Returning

Whenever I leave New York for a long period of time, coming back is strange. People I had transient, fleeting friendships with at the end of the last block of time seem to have faded away. I have no rehearsals to whine about yet--not enough homework to wither up inside of. I do this thing where I like to PLAN: I'll hoarde up on applications for summer projects, volunteer for events, consider things that will only affect me months and months from now. I am ill at ease.

It scares me a little how unsafe and unstable former familiarity feels--how much harder it becomes to reach out and connect with people and events and even attitudes after so much time away from them has lapsed. And then there's the fact that my life changed a little a few weeks ago, in a small but important way, in Miami. I keep thinking about people I met there. I miss them.

Studio, and writing, and leaving my apartment, and boys (as ever, those boys) make me want to sneak back to Maryland when no one is watching. This is why I hate first dates and first days of anything--the only good beginnings happen in literature. I like feeling newness after two days' validation! I do not like feeling afraid; especially of things I was not afraid of three weeks ago. That word 'returning' even seems to suggest a kind of fatal repetition in the act of "coming back": it's not making anything new, it's not written as joy, it means to repeat a certain thing. Repeat turning...new...corners. Is a stretch.

Wrote in Florida

THIS woman wants to make love to THAT man, she wants to it here, clothes still on, sun still up, fast, loud like a symphony. She seems him across grass (her name is Jackie Rafferty. Say it three times fast if you can. Say it in Arameic, if you can). She wants to run at the pale, pink blob his body makes, wants them to collide together and neatly insert themselves (comme YIN comme YANG) with a frank but quite lovely thud, perhaps in midair. Definitely in midair.

It is frightening and brave but painless. A frantic thing, to stave off death. Ink! And sand. This woman wants. No yelps or squelches, simply just heat, the horrified hollers of elderly undead onlookers, paramedics who cannot reach them before the deed is done (sprinting sprinting sprinting cross the grass, cold shiny instruments dancing under sun) And there are no fingers strong enough to pry the magnets apart! (They’re fused! LIKE SIAMESE TWINS! OH, THE HUMANITY! [yesohthehumanity…]). Three and a half feet above the earth he will whisper sweet SOMETHINGS, breath smelling like nothing at all. Even stuck together the smack makes no stubble or spit, as I may or may not have suggested before--solicit techno music videos, deadbolt clicks, snowy owl hoots, whatever you imagine a bomb sounds like a hundred miles away behind big helicopter pilot headphones, I mean before television told you. Just…take pity on her. You see, Jackie Rafferty has never been in love and so this is what she thinks it is.

Wrote this in Florida. MISS Florida. It's hard to come back and make choices and as ever, be a slightly different person in the same body and space...

Am still in "pajamas" (pajamas meaning things I found on the floor). Today:
-watched Jackie Brown with my parents. Rose at 3pm. Worked on actor resume, read some of the Style section over tea, washed face, dicked around on internet. It's amazing how you really can just murder time--with the resounding whump of an explosion far away.

Obsessed a little bit, in direct opposition to New Years Resolution number one. I know I shouldn't stalk you--especially when I don't even have anything to say, really--but it's like Cheap Trick, I want you to want me. Attention is really the best thing anyone can ask for. It feels great.

I think Jackie Brown is about growing old. It's really bloody and very Quentin Tarantino, but that ending scene with Max Cherry and Jackie is really kind of eloquent. I can't figure out why he won't go with her, or why he won't take more money. I hope it's not something I'll learn to understand when I'm older. I wonder if anyone really, truly wants to be alone or if everyone is a lot more afraid than they seem...of dying. Is it dying? See the thing is, when I think about death it doesn't scare me as a thing by itself. I worry about pain or losing my mind or deteriorating slowly or seeing other people I love pass away, and being old...maybe it all has something to do with dignity. Jackie Brown doesn't actively lust after trips to Spain or a way out of her job, she wants dignity. More than she wants to be in love. I guess she already was in love.

It confuses me, sometimes (and trust me, I can imagine how naive this sounds) that not everyone wants the same things.

Technology and Sarcasm as a Paradox!

It was brought to my attention at a classy New Year's Party last night that our generation exists between two very disparate identities: we are the age of technology, and the age of irony and sarcasm. In our discussion, we noticed that sarcasm and irony more often than not fall completely flat when conveyed through technology (by which I mean text messaging or phones or what have you)--for instance, if you look at comments on the average YouTube video, there is literally no bottom to how idiotic a post might be yet people will still take it seriously. My friend Maddy references white supremacist posts or gibberish rants as key examples: while most sane people might recognize a lot of these scribbles as tongue-in-cheek, most people on YouTube seem...not to. A disconnect, yes?

Thinking in this vein while crafting my New Year's Resolutions, I made a list of things that feel true about technology and relationships:

WHEN A BOY...
…posts a song on your Facebook wall, what he’s really saying is written in the lyrics of the song, which is—let’s face it—probably a profession of love.
…drunk texts you telling you ‘you’re pretty’ or ‘_________, gorgeous’ he means he really likes you. In the daytime. He might love you, even.
…does not talk to you while you are both online, he already has a girlfriend or is gay.
…talks about other girls’ hotness—even if they are admittedly very foxy celebrities—he only thinks of you as a ‘friend’. Nothing more.
…invites you to a movie marathon or indicates or initiates any interest in ‘hanging out' over Facebook, this is the poor man’s version of ‘asking out’, and should be followed up if the person in question is at all interesting.
…has told you he likes you, suddenly everything he does online (statuses, notes) you can trace back to yourself in true violent vanity fashion.
…talks to you all day about nothing, really, and responds attentively to your messages (online or texting, of course), it’s assumed he likes you. You should act.
…texts you anything along the lines of ‘hey! Whatcha doin? Where you at? Or come over!’ any time after 12am, it is a booty call. You should act.

But even as I look over my list, most of the culprits I know have been guilty of completely opposing double-meanings. It's like that extranneous Drew Barrymore character in "He's Just Not That Into You" monologues: we have crafted a culture where rejection is not only indecipherable most of the time but also able to be repeated, like double jeopardy; our desire for clarity amidst sarcasm and mixed signals becomes rapidly masochistic while the romantically hopeful actively pursue the disinterested through multiple technologies. So...what now? If I sever all contact other than face-to-face I'll never have a conversation with my BFFS again, let alone get a boyfriend. I may move to the jungle.