bendy: travel

It has been such a long long time since I've blogged. I've thought about blogging at least once or twice a week, usually as I'm climbing the stairs to my apartment after a long drive back from Redmond. But once I open the door to my home and find BSG dvds to watch, fun new recipes to try, and a cute boy to cuddle on the couch, all my ambitions disperse. So it goes.

May was also a pretty insane month, as we:

Adopted a new vacuum

Visited family & friends in LA

Went to New York for the Stationery Show

Hosted Kim & Emily for the weekend

Recorded a hit single with the Seattle Six.

A lot has been going on.

I was recently reading through my old blog from my college years, and it's insane how much I would put out there in public all my thoughts and feelings about *everything.* I was a steady blogger from 2001 to 2005, averaging 15 posts a month at least. And in the early years I didn't have a digital camera, so it was all words. Sometimes I would post results of internet quizzes like "which Harry Potter character are you?" (Remus Lupin), but mostly it was just a daily recital of my innermost thoughts.

And it seems like I had more personality back then. I guess by that I just mean that I put more tang and pizazz into things. I was oh, tremendously emo, and everything moved me, everything had such great significance. I think I thought that if I didn't blog it, reflect on it, and really glean from each experience its deeper meaning on my walk through life, I would fail to understand or grow. I would be at a standstill.

I don't still have that mentality, but some of that must dwell in the far corners of my brain, otherwise I wouldn't still be here, blog blog blogging. I feel more content now to just move through my life and hold onto whatever my body and mind choose to hold onto. But the world of blogs and the blogging community has changed so much from what it was like in 2008. What is the ultimate function of a blog now to me?

This blog, Bendytime, was initially conceived as a way for both Andy and myself to keep in touch with family and friends in both Minnesota and California. But a blog cannot possibly perform that function. The only way to do that is to put phone to ear, pen to paper, butt to airplane seat. So where does that leave us? With a document of our lives that we are too busy to update.

I don't really know what I am getting at here.

It is a beautiful Sunday night here in Seattle. Today we changed my license plates from California to Washington, and part of me was sad, but part of me was resigned to it. If I plan to live as many different places and travel as much as I hope to, little things like changing license plates will have to become commonplace. Another step: hopefully getting our passports soon.

Andy is cutting his hair in the bathroom sink and I am preparing a big pile of tshirts and totebags that I plan to silkscreen for friends. I stayed up till 3m drawing up a Space Needle birdhouse, and if all goes well, my nearest and dearest will be getting homemade presents from me for my birthday.

Today in Los Angeles, my brother graduated from college and I was not there. But I think he knows I'm proud of him. And graduating from college is not really biggest milestone or accomplishment he will ever achieve. The ones that will make an impact will be–or already have been–quiet and solitary. Most likely he wouldn't even notice until much later, and then look back and go "oh yes. that was a big moment. something changed."

And it was Father's Day too. I bought my dad a card at Bartell's, and I noticed how many of the cards said things like "Even though you don't say a lot, you've done so much for me" or "Although you're a man of few words..." or "The way you tell me you love me is in actions not in words." Is that really a reality for fathers? Not talking? Enough that the writers at Hallmark have found a dozen different ways to say basically the same thing? Or is it that the kind of kids who buy their dads beige and brown Hallmark cards with long-copy and photos of fish and golf carts on them are the kinds of kids who don't know their fathers very well. I have a Hallmark campaign in my portfolio where the tagline is "Feelings are complex. Cards are simple." The Father's Day cards I read made me want to revise it to "Feelings are scary. Cards are safe."

But more than anything, it makes me sad for families and children everywhere. At least in my family, the sentiment is true. Since moving to Seattle, I've found it impossible to talk to my Dad, while my relationship with my Mom has gotten much better. I called for Father's Day and we spoke for barely 3 minutes. I don't know if it's because he's mad that I moved, or worried about me, or just that he's so emotional about it he can't even talk. But the point moreso is that I don't know. Because he won't tell me. And I don't even know why he won't tell me. If he would even just tell me why he won't tell me, I wouldn't ask any more questions.

My life would be much better if my Dad had a blog. Or a Facebook.

And otherwise, life parades onward. Speaking of parades, the summer solstice parade in Freemont this weekend promises naked people galore, I am looking forward to posting photos on my Flickr. Not to be missed!

...down from the door where it began

I think moving from Los Angeles to Seattle was the most emotionally draining and logistically daunting thing I've ever had to do in my life thus far. And although I say Los Angeles, most people know I actually mean Torrance, California, city of my childhood, playground of my youth, and the house that I grew up in.

I prepared for a full year, even so much that I went through and quit my old job and got a new job in order to make more money and gain experience that would allow me to start my career in a better place in the new city. I put everyone through what Emily termed "the Longest Goodbye Ever" and exploited my imminent departure as a way to get anything from free meals, to wild adventures in the city, to my choice of songs in Rock Band. And I almost got a lap dance.

But with all that preparation, I still found myself overwhelmed when the time came. The actual physical move went better than I had anticipated and cost less than I had budgeted. But I was not emotionally braced for the reality of leaving everyone and everything I know behind and running off into the great unknown. It was a strange thing to hug my family and friends goodbye and then get onto a freeway that I had driven on every day, and somehow end up in a different life. It was very Lord of the Rings-ie:

[Bilbo] used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door," he used to say. "You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to."

So yeah. The first night in the hotel in Redding I cried at the sight of the marshmallow roses my mom had given us, at the snowglobe Jean made me, at every little thing. A lot of the time I wondered to myself if I was making a huge mistake. Most of the time I just tried to allow my mind to float in space and not feel, because feeling was painful. And it was easy to do this because the landscape was beautiful: snowcapped mountains, silvery lakes, and a lot of roadside adult stores in Oregon for some reason. It was a nice drive, but it hurt like hell. Even at this moment it's just easier for me not to think about it. Talking through it a few days later with Andy, it seemed like a dream, and I think for a long time, the journey between point A & B, or rather CA & WA, will remain a numb blur.

I do remember we had a lot of coffee and beef jerky.

And now I am here, in Seattle! It is an exciting new place, and I think if I had to choose a city to start a grand new adventure I could not have found a better place than Seattle. Or a better navigator/tent buddy/Samwise than Andyroo. He's the cheese to my macaroni, as the saying goes. I miss my friends and my family, but in that I am fortunate also, for they have all been enthusiastic and supportive and they all know that I will still be there for them, just a phone call or text message away.

Into the caverns of tomorrow with just our flashlights and our love
We must plunge, we must plunge, we must plunge.