Hey by the way this one is long and all the interesting stuff and epiphanies are hiding in plain sight amongst paragraphs of spew. And I wrote it all in one go and don’t feel like editing it. So you don’t have to read this one, I don’t mind. But, if you thirst for a glance at my inner psyche, this is certainly the watering hole to be quenched at.
I am experiencing a great and wondrous journey right now. I haven’t done anything like this before and I was paralyzingly nervous, but two days in and I feel very excited, but relaxed. I feel this could be normal for me — not only experiencing my location, but feeling relaxed again. There were great agonies that led up to the moment of me leaving to go on this trip, that it was going to make everything worse and I would not be able to stop running from places. But, I was wrong (at least, ⅓ of the way through the trip, I am).
Let me tell you the wonderful things I’ve experienced so far; Today, I saw the most beautiful building I have seen in my entire life. It used to be an iron mill, and when I first pulled up and parked, I was blown away. And when I got out of the car, and stepped past the gate, looking at the enormity of the mill and the rust that encrusts it, I could not breathe. Like the air caught in my chest. When you’re there you can really hear it all, the rushing sound of molten iron and the cascading of coke fuel down the tunnels. The whipping sound of chains and levers being pulled. Soot billowing out of the top. Railroad cars running every direction. Although, the mill shut down in 1981, so all you can really hear is the chirping of the bugs in the brush by the river. We took a two hour tour, complete with our own little hard hats, and the only disappointing part was that I was dying to actually go inside, and we spent the majority of the tour outside. It was also blazing hot and I made the mistake of wearing tight jeans so that also contributed to my desire to be inside the dark, cool building. The molten iron used to get up to about 4000°, but when we stepped inside it felt pretty nice.
After I left, I thought about cathedrals and architectural feats, Notre Dame, The Taj Majal, the fucking Eiffel Tower. Places of worship and reverence. I’ve yet to see any of those in person, but I’m yet to care. I never wanted to leave this mill. Even if they wouldn’t let me inside, I’d still be able to just stare at it for hours and hours, hearing the explosions.
For some explosions I did actually physically hear, my trip to one of the art museums yesterday introduced me to a piece I am now obsessed with. I had the pleasure of seeing Demolition of a Wall, Album 2, by Lucy Raven, I think I watched it about ten times. It’s a bunch of recordings of these landscapes in New Mexico, and then each one is hit by a bomb. And it is the loudest fucking art piece I have ever heard. The speakers were so impressive, I’m surprised I didn’t get distracted investigating them. I think explosions have just been on my mind during this trip, honestly my ears kind of won’t stop ringing, and have not since I left the first airport, so don’t blame the actual explosions.
My first flight was fine, but I was having one of those half-panic attacks, where half of your brain is on fire screaming “THIS IS NOT NORMAL THIS IS A MISTAKE YOU ARE GOING TO DIE” and the other half is like “Bro just drink this fucking gatorade and chill out. It is 100% actually normal and fine to get on an airplane and go somewhere.” This was not shocking, as I tend to have hermit-esque behavior and tendencies, and I have not completed an airplane trip* since 2019, I believe, and that trip was the worst one of my life, I think we legit were in 3 different airports for a total of 15 tumultuous hours. (*The flight I took last year was incomplete because a bird flew into the engine of our plane 10 minutes into the flight, and we had to land and it was canceled. So you understand my plight at flight.) But, once the plane actually got going for a while, I smoothed out. There were only minor road bumps for the rest of the day, all of which I handled with utmost ease. The saddest of which was when I fucked up and had to go through security again at the second airport and had to throw away that gatorade. Fuck. I took like one sip of it.
Now, the greatest thing I had experienced so far was a complete accident. On Saturday at 5pm, I had been awake since 4am, running on only 3 hours of sleep, 2 flights, and 1 club sandwich, and I drove to my host’s house zonked out of my mind. I greeted them kindly, then went to my room to take a nap before dinner. I do not know how to fully explain that this, without a doubt, was the greatest nap of my entire life. I think this is it, too — I will never have another nap as great as this one. My head hit the pillow and I truly realized how tired I was, I closed my eyes and waited to fall asleep. My ears were ringing, but I heard this other sound, it was almost otherworldly. A different ringing, a collection of circles, resoundingly loud and rhythmic. I heard them glowing and going in and out. It took me a while, but I realized I was hearing my own breath. The rhythm was of my lungs, I was just perceiving it in another way. Have you ever heard yourself breathe, not in through your ears, but directly through to your brain? I was hearing with my brain, as one does, but skipping the middleman. It felt like breathing pure oxygen. I wasn’t seeing anything, either, it’s not like I was so tired I was hallucinating the hat man or something. But I was hearing rings and circles and cycles. It felt like I had no nose. At some point, I did actually fall asleep, and 45 minutes later I woke up refreshed, at 100%, truly, back to normal. You know when you say “This nap is gonna fix me!” and it doesn’t, because most of the time it just puts everything on temporary hold? I laid down simply to lay down, but I really do mean it when that nap fixed me. To be truly honest since July 2nd I have been operating on 25%, 35%, pretty much anything below 50% capacity. That’s what made me so nervous about this trip, I thought the timing was going to be all wrong and I’d ruin it for myself. But I do truly think that nap was a little life changing. I woke up not feeling scared anymore. I’ve really been quite (reasonably) scared for almost a whole month now and it is unlike anything else I’ve experienced. So, when you feel damaged beyond repair, it is in fact, extraordinarily relieving, when a nap fixes you.
Delightfully rainy today. I made the perfect outfit choice, and was very grateful I keep toting around my sweatshirt because even though the majority of my time here has been blazing hot, my theories are always correct: Buildings Are Cold. I started off by meeting an artist I reached out to, and they were absolutely delightful. We had such an amazing conversation I’ll be thinking about for a while. Weaving is so magical. It’s so natural. It makes so much sense that it’s an early worldwide phenomenon. I got to talk again about IWIKYNUBC (Pinhole), which every time I talk about it, it makes it all the more satisfying and unbelievable that I was able to make it all work. After talking with them, it really makes me want to do something like that again so bad.
While I was at the gallery we met at, I saw some really cool guys made of dryer lint :) And then both my lunch and dinner plans fell apart because they were both closed on Mondays. Oops! A lot of my restaurant plans have just changed rapidly in the moment, they changed like ten times today but honestly I didn’t stress out. I found average food, and that’s all I needed. I struggled to find parking for a moment so I parked in a grocery store’s lot, but I went down a full row not knowing it was a dead end, and proceeded to do a full, 8 point, Austin Powers turn. And I fucking made it out. So impressive but so devastating that there was no one there to see it. Then I’m pretty sure the pizza place I went to was a money laundering front? Upon searching Yelp reviews it seems to have rebuilt itself after a fire a few years ago. Interesting.
I keep getting distracted so I feel today’s journal will be less productive. But, after my mob pizza, I went to this cool little shop of a bunch of recycled junk. I got some random pieces of toys and a beautiful, red, very surprisingly sharp, triangular prism. Is this the summer of the triangular pyramid? One time is normal, twice is coincidence, three times, makes a triangle? We’ll have to keep finding out, I guess. I also got some fabric samples for 75¢, and checking out with a bag full of stuff for $4 was fucking awesome and I should have gotten way more stuff, but unfortunately, I did have to consider what I could fit in my backpack. After that, I went to the big main library and got very lost. It had a very confusing set up/numerical system but I got the hang of it. Took many pictures of books about the coal and steel industry, effects of masculinity, weaving, dance, and surprisingly, the Vietnam war (I often forget that’s a topic I have dived deep into research before. Probably because it’s not a topic easily breached in casual everyday conversation). I sat in a windowsill overlooking this nice little cordoned off rainy roof, reading my current book (Jocks, by Dan Woog, would highly recommend if you are gay and like sports), until my butt fell asleep.
I went to an average looking taco place to close out the night. As I expected, the tacos were average. But the french fries? Immaculate. It was also the perfect place to just sit at a high top table facing the window and just space the fuck out looking at the rainy traffic. I tapped back into reality when I realized I had not remembered the name of the parking garage I was using, leaving me only to ask the age old question, pondered by our generation’s greatest sages: Dude Where’s My Car? Even then I wasn’t panicking, just laughing, because I had taken several photos of the inside of the lot, so I could remember which floor I was on, of course. Using my Cyber Sherlock Holmes Skills, I used the location information on those photos to find the name of the lot, making me laugh harder, that in a roundabout way I DID use them to remember where I parked my car. I ordered an oreo milkshake and left. The lid popped off in my cup holder as I was driving back home, causing me to goofishly yell “NOOOO MY MILKSHAKE!” I’ve enjoyed this rental car so far but damn those deep as fuck cup holders.
Today’s reflection was about FOMO, something I didn’t expect. I got to be in a lot of places I really liked today, and imagined myself in my day to day processes. It felt smooth and easy. I imagined what it would have been like to go to school here. The beautiful library, the fantastic campus, endless resources and food in the city. God damn I was romanticizing that shit! It’s probably ass! Honestly, I did what I could, with the best that I had, in terms of choices of college. By the time I had to commit, I felt my options were limited, but I still felt excited for change. Over the past three years, I’ve gone back and forth between feeling regretful like I made the wrong choice, and feeling like I could not have gone anywhere else. I think I wanted that really normal college experience that a lot of people get (this is very broad and vague, I know), but I do not think that would have ever been possible for me. At least, not the version of myself that lives in this universe. While I was romanticizing the big city university lifestyle, I snapped back to reality, and this morning, when I had mentioned to that artist that I didn’t ever think I could get into a regular college, let alone that I would graduate high school. Where was I getting off thinking 18 year old me wouldn’t drop out of a place like this after one and a half semesters, if I could even get in? Another one of God’s little tests. Jocks had me feeling a similar way, too. It’s true stories about these gay male athletes, whether they came out or stayed in the closet, and how all of their gay and male identities always somehow came back to sports. I find myself reading about their experiences in high school and college and being unable to relate to any of them. This book was published in the 90s, so obviously the lives of gay young adults have changed drastically, but I still find myself missing out on both of these worlds — the gay world, and the sports world. With sports, I’ve always felt like I missed the boat on that one. I hated soccer because all the girls on my team hated me, and I dropped ballet for reasons I hate to talk about. I played lacrosse for a few weeks one summer, but all the girls knew each other, and didn’t talk to me. I’ve always had an interest in baseball, but have never gotten an opportunity to play, even casually. I've returned to that cycle of thinking that always brings me back to “What would have been different if I was born a man?” which, the likely answer is one that would make me unhappy — yes, I would experience a lot more natural privilege, most likely making my life a tad easier, but my personality would be the same. And I’d still end up gay. (Side-note; I used the men’s restroom for the first time today because I have been he/himmed everyday since I got here, so I felt like I’d get stares in the women’s bathroom. It felt strange.) So the new cycle of thinking is asking myself “What is the type of man I’m going to become?” and that is a question that I am too nervous to answer. The gender crisis continues, obviously, as I accidentally opened my front-facing camera today and saw a man somewhere in there. I can say for certain that the man I want to become is more focused on the person that I want to become. If I was born a man, things would be different, like I would be having a very different gender crisis right about now.
Recently, I talked to my friend/co-worker about sports. He talked about the ones he played in high school, and the current athletic things he finds enjoyment in. I mentioned my desire for baseball, and my longing for ballet. He suggested I get back into it. I replied “What’s the point if I can’t go pro? Ballerinas retire at 29,” (unnaturally cynically, for myself). He encouraged me to say fuck the pros and keep trying, because it made me happy. I think I gave him too vulnerable a look, because he then smiled very genuinely, but I appreciated the sentiment. Today, the artist I spoke to also had a connection to ballet, and had that haunted look in their eyes that I see in mine when I talk about missing ballet. They said that I should just try an adult beginners ballet class, and spoke with such sincerity, that the freedom you find there is miraculous. Both of these interactions made me realize how deep this wound goes, and it gets deeper every time I think about it. I think it is the biggest hole in my soul, which feels silly to say about having to stop doing ballet in the sixth grade. But I had never really seen someone else who had that same kind of wound, and be brave enough to dive back into that world. As much as this is a research trip for the coal and steel industry, it’s also about ballet, in which this is research for what I want. And I want more than anything to do ballet again.
Big feelings, as I finally stop getting distracted, and feel thankful that NeoCities is relatively easy to use and these sentiments won’t die in the void of my notes app. Tomorrow I have a tour at a rich old fart’s house, one in which I forgot to respond to a voicemail regarding “the logistics of getting in (?)” so let’s hope I can actually make it. Then I have a second tour of a second, rich old fart’s house. They’ll be interesting for sure.
This day passed by quickly, both old farts’ houses were extremely interesting. Not much else to say.
I really do have to mention the “20 RIBEYES FOR $39” sign that I have passed everyday right near the house. Made me laugh so fucking hard the first time I passed it. Each ribeye is about $2? What a steal! I’M NOT BUYING $2 MEAT THOUGH. LIKE ANY MEAT. OF QUANTITY LARGER THAN LIKE, BACON STRIPS.
Skipped dinner, but ended up going to a night market with my hosts. I ate a delicious, but nasty looking chili dog. There was some live music, a woman singing and a guy with an acoustic guitar. Playing Thunderstruck with no drums is actually crazy.
This was the big day! One of the best days of the trip for sure. I started out by going to a diner that was literally under the highway. It was tiny and had low ceilings and I sat right at the counter, and watched them cook all the eggs and onions and peppers and bacon right on the griddle. There was a girl working there who had to be no older than 13, I wondered what kind of summer she was having. I got there at the perfect time, I think, all the regulars started to shuffle in, responding to calls of “Hey, Jerry,” “Good morning Joe, got a seat for ya right over here,” “Hi Bob, how’s the morning treatin ya?” I was greeted similarly, but with less enthusiasm, of course – not that I expected it. I also imagined myself to be a regular here – one waffle, side of bacon, cup of black coffee. I tried to not look too much like an outsider so I remembered to take my sunglasses off halfway through the meal. It was delicious, and just what I wanted.
Then, I had to drive myself back to the airport to return my car a day early (because renting a car for 5 days costs more than my fucking apartment rent). I was low on gas, like, really low on gas, but I was literally returning it so there was no way in hell I was gonna pay $50 to not use any of those miles. The airport is quite a ways away from the actual downtown and surrounding areas, but I truly had the perfect amount of miles left. I’ve never actually run out of gas before, a streak I intend to keep. But at some point the mile counter disappeared after dropping rapidly about 10 minutes before I got to the airport. I had to start counting by the mileage, shit was decreasing Intensely, and I think I had 10 miles by the time I pulled into the car lot. Exhilarating. Would not recommend.
Next was another art museum, and I thought this museum would be much bigger than it was, so I planned to spend 4 hours there. Sometimes I think I am really good at calculating time, once upon a time I could not tell the difference between 5 minutes and an hour, and now I find myself accurately predicting the exact time within 2 minutes. I used to be way too early or way too late, but for the past few years I’ve been able to manage being extremely punctual. So you understand my disappointment when I show up to this place and discover its limited gallery – limited only in my mind, not in content! – and that it was explorable for much less than 4 hours. It had 3 buildings, and although small, they contained a ton of cool art! Just not 4 hours worth. So, I took my time and savored every single piece as long as I could stand. I stared in silence at a giant concrete orb for 10 minutes. I watched a machine with two grinding steel arms move flaccid sheets of flesh-colored silicone around for a total of 20 non-consecutive minutes. I spent 45 minutes in a pitch black room, letting my eyes adjust to see the faint projection at the end of the room. It was kind of magical. It was nice to have 4 hours I knew I couldn’t use to my fullest potential, because I still tried to. I think every museum I’ve been to, I’ve tried to rush a little to make sure I see everything, and I rarely have time or energy to go back to pieces I’ve liked or loved, especially seeing them with other people. It was amazing to be totally free and unencumbered by the wants and needs of others. This was true of the entire trip, but really exaggerated by the fact that, yes, I did in fact have time, to sit in a dark room for 45 mins, and for the most part, completely unbothered.
There were some other really amazing pieces there, and so many of them involved a really creative use of sound, something I’m somewhat hyperfixated on right now. I sat in their garden and started to read a new book, Ocean of Sound by David Toop. It’s a non-chronological history of ambient sound and music, and it has grabbed my attention fully. I zoomed through the first 100 pages pretty quickly, but I had plenty of time. Too much time :( I had a dinner reservation at 6pm, and I think it was around 3:30pm when I got too hot and also hungry in the garden, and went to a coffee shop. The blueberry muffin and matcha latte could hold me over until dinner, but not fill me up. See, I had booked a reservation at one of the fanciest restaurants in the whole city, and I wanted to enjoy that entire meal with a mostly empty stomach. I changed in the bathroom of the coffee shop and got a ride to the restaurant, and goddamn I looked hot as fuck. I was kind of nervous – I hadn’t shaved my face before this trip on purpose, I felt like I needed to look like a man for my safety, but now, wearing a dress in heels, for the first time in a long time I felt really insecure that the waitstaff would treat me differently. Also, I’m a young person coming in alone to dine, ordering a full 3 course meal and wine, I was afraid I also looked like I would be unable to pay. I put all that aside: I have never been to a restaurant as fancy as this one was before, and I was going to eat fabulous food and have a grand time by myself. My wine, a beautiful red. I did not like it, but I kept drinking it because holy fuck it was so much. My appetizer, three beautiful duck bao buns that I kind of devoured, but with a fork and a knife! Took me much longer than if I had just used my hands, but by god I was going to be a member of civilized society tonight. My main course, a giant pork chop with purple potatoes. I devoured most of this too, but it took me a long, long time to even get through half of it. I probably ate too much of it but once again, I paid the big fucking bucks, I needed to down as much of it as I could. The wine helped. My dessert, a creme brulee, because I’ve never had one before! It had a little flower on it :) Overall, the meal was fucking delicious and I was devastated that I couldn’t get it to-go, because I was leaving the next day. But they gave me a little brownie as a treat! Unfortunately I was tipsy when my host picked me up to drive home, and I talked about that dark room the whole ride home and left the brownie in her car. Fuck. I really wanted that brownie.
I think for the rest of the night I just looked at tiktok in my bed. I was uncomfortable at the level of tipsy I was, but at least the bed and pillow felt very soft. If there was any existential pondering done, it has floated into the aether forever, as I cannot remember anything of significance.
I woke up wanting to go home, I had so much fun on this trip but I was starting to become grumpy and exhausted. I had no car anymore, so my host’s husband drove me into town, because he goes to work at 7:30am. My flight that evening was at 6:46pm. I had years to kill, today, because my only planned activity was visiting a gallery that opens at 2pm.
I’ll be honest, I’ve told this story like ten times now and I’m kind of getting sick of it LOL. Basically this day was fucking boring it was a lot of walking. Like way too much walking around doing nothing. The most exciting part was when I finally got to the airport at the end of the day and was letting my phone charge, and I just got to sit in the middle of one of the terminals, and just listen. I’ve been trying to do this more and more recently, just completely zoning out and trying to absorb every sound around me. We take hearing for granted. There’s so much all the time and it’s fascinating what we filter out to focus on the “important stuff.” But I really find the most solitude when I can erase everything out from around me and just hear the world in its natural state. You start to develop that sense of hearing yourself hear, to me it sounds like circles and rings, and it's heavenly. If I could hear like that all the time, I would.
I’ve been back home for a few days now, and I'm feeling myself settle back into routine. I’m surprisingly waking up earlier than usual, and feeling really calm. What is annoying is that I have immediately returned to forgetting what day of the week it is, and sometimes the month we are in. Reality and non-reality still have some blurred lines, but much clearer than what they were like before I left. I swear to god that nap really did fix me. This city has a weird hold on me, and I like it a lot, but I’ve felt like I’ve escaped every time I’ve visited somewhere else. It’s interesting. And it was taking a toll on me. But I really liked my vacation, and now I’m a lot less scared of traveling by myself, which was kind of the whole point.
Not sure how to tie this up in a neat little bow, without exposing too much about my mental state about my vacation brain and non-vacation brain. It has been an interesting summer, one certainly for the books. I pray that August is kind to me. And maybe I can find glimpses of that trip here, every now and then.