various notes
I went back to Boston earlier today yesterday, to meet up with lcohen and bitty and lots of other soc.biters and LJers, and I've got a lot of observations to make before I get to bed, so this entry will be all over the place. I'm feeling kinda scattered, and I also have a lot that I want to get down before it slips through the colander that is my head lately. So I'm hiding it behind a cut tag.
We paid a visit to Diesel, in between dim sum and dinner, and I had to use the bathroom. While I was washing my hands, I took a good look in the mirror (something I don't do that often) and thought, yanno, I'm actually really liking the shaved head. I don't know how long I'm going to put in the work to maintain the look, but right now it's really working for me. Initially, I just had this urge to shave my head, and I figured it was related to the whole crown chakra thing, but as time passes and I find myself really enjoying shaving my head, the way it feels while I'm doing it and while I'm walking around with no hair on my head, the more I realize it goes beyond some New Agey thing about my aura. It just fits where I am right now, for whatever reason.
I think that this new attitude got reflected in the pics I took on the train. I took my camera out when I remembered that I was unhappy with most of the pics I took last week, and I thought that maybe I'd learned something about the way I was holding the camera. The light was still crap, but I think I look totally different this week. A lot of shifting has gone on, possibly thanks to the incredible experience I had with the Body Electric crowd and the assimilation of that, but on a more basic level: I just feel comfortable with myself, in a way I can't recall feeling in a long time.
I never thought I would be saying this, but: Mom, wherever you are, if you had anything to do with my improved self image, thanks!
--<-<-@
Today Yesterday was my second ride on a train this month, which is unusual for me. It amazes me that, even after all this time in Providence and all the times I've taken the train, I still get that little rush of fear and excitement over it. I'm sure that part of it is about Boston still being an unknown, that while I've been there a few times there are still huge swaths of it that are a mystery to me, and it's scary and exciting to jump into the unknown. Another part of it, though, has to do with the perception of control.
I wonder how many people drive instead of taking the train, or the bus (when those are reasonable options, I want to emphasize; when the schedule or the routing totally don't work then this is a moot point) because they like being in control of their schedule. Being tied to a train or a bus means that someone else decides when you leave, and how long you can stay. It means that you've got to buy a ticket, whereas you can just hop in your car and go. It means that you've got to plan your trip (and sometimes your choice of destinations) based on where the train stops, and you've got to figure out how to get the rest of the way there (since the train rarely stops right in front of the place you want to be). You can park anywhere, at least in theory, so there's less walking.
Maybe that's all about the programming I grew up with in Texas, but there are a lot of false assumptions in there.
For one thing, being the one steering the car does not give you as much control as you think it does. There could be a million different things between Here and There that prevent you from getting where you want to go, from an accident to construction to a freak storm to a truck flipping over and spilling some hazardous chemical to a bridge being out. So it feels like you're in control, but you're not. Or, rather, you don't have as much control as it perhaps feels like you have when you drive. For another thing, you might not have to buy a ticket to get into your car, but you still pay, in gas, maintenance, registration, insurance, and so on, so it's not free. So $6 to get to Boston is a pretty good deal, and even when it goes up to $7.75 on Monday (I think) it's still a good deal. And that's not even considering the parking issue; parking in a place like Boston is expensive to do (at least legally), and often it's still next to impossible to find a space.
I think the main reason I get that out-of-control feeling is that it's unfamiliar. It's not as easy to change one's mind and turn around once the train leaves the station. Oddly enough, I hope that feeling never completely goes away, no matter how much I take the train, because I kind of like it. There's something kind of freeing in recognizing that we're not always in control, that you make your choice and get on the train and just trust that it's going to work, and if it doesn't then trust that you'll figure out an alternative. Recognize where you have power, and where you don't, and be okay with that. I mean, once I've done my part (figuring out the schedule, coming up with a plan, and getting myself to the station), there's really nothing left to do. There's this whole Zen quality to taking the train for me, I guess.
Anyway, it's always a rush for me when I get there, and I find some place that I've never been to before. I mean, there are a lot of tools that make that process easier now than any other point in history. lcohen posted an address, I looked it up on Google Maps (so much better than fucking Mapquest IMHO), I see its proximity to the train station, I look up the schedule online... all relatively simple stuff. And I even got more explicit directions from bitty when I called her to let her know that I was going to be at least half an hour late because of the train schedule. Still, I was going into an area, alone, that I hadn't ventured into alone before, and there's a certain element of trust implicit in doing that, and it doesn't always come as easily as it appears on the outside. I'm not accustomed to doing that, at least on foot. I think that's the thing; when I'm in my car, I'm in a familiar environment, so I feel somewhat more in control, even when I'm not necessarily. On foot, I feel so much more vulnerable, and maybe susceptible to forces outside my control.
But, once again, everything worked swimmingly. I arrived right when I expected to arrive, I had no problem finding the place, it was easy to find actually. (I had the time to snap this self-pic on the right as I was walking to the restaurant, and it was starting to snow.) And when I didn't see the table, I called bitty on my cellphone and she came and got me. (They were in a remote corner room I missed on my first sweep of the place.) Meeting with that kind of success two weeks in a row is exhilarating. Maybe I'm making a big deal out of nothing, but I feel like something is getting shifted inside me every time I venture out into some unknown and not only do I not die, but it's actually fun.
I feel almost like this is just part of the process for me right now, learning to let go of a need to control and just go with the flow of things, that there's a larger story arc in play here than just me taking a train to an unfamiliar part of Boston.
Anyway, I have some other pics, so let me get those out of the way:
I can't decide which version I like better. I think my eyes look more intense in the color version, but the lighting was weird and the black and white version fixes a lot of the weirdness.
This one is a testament to the wonders of modern technology. The original is dark and looks unsalvageable, but when I just brightened it there was this decent shot hiding in there. I didn't have to crop it or anything.
Surprise! They're not all of my face. Actually, quite a few weren't, but of the few that actually turned out I feel weird about posting them in a public entry, since I'm not sure how the subjects feel about having their pics posted on the internet. This is one of the few pics that 1) turned out, and 2) doesn't have people in it who might complain. It's a kind of funky pic; I thought I was standing pretty still, but apparently I wasn't, and this camera is so very hypersensitive to movement, so there's this weird distortion in the middle of the pic, like the buildings are warped. And then there are the strangers in the middle of the pic who were freakishly highlighted (highlit? I never remember which is right) like there was a beam of light on them (aliens about to snatch them?) before I tweaked the brightness and all that. They still stand out, to me anyway.
The battery died in my camera on the way home, as I was snapping a pic in the station on the Red Line. I realized then that this was the same dead battery/"borrowed" battery combo from the AIDS Walk back in June. Yeah, my camera is crappy in many respects, but it fucking rocks on the power consumption. Seriously, I replaced one of the two dead batteries with a somewhat used battery, and it worked for six months. And these are just standard AAA batteries, not lithium or rechargeable or anything like that.
It gave me the little red flashy I'M ABOUT TO DIE DIE DIE warning, so I shut it off before that happened, so I knew I was done with the picture taking for the evening.
As good as the pros are for this camera (small, in-fucking-credible on battery life, inexpensive, quick recovery time between shots when I'm not using a flash) the cons are starting to outweigh them for me (grainy pics, I can't adjust the lighting level or review the pics I've taken, the battery dies without much warning). It's not enough to make me seriously say I need a replacement now but it is something on my mind.
The train ride home was pretty crowded, and while my love of taking the train is not diminished, I was a little annoyed that 1) my headphones are so crappy (and my hearing in noisy situations so poor) that there was no way to listen to what I wanted to hear on my iPod, which I failed to drop this time around. It was a BSG roundtable discussion podcast, where lots of people were talking over each other, and with background noise it just turned into this cacophony. I tried anyway, but I know I'll have to start over from the beginning. There was a point where someone disembarked, and left the sliding door at the front of the train open, and it was both loud and cold, so for a while I gave up (until someone got up and closed the door; another interesting episode of herd behavior, nobody wanting to be The One to get up and do something). Not the best train ride, but it was on time and much easier than driving and I'm still a big fan.
Anyway, there was a kid sitting across from me in one of the few seats with only one passenger for the entire ride.
I find it interesting how my attitude shifted about him for the entire hour. At first, I thought he looked kinda hot, but then I realized that I'd initially overestimated his age, maybe because of the lighting. When I figured out that he was definitely under 21, and probably still in high school, my interest waned. My attitude about that age group is pretty simple: whether or not they're jailbait (it varies from state to state), they're still waaaay too young for me to even get into the fantasy of doing them, so while I can recognize that some of them are already quite nice to look at, I'm still all check back with me in 5-10 years, when you hatch.
That would have been the end of it, but I got this vibe from him. And I still can't figure out whether he was interested in me, or curious, or frightened, or what. I know I caught him staring at me a couple of times.
Then he tried to sleep. And immediately, several thoughts popped into my head:
Here's the interesting part for me, the whole reason I mention this story: I take a step back from that, and find it an interesting illustration of how much more invested I am in this state and my life here. We don't fear loss of a thing when that thing is meaningless.
It made me think back to something I was saying earlier in the day to Kitty (one of the LJers/soc.biters I met, and I'm not sure it's cool to link to his LJ). I was talking to him about my current position: I'm living on disability, and planning to go back to school and re-enter the workforce. Right now, my life has its perks (mainly my near-absolute freedom with my schedule and my stable income) as well as its drawbacks (mainly that my income is very very low and I have that nagging feeling like I could be doing more with myself). The thing with the guy on the train drove another point home with me: if I'm already this invested in this volunteer position that I could totally walk away from, how much more invested am I going to be when I have a professional career at stake? where the opinion of my peers and the people I serve could have a huge impact on my success? And the more telling question: does that frighten me?
I don't think it does, but I recognize that at some point it probably did. Maybe that's why it took me so long to get up the drive and motivation to figure out a plan and engage myself with it. And even now, I'm still at a point where I could back out of it. I don't think I will, but I could. I recognize that there's this element of my personality that always wants to leave an escape route, a backdoor, that I don't ever want to be totally committed. On some level, that's about recognizing my power; we are always free to leave whatever we're doing and try something else. We are never forced to do anything. Even at gunpoint. Of course, the consequences of changing course can be severe (especially if someone is pointing a gun at your head) but it's always an option. Beyond that, though, simultaneously mixed in there is a fear of being locked into something, really giving it my all, and I'm sure that's tied to a fear of failure.
I'm also quite sure that there are more layers to this, but since it's really late (and I also feel like I've come full circle, back to the theme of control, in a way, and that was supposed to be the opening chunk of this entry) it's time to wrap this one up. So, good night.
P.S. The kid on the train? I left a couple of things unsaid about him. One, when they announced the South Attleboro stop (the next to last on the line) we both kind of looked at each other, like is he getting off here? And then it seemed like we both smiled when we realized that we were both going all the way to the end (Providence Station). I was in my own little world about it, as was he I'm sure, but there was this whole weird exchange/connection going on between us. Part of me is curious about his side of the story, which I'll probably never know. Two, when he got off the train? I noticed he had a great big hickey on his neck. Heh heh, slut.
Annie Lennox, Little Bird (Utah Saints Version)
We paid a visit to Diesel, in between dim sum and dinner, and I had to use the bathroom. While I was washing my hands, I took a good look in the mirror (something I don't do that often) and thought, yanno, I'm actually really liking the shaved head. I don't know how long I'm going to put in the work to maintain the look, but right now it's really working for me. Initially, I just had this urge to shave my head, and I figured it was related to the whole crown chakra thing, but as time passes and I find myself really enjoying shaving my head, the way it feels while I'm doing it and while I'm walking around with no hair on my head, the more I realize it goes beyond some New Agey thing about my aura. It just fits where I am right now, for whatever reason.
I think that this new attitude got reflected in the pics I took on the train. I took my camera out when I remembered that I was unhappy with most of the pics I took last week, and I thought that maybe I'd learned something about the way I was holding the camera. The light was still crap, but I think I look totally different this week. A lot of shifting has gone on, possibly thanks to the incredible experience I had with the Body Electric crowd and the assimilation of that, but on a more basic level: I just feel comfortable with myself, in a way I can't recall feeling in a long time.
I never thought I would be saying this, but: Mom, wherever you are, if you had anything to do with my improved self image, thanks!
--<-<-@
Today Yesterday was my second ride on a train this month, which is unusual for me. It amazes me that, even after all this time in Providence and all the times I've taken the train, I still get that little rush of fear and excitement over it. I'm sure that part of it is about Boston still being an unknown, that while I've been there a few times there are still huge swaths of it that are a mystery to me, and it's scary and exciting to jump into the unknown. Another part of it, though, has to do with the perception of control.
I wonder how many people drive instead of taking the train, or the bus (when those are reasonable options, I want to emphasize; when the schedule or the routing totally don't work then this is a moot point) because they like being in control of their schedule. Being tied to a train or a bus means that someone else decides when you leave, and how long you can stay. It means that you've got to buy a ticket, whereas you can just hop in your car and go. It means that you've got to plan your trip (and sometimes your choice of destinations) based on where the train stops, and you've got to figure out how to get the rest of the way there (since the train rarely stops right in front of the place you want to be). You can park anywhere, at least in theory, so there's less walking.
Maybe that's all about the programming I grew up with in Texas, but there are a lot of false assumptions in there.
For one thing, being the one steering the car does not give you as much control as you think it does. There could be a million different things between Here and There that prevent you from getting where you want to go, from an accident to construction to a freak storm to a truck flipping over and spilling some hazardous chemical to a bridge being out. So it feels like you're in control, but you're not. Or, rather, you don't have as much control as it perhaps feels like you have when you drive. For another thing, you might not have to buy a ticket to get into your car, but you still pay, in gas, maintenance, registration, insurance, and so on, so it's not free. So $6 to get to Boston is a pretty good deal, and even when it goes up to $7.75 on Monday (I think) it's still a good deal. And that's not even considering the parking issue; parking in a place like Boston is expensive to do (at least legally), and often it's still next to impossible to find a space.
I think the main reason I get that out-of-control feeling is that it's unfamiliar. It's not as easy to change one's mind and turn around once the train leaves the station. Oddly enough, I hope that feeling never completely goes away, no matter how much I take the train, because I kind of like it. There's something kind of freeing in recognizing that we're not always in control, that you make your choice and get on the train and just trust that it's going to work, and if it doesn't then trust that you'll figure out an alternative. Recognize where you have power, and where you don't, and be okay with that. I mean, once I've done my part (figuring out the schedule, coming up with a plan, and getting myself to the station), there's really nothing left to do. There's this whole Zen quality to taking the train for me, I guess.
Anyway, it's always a rush for me when I get there, and I find some place that I've never been to before. I mean, there are a lot of tools that make that process easier now than any other point in history. lcohen posted an address, I looked it up on Google Maps (so much better than fucking Mapquest IMHO), I see its proximity to the train station, I look up the schedule online... all relatively simple stuff. And I even got more explicit directions from bitty when I called her to let her know that I was going to be at least half an hour late because of the train schedule. Still, I was going into an area, alone, that I hadn't ventured into alone before, and there's a certain element of trust implicit in doing that, and it doesn't always come as easily as it appears on the outside. I'm not accustomed to doing that, at least on foot. I think that's the thing; when I'm in my car, I'm in a familiar environment, so I feel somewhat more in control, even when I'm not necessarily. On foot, I feel so much more vulnerable, and maybe susceptible to forces outside my control.
But, once again, everything worked swimmingly. I arrived right when I expected to arrive, I had no problem finding the place, it was easy to find actually. (I had the time to snap this self-pic on the right as I was walking to the restaurant, and it was starting to snow.) And when I didn't see the table, I called bitty on my cellphone and she came and got me. (They were in a remote corner room I missed on my first sweep of the place.) Meeting with that kind of success two weeks in a row is exhilarating. Maybe I'm making a big deal out of nothing, but I feel like something is getting shifted inside me every time I venture out into some unknown and not only do I not die, but it's actually fun.
I feel almost like this is just part of the process for me right now, learning to let go of a need to control and just go with the flow of things, that there's a larger story arc in play here than just me taking a train to an unfamiliar part of Boston.
Anyway, I have some other pics, so let me get those out of the way:
I can't decide which version I like better. I think my eyes look more intense in the color version, but the lighting was weird and the black and white version fixes a lot of the weirdness.
This one is a testament to the wonders of modern technology. The original is dark and looks unsalvageable, but when I just brightened it there was this decent shot hiding in there. I didn't have to crop it or anything.
Surprise! They're not all of my face. Actually, quite a few weren't, but of the few that actually turned out I feel weird about posting them in a public entry, since I'm not sure how the subjects feel about having their pics posted on the internet. This is one of the few pics that 1) turned out, and 2) doesn't have people in it who might complain. It's a kind of funky pic; I thought I was standing pretty still, but apparently I wasn't, and this camera is so very hypersensitive to movement, so there's this weird distortion in the middle of the pic, like the buildings are warped. And then there are the strangers in the middle of the pic who were freakishly highlighted (highlit? I never remember which is right) like there was a beam of light on them (aliens about to snatch them?) before I tweaked the brightness and all that. They still stand out, to me anyway.
The battery died in my camera on the way home, as I was snapping a pic in the station on the Red Line. I realized then that this was the same dead battery/"borrowed" battery combo from the AIDS Walk back in June. Yeah, my camera is crappy in many respects, but it fucking rocks on the power consumption. Seriously, I replaced one of the two dead batteries with a somewhat used battery, and it worked for six months. And these are just standard AAA batteries, not lithium or rechargeable or anything like that.
It gave me the little red flashy I'M ABOUT TO DIE DIE DIE warning, so I shut it off before that happened, so I knew I was done with the picture taking for the evening.
As good as the pros are for this camera (small, in-fucking-credible on battery life, inexpensive, quick recovery time between shots when I'm not using a flash) the cons are starting to outweigh them for me (grainy pics, I can't adjust the lighting level or review the pics I've taken, the battery dies without much warning). It's not enough to make me seriously say I need a replacement now but it is something on my mind.
The train ride home was pretty crowded, and while my love of taking the train is not diminished, I was a little annoyed that 1) my headphones are so crappy (and my hearing in noisy situations so poor) that there was no way to listen to what I wanted to hear on my iPod, which I failed to drop this time around. It was a BSG roundtable discussion podcast, where lots of people were talking over each other, and with background noise it just turned into this cacophony. I tried anyway, but I know I'll have to start over from the beginning. There was a point where someone disembarked, and left the sliding door at the front of the train open, and it was both loud and cold, so for a while I gave up (until someone got up and closed the door; another interesting episode of herd behavior, nobody wanting to be The One to get up and do something). Not the best train ride, but it was on time and much easier than driving and I'm still a big fan.
Anyway, there was a kid sitting across from me in one of the few seats with only one passenger for the entire ride.
I find it interesting how my attitude shifted about him for the entire hour. At first, I thought he looked kinda hot, but then I realized that I'd initially overestimated his age, maybe because of the lighting. When I figured out that he was definitely under 21, and probably still in high school, my interest waned. My attitude about that age group is pretty simple: whether or not they're jailbait (it varies from state to state), they're still waaaay too young for me to even get into the fantasy of doing them, so while I can recognize that some of them are already quite nice to look at, I'm still all check back with me in 5-10 years, when you hatch.
That would have been the end of it, but I got this vibe from him. And I still can't figure out whether he was interested in me, or curious, or frightened, or what. I know I caught him staring at me a couple of times.
Then he tried to sleep. And immediately, several thoughts popped into my head:
- He's embarrassed that I caught him staring more than once.
- Maybe he's trying to catch me staring at him.
- Damn, this would be a perfect time to sneak a pic of him, if my battery weren't 99.9% dead.
- Is that kinda creepy of me, to even want to take a pic of a sleeping stranger?
- Does the fact that this stranger is a teenager influence the answer?
- OMG, what if he was staring just because I've done the Speakers Bureau presentation at his school (pre-shaved head) and he's just trying to figure out where he knows me from?
Here's the interesting part for me, the whole reason I mention this story: I take a step back from that, and find it an interesting illustration of how much more invested I am in this state and my life here. We don't fear loss of a thing when that thing is meaningless.
It made me think back to something I was saying earlier in the day to Kitty (one of the LJers/soc.biters I met, and I'm not sure it's cool to link to his LJ). I was talking to him about my current position: I'm living on disability, and planning to go back to school and re-enter the workforce. Right now, my life has its perks (mainly my near-absolute freedom with my schedule and my stable income) as well as its drawbacks (mainly that my income is very very low and I have that nagging feeling like I could be doing more with myself). The thing with the guy on the train drove another point home with me: if I'm already this invested in this volunteer position that I could totally walk away from, how much more invested am I going to be when I have a professional career at stake? where the opinion of my peers and the people I serve could have a huge impact on my success? And the more telling question: does that frighten me?
I don't think it does, but I recognize that at some point it probably did. Maybe that's why it took me so long to get up the drive and motivation to figure out a plan and engage myself with it. And even now, I'm still at a point where I could back out of it. I don't think I will, but I could. I recognize that there's this element of my personality that always wants to leave an escape route, a backdoor, that I don't ever want to be totally committed. On some level, that's about recognizing my power; we are always free to leave whatever we're doing and try something else. We are never forced to do anything. Even at gunpoint. Of course, the consequences of changing course can be severe (especially if someone is pointing a gun at your head) but it's always an option. Beyond that, though, simultaneously mixed in there is a fear of being locked into something, really giving it my all, and I'm sure that's tied to a fear of failure.
I'm also quite sure that there are more layers to this, but since it's really late (and I also feel like I've come full circle, back to the theme of control, in a way, and that was supposed to be the opening chunk of this entry) it's time to wrap this one up. So, good night.
P.S. The kid on the train? I left a couple of things unsaid about him. One, when they announced the South Attleboro stop (the next to last on the line) we both kind of looked at each other, like is he getting off here? And then it seemed like we both smiled when we realized that we were both going all the way to the end (Providence Station). I was in my own little world about it, as was he I'm sure, but there was this whole weird exchange/connection going on between us. Part of me is curious about his side of the story, which I'll probably never know. Two, when he got off the train? I noticed he had a great big hickey on his neck. Heh heh, slut.
Annie Lennox, Little Bird (Utah Saints Version)