Writing

My first three lessons as a Jeep Wrangler owner.

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I’m acquiring a friend’s ’97 Wrangler because it maximizes my outdoor + summer + fun experience. Plus it’s the only place I can play cassettes now. I’ve already learned three things in the first week of riding it around:

  1. With so much bouncing around, it feels like a core stabilizer exercise nearly 80% of the time.
  2. Acknowledging other Jeep Wrangler owners — all of a sudden I see a lot of them! — is as simple as a wave of the hand from the steering wheel. They wave back the same way.
  3. Windshield wipers don’t mean diddly when you forget to put the top up when there’s threat of thunder and you have rain on the inside of the windshield.

Noted.

Pride reminder

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Just a reminder: friends, friends of friends, friends of friends who have friends who may know someone who is gay, lesbian, trans, questioning, queer, exploratory, GLBT, LGBT, BLT, or getting better — you do not have to be extra prideful* all in one night or one 24- or even 48-hour period. You can feel your pride every day.

 

*see also: partying, woo-hoo, livin large, trashing the city, causing a commotion, wild rumpus, extra loud, exacerbated, or god forbid reinforcing stereotypes.

Pinball wizard 3.0

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While working in midtown and staying in Jersey City this week with dear friends Tamara & JP, after work one night JP and I checked out (and I “checked in” to) the new Barcade location, close to Grove. Besides the delicious craft beer selection, and the equally delicious NJ-style hipster specimens beginning to trail in, JP said the owners rented a trailer and drove around the country to stock up their space with vintage 80s video games. What could be better than a custom pint-wide shelf between each free-standing game! It had been decades since I had been among that many machines — with the exception of one random Ms. Pac Man game with Matt at a laundromat in DC a year ago, and a night at Ground Kontrol as part of the 2008 AIGA Leadership Retreat in Portland, OR. Galaga, Millipede, Joust, and Burger Time were always only somewhat appealing, so I continued, as I have since I was a kid, to plunk my hard-earned quarters into Qbert, Tempest, Frogger, and Ms. Pac Man (luckily, the sped-up version). These games are controlled simply via joystick or with the addition of a single button — fire! That’s their only interface. Let’s call this Pinball Wizard 2.0. This is my generation.

Now, it’s safe to say that my Jersey City compatriot JP is a gaming geek, with both XBox 360 and Wii hooked up to the projector, and generations of previous gaming platforms and gaming promotions proudly on display around the apartment (anyone else remember Sony’s Easter Island campaign?). During my stay, he fired up Portal 2 and grabbed the dozen-button controller to solve it — I could tell he’d done so given the rolling credits. I realized that the more heady and narratively complex games (which seem to have started with Myst) — the ones that require you to figure out what you’re doing first before you start figuring out how to do it — require more buttons to control.

JP is clearly a Pinball Wizard 3.0 maven. I kicked his ass at the arcade.

The original... Three. Word. Tagline.

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I’ve always deplored trends. They lack originality. They smack of a bandwagon mentality. So it’s no surprise that I wholeheartedly enjoy 37signals’ perfect lampoon of the trend to use three word taglines, each as separate sentences. Yesterday, it occurred to me that there were two sets of three word taglines taught to us as kids. The first, Stop drop and roll, was to be recalled in case of fire. The second, No go and tell, was to be recalled when sexual abuse was instigated.

And yesterday, I thought: what if, under stress of either, they were reversed? You wouldn’t want to stop (what you’re doing), drop (your pants), and roll (over).

Liking is the new lugging

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I’m curating my crap, preparing to move into my first real estate purchase, realizing how many of my physical possessions weigh me down. Papers, letters, taxes from ten years ago, planners from fifteen years back when I used to use an At-a-Glance Full Weekend datebook, even though I had way fewer things going on. They’re all heavy. They’ve all been accumulating dust mites in a four-drawer file cabinet, stuffed to the gills and never referenced. It’s only while looking at these things — in particular, some old letters — that I am instantly transported to the first time reading them. While I’d had no current headspace dedicated to them, by randomly pulling through the six shoeboxes worth, I fondly recalled them. This is not how I want my life (or my impending move) to grow. I’d rather rely on my brain and the mushy, fuzzy impressions of the people across the arc of my life, rather than having to carry around the physical memories of the minutiæ. Thus I find it fitting to be posting on my blog about this. How freeing are the digital possessions. They live online, they only accumulate RTs and likes.

Poem, 8/28

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[to be read aloud whitman style] Flight 2033

first lynn, then winthrop and hull, little harbors, clusters of white boatlets and green trees like shrublets, the entire north shore against the vast blue, bank right, i knew we’d see ptown, but not the entire arm of the cape and the south shore, how it all connects, how simple it looks up here.

this is why i like travel, and why i love to fly: it simplifies and minimizes, brings everything into big perspective.

it’s a beautiful day to be up here, warm on the ground, little clouds and little lakes, and look, there’s providence, tiny tf green, a cluster of small buildings among so much water, and island of a town among the green.

i like flying because sometimes i like getting there faster, knowing there’s a simpler way, knowing we’re already above hartford and i can see clear through to long island and the smaller islands around it, shelter island, and beyond.

this is new england: some farms, some water, clustered towns, and so much green and so much blue.

perspective brings everything together and clarifies. connects that which seems disparate, a different state or highway, a different way of realizing everything’s connected.

Poem, 3/15

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I’ve unraveled.

the point from now becomes

a process of raveling, reconnecting myself

with my self’s responsibilities.

it’s a rock in Pinnacles, a point past which

I can no longer go

this time. my boy, my man,

you are everything in the world to me

and what a world we have

yet to make. ps, today I heard

the flapping of a bird’s wings.