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Too Much Data

I have so many thoughts and feelings rushing through me because of this trip, and I desperately want to find some pattern in the cacophony. So I might post a lot for a bit. I understand if it’s too much, but I promise it’s not a permanent shift.

Do you ever have a period in your life where your vision expands? It’s happened a number of times for me, usually when I can finally connect history to propaganda to experience to psychology into something that’s approaching what might be reality.

Like, I was raised by hippies, so obviously all humans are simply human, but when I looked around me, that was demonstrably untrue. I started with class, and was as Left as a person can be before I graduated from University. 

Race was more difficult, because that involved accepting I had not been able to simply treat everyone the same. It took me questioning why my world was the way it was and genuinely seeking out and listening to voices that I never would have found otherwise. It was humbling--it still is.

I was so, so pissed when I realized, I, daughter of the matriarch, had imbibed internalized misogyny to a terrifying degree. I’ll be rooting all of the above rot out of my brain, my soul, for the rest of my life. But that’s the one that’s best at hiding from me. 

Until coming to Poland, I had vaguely considered that the way WWII has been framed was likely pretty biased based on the country. However, the horror overrode most analytical thought. Who cares how it played out when a trainload of thousands of people would be dead in an hour and a half from pulling up to an extermination camp?

So I missed that my history classes were painting Poland as willing collaborators. Because that benefited the Allies. Anti-Semitism was why all the ‘good guys’ turned away a constant stream of Jewish refugees. Once the images and film reels tore across the world, those same ‘good guys’ needed someone else to blame. 

Of all the nations, Poland fought the fiercest, because, for many of them, the Jews of Poland were simply Poles. Poland protected their people more than most countries. They certainly spilled more blood. The more people share their families’ histories with me, the richer, more nuanced this story becomes.

I wonder how many times I will need to learn that people are just people before I can apply it everywhere. 

All the time.

Once again, I am humbled.

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Our infinite cruelty and boundless beauty

I don’t recall a time when I didn’t know about the Holocaust because my mother felt so deeply betrayed when she first learned that the USA rounded up Americans of Japanese descent and put them in camps that as soon as she thought I could begin to understand, she told me what we’re capable of.

I visited Treblinka today.

‘Never again,’ is the hope, the prayer of so many monuments, because we needed to believe that WWII was some sort of abhorrent departure. It was only that this time we had photographs and filmstrips. It made it much harder to protect the home front, even as I wonder if we never should have tried.

Humanity MUST see our haunted eyes in the mirror. This mad dance where we run and dodge and lie to ourselves, hiding in inherent evil and divine good. What if we’re simply human? What if we’re all responsible for humanity’s worst acts and sublime achievements? 

Facing that squirming feeling in your belly, the one that terrifies us all in the small hours, what would happen if we could all face ourselves?

Today I listened to birds sing and the wind whisper through birch trees while clouds drifted in a pure blue sky--at the same time that I knew I stood on the ashes of nearly one million people. 

That is who we are, the incomprehensible. Bottomless pain and hands reaching to the sun. 

I choose to turn my face towards the light.

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Europa

I keep putting off posting until I can do it ‘properly.’ Well, I’ve been across the pond for six days, so I better just go for it. 

Reylo continues to change my life by bringing the amazing @silvergrain-in-the-dark into my life. She has been exceptionally generous by opening her home and her family to give me a safe haven while I bop around central/eastern Europe (apparently the distinction matters). Her whole family made me feel welcome and though we couldn’t understand each other most of the time, there was a genuine ribbon of warmth threaded through it all. I mean, I was graced with home-cooked spaetzle (thank you Mutter Silvergrain), so I’m not sure what else one could ask for. 

I have learned that I am 100% messy American. However, I have also learned that California Mess is a tiny bit charming. At the end of the day, we’re all people and all it takes is a moment of risk to make that connection.

It’s a trick I learned from Mr. Downing. I’m still more timid than I’d like, but now that he’s gone, I must do the Downing clan proud. I wish I’d put his wisdom into practice sooner, but he was pretty adamant that he wished he would have taken his kindness off the bench earlier, so I think he’d understand. 

As ever, thank you all. I love you.

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Men are like pit bulls—supper sweet if they’re raised right.

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Half of a Year But All of a Heart

It’s now been six months since my beloved soulmate Mr. Downing passed away. A not insignificant part of me wants to simply drift along my bursting trove of our beautiful memories, dive so deep that they’re all I can see, all I can breathe. 

But that would be the most selfish thing I could ever do with my life. So many people love me, are rooting for me; I’ve been given far more grace than most. It’s not that I fear disappointing everyone, it’s that losing myself to the past—giving in—would be to squander so much more hope than fits in my admittedly huge heart. 

I will stumble. I have stumbled. It turns out I can’t stay down for long because of my birth family, chosen family, fandom family. And if it feels impossible, knowing how proud he would be of me gives me that last inch.

My future isn’t as shapeless, now; I’ll be going to grad school in the fall of 2024. It has been a loooong time since I’ve had to pay attention to the academic calendar. 

Me: What do you mean it’s too late to apply for this fall? It's like six months away!!!

In the short-term, I’m going to spend roughly two months in Europe beginning in May. Thus far, the majority of my time will be spent in Germany and Poland, but it’s pretty flexible. Baby Perry can’t quite believe that she finally gets to take the trip she’s been planning since high school.

Which brings me to story time!

Recently, I drove up to Portland to visit Sis Downing; I didn’t want to do it in one day, so I planned to stop in Ashland. The road deities were feeling capricious—I broke down about 150 miles away. But! Mr. Downing had procured AAA Premier for us, which comes with towing of up to 200 miles.

Fast forward to Ashland where my Lyft driver from the repair shop to my hotel dropped me off at the wrong destination. Which was actually nearby … but down a long, muddy road. Thus, Chihuahua Downing and I trudged through the mud with my big-ass suitcase. 

Room was awesome though:

Couldn’t last of course. I left my purse in the Lyft.

Sis: From afar it’s like the part of the movie where everything goes wrong for the protagonist right before something magical happens!

Me: Well, I better go to a casino ‘cause I’m not ready for a Meet-Cute. 

There’s a casino along I-5 between Ashland and Portland. Mr. Downing always said I was painted with magic …

I won $400.

Apparently my muse is writing my life; it’s so much sweeter after it hurts.

❤️I love you all ❤️

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The Singular Agony of a Widow’s Joy

It’s been nearly four months since my husband, best friend, soul-mate died. I’ll try to post an update soon about what I’ve been up to in Palo Alto.

Feelings aren’t known for reacting to reason or logic. Because they’re feelings, wisdom from another place. Sometimes they lead us to the greatest heights of our lives. And sometimes, they encase our feet in amber, affixed to one spot for an age. 

Allowing myself to really laugh without that tightening of my throat because I can’t share it with Mr. Downing is a kind of guilt I’d never experienced before. It’s completely immune to any arguments for why he’d never want that for me, that rebuilding takes nothing from how deeply I love him, that he’d actually be so proud of me.

It still feels disloyal to find glimpses of happiness, glimmers of excitement for the future.

But, I’m intimately familiar with how my brain is both my greatest asset and the horrible little goblin that only shuts up when I hide from all risk. Which means another one of those oft-repeated, rarely truly heard adages proves itself true: the only way out is through.

So, every time I want to shy away, I turn into the pain and say, “Hold my tea.” Facing the howling hole in my chest is about as fun as you’d expect, but the strangest thing is happening. That hole is shifting, the soul-shaking gusts of grief are pairing with something else, a sweet, flickering glow of how much he loved me. It’s a bit like a soothing balm to chase away the aches of exercising new muscles. 

I can just see the shape of ‘good’ instead of simply ‘okay’. Because it’s not really a hole within me, it’s a forming lake. Someday, it will be full of clear, clean water where I can sit at its banks and feel his love lapping at my feet. Because Mr. Downing never could handle it for long when I was hurting before he had to do something about it. 

Turns out that might still be true.

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Grief, Greed, and Gratitude

In the latest installment of rebuilding a sundered soul, I tried to go home again. And, as we all eventually accept, the more trite the saying, the more it speaks a fundamental truth. You truly can’t go home again because who you are and what it was can never remain static.

Which brings us to Esalen, the hippiest place in all of hippidom. Well, at one point. The retreat is set into the cliffs of Big Sur and can make the staunchest of atheists want to at least check under the hood of agnosticism. 

I mean, look at it!

It played a significant role in the counter-culture movement back in the ‘60s, but it still worshiped at the altar of white, male exceptionalism. However, they really did do the best they could with the ingredients they could perceive.

For 21 years Esalen was where I went when I needed to untangle something significant, and they were offering a grief workshop this past weekend. It felt fated. Oh, there are also baths built into the cliffs, fed by nearby hot springs, so there’s that.

Unfortunately, while I was in New Orleans, Esalen completely surrendered to the beast of capitalism that had been snuffling at its door for quite some time. I’ve been so out of it that I didn’t really do the math on how much I spent on a weekend there, but once I saw how fundamentally it had changed, I finally put it all together. The summer camp for seekers where I decided to spend my life with Mr. Downing is no more.

However, though the organization is lost, I was still in a sacred place with other people in mourning, and I really needed that. By the end of the weekend, I was sitting at the edge of the room, silently crying, and two of my fellows gently came up to me and simply took my hands, holding my grief with me. They wrapped their arms around my shoulders and swayed me to the sound of drums.

I have been so afraid that no one would ever see me again, that I could never allow myself to be cared for after losing Mr. Downing. He was the first person I let see my flawed and aching heart. 

These two beautiful souls knew what I needed and simply ... gave it to me. As is often the case, I’m certain they have no idea the profundity of their gift. 

But I do. 

I’m no longer so terribly scared. My beloved was the first to make me feel safe, but I now know he needn’t be the last.

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Found on Mr. Downing’s Phone

There once was a dude named Burnett Whose fate was to drastically fret He met a sweet girlie Who changed his whole worldie And now his whole life is set

---

I came across the above limerick while looking through the notes on his phone for any to-dos or helpful passwords. He never shared it with me, so it was such a dear reminder that he really was truly happy in the life we made together.

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A witch is considered as a evil person,but a wizard is considered as a wise and good person.

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Dividing up eras of tumblr

It just occurred to me that I kind of arbitrarily started referring to “first age” “second age” and “third age” tumblr one day because I realized during a discord conversation that it really can be divided up very effectively between a couple major events that changed the fabric of the site’s culture almost overnight, but nobody but me ever refers to them that way, so by way of explanation:

First Age: everything before Dashcon. Art communities were still largely thriving on the internet and social media still mostly existed out from under corporate monopolies, and people were just wildly guessing about how to use it. We were in the last hurrah of the internet wild west and lolcats were still a thing. Tumblr was just a fun and quirky place, we were blissfully writing unironic posts about tumblr university and fandom vs hipster and the “I like your shoelaces” thing, Hank Green wrote a goddamn song about tumblr, we were all like Adam and Eve dwelling in Eden unaware of their sin. Potterheads grab your wands.

Second Age: post-Dashcon, but pre-Purge. We have all eaten the fruit of knowledge and there is no going back. There are no more secret code or tumblr university posts because everyone knows firsthand how badly that would go. Fandom culture is forever changed. We are now aware that we live in a hellish cringetopia but have absolutely no plans to leave, because by now a combination of monopolies and a sneaky rise in purity culture has the internet by the throat (but not in a kinky way, that would scare off advertisers) so there aren’t a lot of better options, and at least our relatives can’t find us here. A lot of artists now have their primary presence on tumblr. The lax policies regarding nsfw and controversial content mean it’s a good space for queer creators and sex workers despite the many shortcomings we’re now aware of. The porn bot plague really kicks into full gear to the point that every time our follower counts go up we’re ready with the block/spam button like the uncles from Secondhand Lions picking off traveling salesmen. The drama starts to get really fucking weird, with classics such as the human pet guy and the bone-stealing witch.

Third Age: post-Purge. After changing corporate hands a few times, the drive to make the internet safe for our Good Christian Advertisers and hypothetical children has finally reached us, and brings with it TERFs, purity culture, and the Porn Ban, which was allegedly a solution to the porn bots except that it clearly wasn’t at all. The large community of sex workers and artists that was keeping tumblr afloat as anything resembling a viable social media site have made a mass exodus and a lot of the rest of the userbase followed them, mostly to twitter or a few doomed attempts at tumblr copycats. Tumblr is now a mad max clown car full of people too stubborn to pack up and leave for a functional website. It’s a post-apocalyptic wasteland whose only remaining merit is that even without the ability to post porn we’ve managed to make ourselves such a complete anathema to advertisers that we’re mostly just left alone. We’re all just tired. Some people still run art blogs but nobody outside of tumblr ever sees them.  Literally all we have going for us is that we’re not twitter and we have +5 resistance to capitalism. And Xkit.

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“people in the past had such high hopes for us, they thought we were gonna vacation on the moon” fuck that!! they thought automation was gonna automate so much work that we’d all work 20 hour weeks like our ancestors used to! they knew we’d all be 5x more productive, which they naturally thought meant we’d be working less not more!  they thought the time & profits created by mechanical production would be distributed among the workers and we’d all share in the profits!!! they predicted our jobs would be replace by machines and they were right, they just assumed humanity as a whole would benefit instead of just a select few!!! and it shoulda!!!! 

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This can’t be real 😣

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