Peetsborg

The past four years saw me living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I was back and forth for longer thanks to college shenanigans, but I was firmly settled out there since the summer of 2012. And now, here we are, summer of 2016, and I'm on the opposite side of the state. 

On Wednesday I went out with my dad after being back in my hometown for a little over a month, to do the final cleaning of the house I had lived in for two of those years. I saw all three of my prior roommates that evening, and one of my best friends as well, all of whom participated in taking out the remaining evidence of our inhabiting the building. My dad and I crashed there for the night. I was up until 3AM, ensuring the house was impeccable for the next inhabitants. 

The focus of intense housework, combined with the wandering mind of someone too far gone into the night that one might call it morning, left me with some heavy thoughts. Sure, I had lived in Pittsburgh for four years, solidly. I infrequently went to my parents' house, usually only for holidays. I missed out on a lot of small events and milestones. I grew distant from my brother and parents, as we lost sense of how to interact with each other on the day to day. We're undergoing the process of bridging these gaps. It's not good or bad. It just is, and you deal accordingly.

But that meant I had made Pittsburgh my home. I have a family out there, of sorts. My relationships with a vast number of human lives in the area of south western PA have come and gone, growing and evolving. I've changed. I've learned what friendships stick, what it takes to maintain them, to cultivate them. I've learned caring with purpose and I developed an insight, a strong sense of empathy. I probably should have been a Psych major, but alas...

Every part of that house that I cleaned, getting down on my hands and knees to scrub at the baseboards, stretching up onto the tips of my toes to dust the ceiling fans - it all stuck with me. I can't put the experiences of that single house into one word or feeling, let alone my whole life in Pittsburgh. It all rolls up into this tangled knot of complex emotion and growth. It makes my head spin. It makes my heart ache. It makes me laugh. 

Most of all it reminds me of catching a Greyhound bus in Philadelphia. In line there was this elderly man with a beard as thick as his Russian accent. He seemed confused as to where to stand to get on the correct bus, and eventually found an available attendant to tug the sleeve of. 

"Ees thees buzs goink to Peetsborg?" he asked, gesturing with his luggage. It was. He fell asleep early on in the ride. He slept through the rest stop at Sideling Hill. He slept right up until the bus started winding around the bend near the Oakland exit, where the river wanders off into the distance on your left towards the Point, where Downtown sits beyond a crosshatch of bridges. When he roused from his slumber, he pointed and cried, "Eet ees, Peetsborg??" 

And I nodded to myself, knowing a loved one would be there to pick me up from the bus station, to ask me how my trip was, give me a big hug. Knowing I was home. 

You Are The 11th Caller In Line

I have about five half-finished written posts for this blog that I've generated over the course of the past two days. It's a lot of stuff I want to talk about and the topics have more open timeframes. But as the slightly hiccuped loop of on-hold music plays in my ear as I wait for a utilities company across the state that I in theory wrapped up my dealings with mid-June, I can't help but wonder about something that I'm sure won't linger beyond this call.

There are a lot of systems in life that don't work. A lot of hoops to jump through, a lot of unnecessary and redundant steps. Some of these systems are devastating to people's lives, and some are only inconvenient. Sometimes systems get updated, a much-needed fix-up to make them operate better or as they should have from the beginning. This is not the case for the utility companies I've interacted with in the past few years. One of them only allow payments for the utilities you need through mail-in check, or cash payments at their offices. Their offices, mind, that are only open during the standard work week, so if you happen to have a standard work week schedule, good luck with that. Or you can pay by phone for the others, but at a price! But that redirects you to another website that also charges you for their service. Oh, but a web account for paperless billing is an option! Except I kept getting paper bills anyway, so what was the point of that?

And I know why they get away with this, too. They could so easily make this process that so many people must go through on a regular basis streamlined just a bit more. It could probably even make the workers on the other end have a better time of it! But they don't have to, because everyone who can afford to acquire these utilities, will go through the obstacle courses set up to get and keep them, because they aren't that big of a deal. So why bother, right? It's only people's time. It's only this terrible loop of music that's probably being played off of an overly-used cassette tape, because that's the sound quality we're working with here.

What drives a process that could use some updates to continue dragging on in an incredibly inefficient manner? Because if it ain't broke, don't fix it? That can't be good enough.

Clarity and simplicity are so rarely found in the world. It's funny to me that it takes some bit of minutia like settling utility bills to remind me of that, and appreciate it where it can be found.

What We Make vs Who We Are

I've had quite a few conversations with several different people along these lines, and while it started as a shocking revelation on my part (about myself), it slowly became a gauge of other people for me. Not a judge-y or critical gauge, just something interesting that I know really bothers me. I'm being vague...

I can't separate the artist from their work. I can't look at something someone else has made or done and not think about who the creator is as a person based on previous actions or opinions. This can have a wide and various range. For an extreme example, when I found out Bill Cosby had rape allegations against him, I immediately could not appreciate Bill Cosby. Anything I previously found funny by him left a lump in my throat. Seeing anything he said or did prior, during, or after the times when the sexual assaults were happening all skeeve me out. But there are those who can appreciate the shows and comedy sketches he put on without letting what he did bother them.

That's an amazing and terrifying ability.

For a couple of examples a little less heavy than rape, we can look to JK Rowling. I love the Harry Potter books, and learning about her personal authorial journey is inspiring. I admire that she's gotten to where she is today. When I started to read the new content still in the Harry Potter universe that she was cranking out, I began to cringe. There was some casual racism and cultural insensitivity for the other countries (and continents) she was giving magic school systems. Some of it was thoughtless, like giving the entire continent of Africa ONE magic school. Some of it appears to be poorly researched and stereotyped, like the assumption that all of North America could do with one castle boarding school for the entire population, and that the magic culture in North America would operate exactly like that of the UK. These are hardly devastating crimes, to be sure, but that's the point. To me they made JK Rowling appear as a little thoughtless and stereotypical in her world views as a result, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth every time I return to a Harry Potter book.

Or for something a little more standard, we can turn to the Marvel comics cinematic universe. In the past (and unfortunately it still rings true) the diversity in the cast of Marvel action movies has been pretty flat; we're beseiged by white guys, with the singular white woman or black man. As a result, a lot of interviews with the group of actors that make up the Avengers cast tended towards a lot of well-considered and thought-provoking questions for the male actors while Scarlett Johansson was left with insipid questions about her diet and how she managed to squeeze into her skin-tight costume. Certain members of the cast were quick to jump in and challenge the question's value. Others were not. Jeremy Renner, a person I had previously enjoyed purely through his role as Hawkeye, I soon saw through a different lense as he took the opportunity alongside co-star Chris Evans to call Black Widow a slut. Now that's no good on it's own, but Chris Evans came forward to apologize for his comment, realizing it was inappropriate to be slut-shaming a fictional character (and the only woman in the Avengers movies at the time). Jeremy Renner doubled down and defended the comment. Guess who I just can't look at in any of his new movies now without cringing a little?

This mostly has to do with my response to celebrities and figures in the spotlight. Fame is something so unfathomable to me. It distances us from these standard human beings while simultaneously giving us a disgustingly large window into their personal lives. I think back on when I was a kid being an uneducated fool in my day to day (and I have a long way to go still), and am thrilled I wasn't constantly under scrutiny. The pressure must be unbelievable. It also must give a false sense of bravado, this feeling that as long as it's spectacular, they can get away with anything.

There are cases where people I consider peers pull stunts that astound me. All I can think is, why? The less I know the person, the more disconnected I am from them emotionally, the harder it is for me to bridge that "why" gap. The more conversations I have with these people to figure out "why," the more I feel either I'm beginning to understand or I truly operate in such a different mental capacity than this person and I will never understand and maybe don't really want to.

In thinking on this, I don't want to learn how to separate what people do or have done from how I know them or what I see them in through various media. It helps me fine tune the standards I have in my own life. It's also because what people create, when it's good they put themselves into it. A bit of their heart, their soul. It's what they want to do, what they put out into the world. It's a part of them. And in that way, I know I'll always be more understanding and forgiving of the people closer to me of course with consideration for severity - I'm gonna be hard pressed to forgive a axe murderer. If something was made with a mind towards something I am strongly adverse to, perhaps I don't want to be consuming that media to begin with.

A Taste

I've been working on a short story. In fact, I just completed it as of posting this. It's the very first short story I've written on my own, without any school-based requirements or expectations. 

It's a little weird, having a piece of writing I'm not going to submit for a letter grade. Honestly I'm thrilled but kinda at a loss... But I guess this is what an audience is for!

Now I'm not going to post the whole thing here, at least not quite yet. But it's probably some of my favorite writing I've ever done. And it still needs some editing on it before I'm ready to say it's absolutely and totally completed. Otherwise, it's done. I did it. A written piece by me, for me and for other people too I guess. 

So until I'm ready to slap it down in front of everybody I can, here's a taste.

"The souls of the mountains are restless. They surge sluggishly from the earth, pressing upward as determinedly as they root deeply beneath the crust. Their slowness is mistaken for motionlessness. In the endless expanse of time, they heave and roil like great waves of turf and rock, rising with the shifts in the land and eroding with the ruthless beating of the weather. In the swirls of snow and rumbles of thunder they murmur softly. Every footstep on their surface is like a pinhead pressed against the skin, a sharp pressure too flat to puncture, irritating and tingling. Trees sway in gales like hairs pulling at their follicles. The steady beat of rain sheers off thin layers from the mountain's body. The brutal heat of sun bakes the clay and plants once soft and damp. And people with their sharp metal tools chip away faster than any storm, carving them to their needs, never taking the living bodies of the land shuddering so slowly in pain, in rage. The souls of the mountains are restless."

Until next post on Thursday, folks!

Gross

Here's a word I use far too often. It's this fascinating multi-tool in my linguistic tool box, all reliant on my tone and situation. Time to ick some people out!

The scuzz that accumulates in grout is gross.
Burnt edges on an otherwise perfect sunny-side-up egg are gross.
The sensation of a needle in your vein when donating blood is gross.
Molting cicadas are gross.
A kind word and a hug from my begrudging brother are gross.
The fact that my parents at about thirty years of marriage go out on a bicycle built for two on the weekends is gross.
Shy and sweet gestures of affection from my boyfriend are super gross.

It's become a universal expression of disgust, distaste, and immature delight for me. I'm not sure when or how this happened. I'm not sure how it began.

It's amazing to me. I mean, I've studied enough languages and taken enough linguistic courses to know with smug satisfaction that languages are a constantly evolving social construct (much to the frustration of my more grammatically particular associates). As long as you're conveying your intended message to the person on the other end, you can consider it proper [Insert Language Here] all the live long day. This is without getting into the intricate details of linguistics which I'm sure I'll get into one of these days because BOY HOWDY is that stuff heady but fun! but probably the most amazing thing is, people I speak to know what I mean when I say gross, depending on how I say it.

Or at least I think they do.

Trudging and Ruts

Can I get a raise of hands for the number of people who just hit a brick wall in their lives with decent regularity? No? Oh, right, wrong platform. The illusion that I'm a lackluster standup comedian lingers... 

So let's talk about motivation. And by talk I mean I'm going to sit here and type out a whole bunch of words for people to read and then wait to see if this opens a dialogue. It's taken me a great deal to get to this point. I'm able to admit that. I feel safe saying that motivation is sometimes hard to come by. Whether someone will come forward to verify or deny this declaration of mine remains to be seen. When I first started this and asked for feedback, it was with vague hopes that I would be pushed forward by it. With time I have learned that I am terrible at motivating myself for myself. Give me a project and I'll do it, but the second I need to do it for myself, all drive to complete the task just withers away. It's why I have a decent number of knitting projects completed and Magic The Gathering cards altered, but none of them belong to me. 

To put a finger on why, I believe it's a three-facetted problem. Firstly, I'm an extrovert through and through. Not only do I seek out company when without, but my energy levels and push to achieve things when even casually observed go through the roof. I recharge emotionally and mentally when with people. When left to my own devices, energy levels deplete. I wilt. A week to myself becomes torture when trying to get the littlest thing done, even if it's as basic as making dinner. I don't really need to make a decent dinner, do I? It's just gonna be me that's eating it. No need, really. Might as well sit down with a half a watermelon and a spoon and call it a day. Not that that's ever a bad idea, I love me some watermelon.

Secondly, we have what I refer to as the concept of completion. I touched on this in How To Be A Better Dragon regarding my personal written projects - if I just keep holding onto what I'm writing, what I'm making, it can always be better. This line of thinking results in a litany of incomplete projects that can always be improved. When I'm set to task by another individual, however, there's usually a deadline involved. This person wants this done within their lifetimes, maybe even within months or days or hours of requesting. Maybe I should get a move-on? Makes sense, I suppose. I remember when even deadlines didn't do it for me. Ah, maturity sure is swell...

Thirdly, it's undeniable that in almost every field I've chosen, I'm working with some decently subjective material. You can't look at a painting and go, "That's wrong. You did art wrong," because there's no wrong way to do art. You can't bottle or measure or weigh it. There have been established levels of quality for things like paintings and sculptures and written works, but these things require enforced genres, and they are all capable of having exceptions. A good written work is in theory grammatically correct within the language it's being judged, with a clearly conveyed idea and tidy conclusion. But then there's open-ended stories and slang and concept novels that are written abstractly. The only thing that pins a subjective piece down as Good is when someone points at it and says This Is Good. Positive feedback validates the piece. Negative feedback develops the piece. Lack of feedback erases the piece.

It's important to know what gives you drive in life. Maybe this is a result of my own particular collection of neuroses of which everyone has their own unique cocktail or lack thereof but as a result I know how to best proceed in my own work environments. I've learned to set my goals. Most importantly I've learned how to ask for help with it. It's a process. Sometimes it's like pulling teeth. Not every day is going to be better than the one before, but the overall projected arc is one of improvement. 

And that's pretty neat.

Take a Look, It's in a Book

Pardon the title grabbed directly from the opening of Reading Rainbow, but it feels appropriate for this. I've always been a firm believer that books are some of the most fantastic pieces of art. They're little worlds to venture and escape to. Within their words are characters that become so close they might as well be your friends and family, or worst enemies. The places they live are fleshed out fully in your mind's eye. You envision this realm with such clarity, and each version is a little different from reader to reader, as they all bring something new to the table.

I've been thinking about this a bit more as I've returned to my childhood bedroom. There are books there that haven't been touched for years (I, regrettably, can't take my entire personal library with me wherever I go (I know it's better for the environment and less expensive, but I can't get over the sensation of having a physical book in hand)). I've even reread a few since coming back. Like old friends you don't talk to as often as you used to, but with some magical ease you reconnect as if no time has passed. You just pick up wherever you left the bookmark. I've also been thinking about this as I swap recommendations with friends. Hearing what they get out of the same books I love is a fascinating experience. It warms me when they speak to something I also cherish in the book. It excites me when they note something I missed or maybe didn't appreciate on my first read.

This is just kinda short and sappy, mainly because I have other things I want to write and read but I wanted to put this on my blog because it's important to me. Reading's super rad. It's an indulgence in raw human emotion preserved on paper in ink. The phantoms of wishes and dreams from people long dead or still walking this earth. Who were they when they wrote this story? How would they want it to be told now? What would they change? What would they keep? I wonder this every time, without fail.

It's a holiday weekend. Whether you're spending time with family, or friends, or alone; heading to the beach; stuck at work; no matter what, try and find some time to crack open a book. You won't regret it.