Year of Clarity

Buddy hunny amigo. I promise it’ll get a bit less cryptic later in this post, though not for a while. Multi-year causal chains converging into solid CO2 shipping and 10 second memory game and Chloe Ting workouts and a poem in cascading style and then “Hey, was this a date?” which it was, like hit by an MDMA bus.

In memoriam as of Nov-ish, in poetic snapshot license and without yet the skill or the will to use plain language, omitting lots not fit for public at all. Not really intended to be read by anyone but myself anyway, this is like a map of mnemonic memory shortcuts.

Buddyfly 1.0 and 2.0. Lost? confused? clothes still damp? 142 puzzle, overthought and undercounted. Anxiety squiggles. Squeezing every last bit of emotional intelligence, successfully, it seemed, and worth it, still. Remote talks and remote walks and inspiration for high watercolor. Unnecessary cologne.

5 hour flight to 5 minute drive.

Beach object art, hat Magritte-like over a blinding yellow field, the lone friendly seal. Knots. Black and white sunflowers in trash museum. Who will be the first to? I, turns out.

Relinquishing control: who am I to move this blob of paint, what do you want to say to the future non-fungal Eugene (same thing been saying all day), sulking over past guilt on the comedown.

Mind body art play. Random nocturnal drawing in three to five thicknesses of pen and charcoal. Kinda looks like mom. A newfound enjoyment of groceries, giving rise to Kyle’s avocado, aspic, and a most disgusting sushi construction championship.

Tinge: Unshared appreciation of Moma visitor. I’m not X with Y like Z — shot #1, fatal in retrospect, bandaided by the best written advice in the West. Little tinges here and there. If I appeal to you for emotional connection and you respond intellectually to a problem, rather than directly to me, on an attachment level I will experience that as “no response”.

80 or so of bus above, misleading about degree of merging of souls. Heart scallions and rose garden slides and dog drool and greek statues made of blanket. Catwalks, jet skis, guns, groves, grasses, stumps, birds, skies, farms, hidden green (past) and red (future) ones, nathan for you and my cat from hell. Shinzo Maeda. Cuddle puddle substance. Dostoevsky fights.

Not positive enough, not competent enough, not loyal enough. Second-guessing reflex.

Bye #1. Hey Eugene, let’s water the ugly plant and mend the broken mirror.

Not too far from bottled beer sacred program shall you find.

Goats in a zoo and in a birthday setting. Beard absence experiment. The mysterious Chris (or so) whose all memories in a basket outside on the streets above the rose slide. Supertasters or not: not.

Sisyphean restoration of trust hemorrhaging from one side and safety from the other. Outraged by your X, Y you Z so much, your W pet. Ticking time bomb of contempt.

Urban Ore, bikes, Commis while a kite. Trash TV en español. Campside Stardew Valley next to a breadlike stone and the gold thieves. Violating §465.5 (g)(1) with one two three four five six lobsters.

Constructive feedback with scoff and eyeroll, overflow, bye #2, memory-purging anger and anger-purging horrified reflection, forgive yes, forget no, second-guessing over. Cautious closure and back to friendship from currently safe distance.

End of memoriam.

Now, what else, and clarity about what.

Clarity about, cliché, who I am slash am not and what I need and want and what I don’t need slash don’t want. Lots of practice this year setting boundaries where a few years ago freezing and fawning used to be. Lots of practice of admitting to myself that this or that (personally or professionally) cannot go on anymore, and choosing the option that can and must — orders of magnitude faster than I used to. Pretty proud of myself on those, tbh.

Clarity about exactly what it must have been like to be on the other side in 2019–2020. I’m so, so sorry.

Clarity about, well, this isn’t as earth-shattering, but about what I need to function at my best: turns out, it is very simple: gimme a routine, a notebook, a warm base layer, a pinch of zen, a therapist, some fresh oxygen, some humans, get me out the house, and cut the bullshit.

In terms of skills: Expanded my cooking repertoire to what must be now over five or six different dishes, briefly improved watercolor and briefly piano, gained an extra climbing grade. My cats have leveled up as well: one now legally and vocally entitled to the bathroom sink, one has found her calling as a vigorous player, apt singer and Chagall model.

In terms of other bright memories: smooth arachnic trees in Filoli, the world’s worst audio player on a plane, in Russia wild strawberries green one day and gone the next, a butterfly on uncle Albert, and an ancestral connection through hundreds of family photos from over a century ago now all a click away. Oh and fixing mom’s SSD.

In terms of friendships and family: all same people, but continually loved more — one day maybe I’ll actually open my shy mouth and tell them. But they know, right?

In terms of work: after lots of one-offs and false starts and giving up on 1/N-assing N things, CEO WoCl, for the foreseeable future, with confidence and inspiration and a motivatingly tolerable amount of not knowing the heck I’m doing.

Feeling actually good and pretty dope about the next year — seems like I’ve figured out a whole lot of shit that one needs to figure out sooner or later.

The general direction for 2022 is to keep identifying what I need and keep every day pointing the nurture gun at it. It works almost too well to be true. And what I need is health (physical and mental), love and community, space for reflection and creativity and spiritual growth, and deep focused self-actualization informed by further support and while on top of my shit. And it’s more or less clear what nurturing these looks like. Here’s to that.