theundercoverblogger

[theundercoverblogger]

On spring and the pieces that remain

Hey Karaoke,

I'm writing this three days after Sandy's passing. I'm at Cherrywood Coffehouse and it's such a lovely day. I just told a friend about how, unlike how my step-brother's death filled me with an overwhelming sense of injustice, thinking of Sandy feels like defiance. Smiling a little bigger for her, enjoying my favorite peanut butter smoothie like I wish she could do, reaching out to friends and asking about their day. Clichéd as it sounds, I feel like a part of Sandy lives within me and that I get to show her the Spring sunshine and all the people who love her.

Yesterday you and I were chatting in your girlfriend's backyard, the sun a little too warm like our anger at Sandy for not knowing how to reach out. You and I talked about my ex and how I was trying to get that last 10% to move on. That turned out to be a nugget of truth where he finally admitted to not having the emotional capacity for me--nor the willingness. It's something I knew intuitively early on, but kept going despite it. You could say I should've bailed earlier, nipped it in the bud the moment I saw a red flag, but I'm glad I didn't because I didn't know for sure. I'm proud of treading through discomfort and pain, because he said he was ready for a new relationship and I chose to believe him.

I asked you yesterday if my lesson from this should be that I can't trust people to know their feelings. Sandy didn't, she pushed people away and we mistook a cry for help for a fiery independence, characteristic of those who are young and unwilling to settle. You said "We can trust people to know their truth" and I know you are right, I just don't understand what that means yet. All I know is I'm going to "trust, but verify" from now on. I will be asking people more difficult questions, I will be risking making my friends uncomfortable when their voice chills a little too like Fall on a Spring day.

Living is defiance and suicide feels like giving in to the dread that your days will never be as bright as they once were. I support people choosing when they're ready to let go, even if that's life, so I will ultimately abide by Sandy's decision, little choice as I have. But I will make that decision while carrying the tiny fragments I have left of her within me, making her stare at all the things that go on without her, not in punishment but with wonder: You're still here. This is the world that refuses to let you go.

Looking forward to our mini-golf/frisbee/laser-tag man-date, Alan

[theundercoverblogger]

Everyone should have one (a blog)

Hey Micah,

Do you also love the time between 3 and 6am? The early morning when everything feels surreal and which you can only access when you wake up a little too early to get started and a little too late to fully go back to bed. I find this is the best time for me to dream of what life could be. In a time where I often feel I have everything I want, it feels greedy to want more. It was also the time when I would wake up to get a couple extra gaming hours as a kid, especially Digimon World. A couple extra training shifts before my digimon inevitably evolved into a Numemon for reasons too cryptic for an 11-year-old (people are finding out new things about that game to this day).

My new routine is trying to sneak in reading an entry or two of my ex-boyfriend's Tumblr when I wake up at 5:40am. I feel as excited as I was when playing Digimon. The feeling of doing something forbidden that my awake self couldn't, something others wouldn't approve of; the mystery of what will come up "next".

Reading this blog, I have realized 3 main things: 1. I will be stealing and improving on this idea. 2. We should all have a blog. 3. We should be documenting our evolution.

On stealing and improving Stealing gets a bad rap. There's this whole debate of AI stealing the style of unconsenting artists and then using it to create new products that will be sold on their own. My take is tepid and very mid: Artists should not have to fight AI for their livelihood (they should not have to make art to afford to live) and we should improve AI to better track the input, so credit due can be given and so you can explore more of your favorite artist when you come across AI-generated content.

So, since I'm now crediting my latest ex-boyfriend with the Discovery of Tumblr, this is no longer stealing and since I'm addressing a friend in my writing, it's no longer derivative but rather improved. I think his writings died down because he didn't have anyone in mind when he was writing. Even the last one was addressed to a friend long gone, the kind you keep in a snow globe of a city you visited as a kid. However, he did share his blog with me.

I don't know if it was accidental, incidental or an attempt to show me the inner world he couldn't when we were together. I'm betting on the middle one, since he had me as one of his close friends and he wrote the post the day I broke up with him.

Sharing his blog made it come back to life: Someone is reading it. I've read half of it and I'm of a mind to read the whole thing. I've read through most of his Texaversaries, his moving to Austin and have spotted the one line where he acknowledges his relationship of 8 years.

So to make my writing come to life, I'm addressing you, Micah. I always try to address Dodo or Alex, the archetypes of a best friend in my mind. But honestly, I have so many people that deserve the title of "best friend" that I'll just choose one that feels particularly accurate: My writer friend of chance, whom I met on a drunken trip to Prague and who introduced me to Chance the rapper as we were making our way to Cuernavaca on that dark bus ride, 8 years, or so, ago.

We should all have a blog We should all let our inner teenager run wild with theories and musings nobody will ever take seriously, the discoveries that are full of common sense when contrasted to each other's. They are our discoveries and are as personal as a song written using the same chords as thousands before us. It is our blog.

But fuck it, let's rebrand. We should all have an experience--fuck, Airbnb already coined that. We should all have a story? Instagram. We should all have memories? Facebook. What about an Introspection? Or to make it sound fancy, some Selbstbetractung? Ah, nothing like bringing in some European flair to make things sound formal.

[Insert new name for blogs]. Much better. I can't believe we went with the term "blog" for so long. It's perfect early internet slang, but drat, imagine if Shakespeare had a blog!

Meanwhile, the connotation that a blog is a sandbox with toys buried here and there is appealing. A blog should not be a memoir. It should be dirty and rambling and uncomfortably personal. We need more privacy in our lives, enough to let us share the ugly and unkempt.

We should be documenting our evolution Back when I played Digimon World, I would always be annoyed that there was no way to keep track of what you started with. You would get your partner digimon and, unlike other monster collecting games, they would grow, die and be reborn as a completely new thing. But you only ever got one. The same companion to restart the cycle, a spiral that revolves.

I like to think that people are the same. I keep track of a "family tree" of sorts that shows all the different people I've been throughout my life, their influences, goals and passions. My ex, let's call him Lazarus, has clearly changed radically between his teens, 20s and so on. And so have you, Micah. You're still not in your 30s but I can see all your versions as clear as a family portrait: The young one eager to explore the world, learn German and learn about love; the rebellious brother who wanted to start his own company and question his identity, sexuality, even his relationship with his parents; the mature older brother with the ambition to climb the job ladder, with the impressive girlfriend, vision and lifestyle; and now, again, the writer who meditates with friends on a mountain while he dreams of Martian colonies and feuds between dynasties.

I call these versions relays, because they pass the baton of "who you are" at any given moment between them. I will write about it more in depth some day. Maybe I will get to write about the next generation of Micahs.

Looking forward to seeing you and to our South By adventure, Alan