Row in transit

Blogging without a safety net is risky. I prefer anonymity, but I’m also getting more comfortable with public collaboration.

Lately, I find it particularly difficult to sum up extraordinary events in life, and since I live the dream, I’m increasingly unable to filter my thoughts at the rapid rate life occurs. I also seem to be having a massive brain clog, but a plan to hopefully clear the pipes is in the works. I think it involves, among other pursuits, time.

I’ve been using blonde shampoo, leftovers from a friend, because we believe it’s a stupid marketing ploy. It smells fabulous.

I’m working on lumiere videos and soon, Andreas and I will finish our manifesto. Perhaps we will have a public reading. You should come.

I Twitter things I don’t tell my family, including my ever-changing plans involving location, wheels, and home. Some days I’m so cranky I can’t believe I let me out.

Last month, on my way to the AMC, I was stopped by TSA for having large sunscreen. Upon further inspection, they found my mace, which they could not immediately identify. When I, young white woman who had moments ago been mistaken for a ballerina while stretching my way through the security checkpoint, told them what it was, I was told to have a seat. I did, for about a minute, after which point I rose to wave down a flight attendant, “Hold the plane! I’m right here!”

The most disturbing part was that they did.

“Why do you have this with you?” “I forgot to leave it at home.” Half true: for the past five years, I’ve flown around the country, as well as the world, carrying my weapon on board the plane every time.

Sometimes I sit on the balcony with my housemate and watch the men across the asphalt courtyard do man things: eat steaks from the grill, drink bottles & cans of beer, listen to their one intelligible friend say things like, “So there was this guy Don Quixote…”

Sometimes I call my grandmother just because of the things I can say to her. Victim of an overzealous disposal of hard drives that were her long-term memory, no one in the whole world is as happy to hear from me as she. I yell things like, “Remember when I used to eat frozen green beans straight from the jar?!” because I have few other people to whom I could speak in such a way. I wonder if she is her own virtual recycling bin and discarded her troubling memories intentionally over time. No one misses my grandpa like we do. I wear her clothes at least twice a week.

Some people join the Army so they can afford a new Hummer. Bono, savior of Africa, co-owns Forbes. You have people in your life who only want to sleep with or kill you. I don’t want that sandwich with a knife in it. There will be a confrontation. Truth comes with contradictions, and it must come sooner than later.