme donuts. it struck me how indian my time in fremont is, this time more than usual maybe, and also more enjoyable. maybe the first time iāve ever been home that my trip has been universally pleasant, except that my brother and i havenāt spoken for almost 8 months. seems like the culture at hand is some sort of mix of a california suburb and a north indian diaspora, a peculiar blend that probably many people here experience but maybe hasnāt been talked about or shared in a public sort of way. i wonder when that will changeā¦
feeling a little saddened by the fact that the last time I wormed was almost a month ago. many things have happened since then, so many things, but did they really happen if I didn't worm about them? "overextended," I keep saying to myself and to the world, but I must be some sort of fool if I've been saying that for 11 years...
sitting in my bed at 5:25pm on a sunday evening, with a laundry list of things to do despite the fact that I am sick with a head cold and on something like an average of 3 hours of sleep a night for the last 11 days or so. oddly, I am still functioning, claudia says I have so much stamina, a 'four wheel drive.' I wonder when God will decide to end me once and for all, how long it will take of me treating my body like shit. I drink coconut water in vain to make myself feel like I care.
we've just returned from Santa Cruz (technically, Watsonville) where we spent the night for Bowen's birthday, at his dad's place. it was also Jason's birthday, Jason who technically shouldn't have a name on this blog, Jason who it feels strange to write about as a real person. even jasĆ³n feels more tangible... this blog really does feel like my alone place, but also a place so immediately public that its laughable I conceive of it as in any way my own. regardless, I guess I can just choose what I feel, for the most part, so if I pretend this is password-protected I guess it just is.
where to begin with the last four weeks? my immediate inclination is to open my iCal, and recount the events that transpired, on the road style, but I have been feeling more and more lately that that approach is lazy and unfulfilling, and I would rather choose what stands out, outside linearity, outside time. at breakfast with Aditi in Westwood, we discussed the dissolution of a chronological understanding of time, and what would that look like, to understand time as we know it as a Western construct, a tool of colonialism or capitalism, and not as some universal truth. they made me so happy in their stylish outfit, their limbs littered with arty tattoos, the way they asked for our table with grace, confidence, and ease. so different from the girl that I once knew, who shied from my parents, picked at our shaved ice with glazed eyes, could be so distant and dangerous that it pained me, literally, in the hallways of the Hyatt mccormick. strange that Jason got to meet them, my day one homie from the trenches, who still exists in a kind of melancholy or malaise that I have tried so hard to escape from, but that they inhabit with a solemn acceptance and maybe even a perverse joy. to remember that that is where I came from is sometimes jarring, but important. Aditi explained it as 'we were both really depressed in different ways, and it just kind of worked'...to remember the pain of those early days is deeply saddening, and when I am away from them it is easy to overlook or pretend that none of it ever happened. on the flip side, to remember is to also recognize that now is so much better, exactly how they always promised it would beāto be in control of my own life, happiness, and destiny; to be seen and appreciated for who I am; to be in community with others. it's like when you give birth and your brain just convinces yourself that it wasn't as painful as it actually was...the ability to self-soothe is really something...
all I think about these days is Jason, but somehow nothing comes to mind to write down. I guess it's all a little sideways, and nothing is really about him, obviously due to my shameless narcissism. at dinner I talked at him about my struggles with femininity for 30 minutes without once making eye contact, and later when I said I couldn't tell what his reaction was, he said 'you would have known if you were looking at me'...sometimes he is so smart, and I am so dumb...
I think my hesitance to write anything serious about him comes from my fairly predictable fear of attachmentāto immortalize him in the annals of e-worm feels too vulnerable, too scary. but I said to him the other day that reciprocal attraction is maybe the most exhilarating thing in all of life itself, and if that is true then I would love to read our experience porn when it's all over and everything is burning. Jason said exhilarating sounded too exciting, but I said that that is exactly what I felt and what I meant. it's better than any high...
maybe there is also some other feeling that to describe or convey is to deaden its magic. maybe the thing exists only in the hammock at 4am, in the fake corner office eating snacks, at crossroads listening to the indigenous women sing. only at Topanga beach, leaning against my car parked outside the dubstep bbq, under the tree at sunset. when I think about the person I thought I was meeting at bar part time in mid-april, I could not have possibly foreseen such a multifaceted person, whose multiple facets somehow just fit into mine like a puzzle, not perfectly but close. maybe it makes me believe in magic, or god, certainly there is no AI that could predict such a thing, romance being so fickle and dependent on affect. to feel so good and happy is a true blessing, and I think of the lyric, as always, 'the sun will shine in my back door someday...'
I have been learning a lot about myself in the past month. at lightning in a bottle we came up in a sound bath where I thought deeply about my trauma around abandonment and trust and resolved to not make others pay for the failures of people from my past. I realized I have a lot of work to do to be perfect. romance can make things sticky and tricky in a way that friendships, luckily for me, are not. I talked to my therapist about getting better at asking for what I need (first step, identifying) without shame or fear. to believe that you deserve someone who will fulfill your needs...to believe that there is someone who would do such a thing is foreign to me. charese says, you were both punished for having needs and rewarded for not having them, so 'how would you even have the tools?' when I think about the ways in which my childhood differed significantly (negatively) from that of my friends, I feel a little ill. in episode 13 of my cognitively dissonant personality, all I ever wanted was to be normal...right?
Jason and I talked about how much of each other we know. is knowing someone about understanding the ways in which they interact with the world, based on their past experiences? or is it knowing their literal past experiences? in any case, we weren't there for any of them, so it's already a proxy, filtered. seems like knowing someone is about the first thing, and also it's pretty easy to get the first 50-60% (we did it in like, 6 weeks?) but then it gets harder and harder to top it off. and anyways, 100% is a fake number, since you keep changing...he doesn't know many things about me, still, which makes sense because we are still maybe strangers, sort of, (though I prefer lovers), but oddly I feel like he probably can see how those things have affected me anyway. but probably it will all make a lot more sense later, lol.
if only my early childhood development wasn't so fucked, maybe I would be smart and cool and well-adjusted. a girl can dream...
I am very excited for some much-needed alone time. I haven't had a second to think or process anything. I haven't been able to create a bank of memories of good times, interesting sensations, sweet compliments to draw from in times of daydream. it all is just go go go, all the time, until I die. Jon keeps saying I need to chill. thank god for him, a little jiminy cricket on my shoulder, always my best interests at heart.
it's so nice to be infatuated, but I have to say it makes me so much less productive. I feel like a hamster running on a wheel, except now there's just like a super hot smart interesting fun other hamster in the cage distracting me and I keep almost falling off the wheel cuz I keep looking at it and, like, wanting to fuck. and that other hamster literally just has endless energy and never goes to sleep, and so I never catch a break. maybe he can just be a hamster, Jason who...?
at the untz I kholed the last night and died, again, from the depravity of lifestyle, the substance sorbet, and felt so much comfort in my aloneness and independence and my ability to dissociate fully from any needs, if necessary; I feel confident that when I die next time, I will be OK ā