My longest post yet... I have a lot to say. Let's see if i can thread the needle!
I had a really exhausting day today at work. Really just the most I've ever been put through at this job. It is in this near-jokerified state that i return, to you, dearest reader.
Except for Fran, who I politely acknowledge, but out of consideration for my overall wellbeing, am trying to take a step back from thinking about so much. Staring into the sun and all that. And it's not like she's going anywhere. Well, she definitely will be around less, since I've mostly been lucky enough to catch her when her schedule is more open than it usually is. But I think this is in anticipation of that too.
I think... maybe two years ago now? Maybe within a couple months of getting my motorcycle endorsement (oh, how I want to ride a motorcyle again), I underwent a really stressful experience that forced me to come up with a strategy for just. Even trying to keep my emotions from veering off the road. I think what I came out of that time with was the understanding that changes between drastically different emotional states for me can be pretty destabilizing. Like riding your front tire over a patch of smooth ice. (why would I know what that's like?) I need to treat my brain like I would the transmission of a car, or a motorcycle, gently.
If I'm going from a very high energy activity, like having an exciting time around lots of people, then going back to being by myself at home, it can be really jarring, like the horrible gear shifts that i was doing in my motorcycle class. Poor baby... (it was an overpowered 1200 RPM Harley that got way better maintenance as a learner bike than most people's own bikes do at home. i do not, in fact, feel bad for it). But if I can come home and shift down one notch, with a medium energy level activity, it's easier to go from that to the energy of being by myself.
Am I by myself right now, or am I feeding off the energy of the companionship of an imagined reader? That would certainly raise some questions about why I write. I talk to Fran the most like how I am when I'm writing, but I don't really feel like I'm addressing anyone when I do writing for myself like this. I don't think it's too much to be concerned about.
Also keeping me company is the Anodyne OST, which I haven't listened to in a while, but is perfect for doing introspective writing on a rainy day. When I put it on, my mind jumped back to how awkward it was meeting Marina Kittaka. It really, really, drives the point home about parasocial relationships when you meet someone you have such a built up idea of in your head and realize that you don't know them at all. One of those breaks with reality so sifnificant, that once it enters your awareness, it makes you question everything and maybe throw you into a total panic. It didn't quite get to that point for me, but I was definitely maybe less than normal about it. Sorry marina! I was not prepared for the actual depth and impact of your corporeal preasence as a fellow flesh and blood human being as I had presumed from engaging with your art! A person and there art really are two different things.
This is something I think I've really come to appreciate with Fran. The things she's experienced and chosen to represent in her art are of her, but seem comparatively lifeless next to her. Or maybe that is, I can see now that having the art and the person side by side, the art only serves to bring something out about the person themself? But sometimes it is its own thing, with a separate life outside its creator?
OK, this is getting dangerously close to heavy-duty thinking about art. I'm just here to talk about my almost panic attack I had from meeting a microcelebrity. I'm normally pretty ok at introductions, so long as the person isn't too jaw-droppingly hot for me to function, and since just about everyone there was about that hot, I had pretty much learned to sink or swim by that point. God, I am telling you. Minneapolis is crazy. It's not even so much a reaction to the physical presence, as it was also just the beauty of so many queer people having mundane joy together. I read that sentence back like "what the fuck are you talking about, bitch?" but I also very viscerally, in the pounding of my heart thinking back on it, know exactly what I mean!
And I think all this brings us around to... agape? eu-dai... the other one. Gonna pull the chat logs real quick. Fran took these funny pictures I can't stop thinking about bc she pulls these stupid faces. Wish I could remember the words, though!
"eudaimonia." yeah, ok, i can kind of get this one. like the emotion i associate with the four of wands, (even if ive been approaching it with more of a cups analogy). really, i think ive been dealing a lot in it first hand. I remember asking Fran at the time, if this was a form of love, which i think in a pretty direct way, it is, yes. This is the thing that helped me understand why Nathalie is so generous, or Fran. As it applies to eudaimonia, I think when you have this feeling of overflowing joy or flourishing (ace of cups), it's too much to contain in yourself (because it was never meant to be) and you want to bring that joy and flourishing to others around you.
I think this is what community can be. I was really shocked by how much, when I got on anti-depressants (along with other things that this serves as shorthand for) I was so much more motivated to try and bring joy to people I suddenly realized where really struggling, or resigned myself to not being able to do anything for because I was too weighed down with my own problems. And I think that what confused me about the source of the generosity that Nathalie and Fran embody was missing this understanding of eudaimonia. It is as mysterious and acausal as love itself, because to overfill its vessel is the telos of the flourishing. Ecstatically unaware of the bounds of its mortal conduit, joy pours forth to suffuse the whole of the community. Oh, I see now. How I see. Many-handed hunger really does demand an infinite supply, if our hearts and bodies can only bear it.
And now I've dropped out of gear. It's strange how. Mm. I think this is a good place to let it rest.
Back to diary.