A day is a day is a day. Or not. When you’re me a day can be quite a few and a weekend can be so full, it feels as if someone injected a whole month straight into my veins. This was one of these weekends but it’s less about what happened and more about how I respond to things1As I was driving down to Belfast2 this afternoon I was listening
to an episode of On Being with guest Danah Boyd3 about online and off line lives. In this episode she spoke about her blog and the way it started, of how meditative it was for her to write everyday and of the questions of private life in a public space. This was actually only a tiny part of the podcast but it specifically resonated with what Maya told me about blogging just before I left Israel and that I wrote as my first blog post – “It’s not about what you want to say but about what you want to remember”. I’m going back to this sentence because I now realize that the gap between the two, is the gap that exists between the way I want others to see me and the way I experience myself. When I think of what I want to say it always includes editing, it’s what I want to portray, it’s the end goal or rather the punch line. At times, I would like to remember things like that, only the punch lines and days that were perfectly lived. But mostly, I want to remember the process, the way I felt about things as they happened. And that kind is most of the time far from being perfect and mostly has no punch line. So between the words of Danah and those of Maya, I realized that my blog until now is more of what I’m saying and less of what I want to remember. It’s neat and pretty and I’m not. I wish I were. I wish I knew how to keep my house nice and tidy but the fact is I’m really bad at it (ask my x, it was one of our challenges). I wish I always knew what I was doing and what to say and when but I don’t, more often than not I’m awkward and hesitant, way too conscious of myself and spending too much time self reflecting.4
The drive to Belfast today was a reminder of this gap, mainly because nothing happened, there was no punch line. It was a 50 minute drive, then two hours in a lovely town on the ocean where I stared at the sea, ate at the co-op café, had another frustrating conversation with T-mobile5 and wished something more exciting would happen before driving 50 minutes back. In the ten minutes I had after the phone call and before having to head back, I sat with my diary, (yes, pen and paper, I still do that) and it made me realize the difference in what I’m writing on paper, to myself, and what I’m posting on the blog. It’s not that I want or need to expose everything but it is time for me to document what I’m going through not in a polished photoshoped way but as it is. Messy, funny, boring, embarrassing, dotted with moments of grace and beauty. This then, is my first post, and I promise myself to be me.
The end of the day actually did end up being exciting and full of punch lines even if not my own. At a performance by Jordan Lorenz6 at Colby College, I was reminded how much I love drama (not as a genre but as a form of experiencing) how amazing it is to be with people that are excited by things that excite me and how it’s about time that I except the fact that I’m at my best when I can share the beauty I see in the world with others.
If you haven’t yet, you’ll quickly notice that I tend to go off on tangents, hope you’ll get used to it because this is how I think. However, to make this easier, whenever I go off on a tangent I’ll put it down as a footnote. Oh – and just so you won’t say I didn’t’ warn you – the footnotes are always the most interesting part. I’m resisting the temptation to go on a tangent here too… Anyway, let me know if you have a better idea of how to deal with this :) ↩︎
There’s this weird Maine thing of calling cities by names of other places. You can actually visit China, Moscow, Lisbon and yes, Belfast without leaving the state. I was told it’s a combination of New England mentality and the fact that there were many people traveling by sea to far off countries and so naming places after the ones they traveled to. It’s still weird. And say it was only weird but it really get’s confusing on OK cupid when you end up sending a message to someone from Belfast (the real one in (the real one in UK) asking if they’ll be around since you’re driving down there this afternoon) ↩︎
Thank you Ronit Sela for recommending this great podcast ↩︎
As is evident in this post ↩︎
I wish I didn’t have to but that’s what happens with the combination of being dependent on Google maps, having T-mobile as your provider and driving to an area where they have no service. ↩︎
A workshop showing of an original solo performance piece Jordan has been working on as a part of an independent study in performance with professor Todd Coulter. ↩︎
In Moscow, on March 29, 2014, designer Ma Ya unveiled Ma Ya Fall/Winter 2014-2015 collection on the runway at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Russia. (Photo by Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Russia)
#MBFW Russia Fall 2014: Ma Ya In Moscow, on March 29, 2014, designer Ma Ya unveiled Ma Ya Fall/Winter 2014-2015 collection on the runway at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Russia.
