Coming Home | A Case For Analog Research

It's been a long time since I kept a blog here, but after several years of posting on Substack I'm exhausted with the Feed-ing. 

I've been carrying around artwork and notes that people give me for decades. I carried them across continents, tucked neatly inside my Vital Statistics. I'd like to share what I haven't lost or thrown or given away. 

 

 

There are stories here, that have crossed some geographical, temporal and existential distance. 

Stories about little girls who show others how to poop in buckets. Driving a manual car for the first time, almost into a wall, and then biking to another village instead to watch some forgettable movie. Nazi youth becoming Christian elders reflecting on the mundanity of their past evils. Best friends becoming architects and being widowed. Failed Friendships and Failed marriages. A sat house I almost died in, and a wild artist whose drug addiction almost killed them. 

Among the things I've lost or given away are a turtle shell that ended up on my doorstep with the note "I came, I saw, I left"; a rose and a poem written and handed to me by the late great Leslie of Austin, Texas. I drank a beer with her and her drinking buddy. She had tennis balls in her bra. I'm sad to say I threw it away that night not yet knowing who she was. And over the next two decades I saw her drinking buddy deteriorate into (not) just another homeless drunk roaming the Austin streets. 

There was a painting that I left behind, hoping I might one day own a giant one of the same, beloved artist Jessica Singerman; many drawings and paintings and photographs "of me" that I've given away over the years. It's one thing to be a muse, it's another to be a professional sitter. One fills your ego, the other fills your house with images of you as a still life or gesture in someone's else's narrative. Either way, you're never more than a gesture in someone else's narrative. 

A drawing from a painter before they began any formal training (my favorite artwork of theirs). It ended up in a thrift store donation. 

A book of French crossword puzzles given to me by my Vietnamese classmate in our language class. We were the only non-muslim students there, and we both shared our appreciation for meditation and the Buddha. The rest of my classmates, all women and mothers, gave me gifts that I will never lose too. 

I also lost a homemade map for gleaning fig trees in Geneva and another homemade map and code for the gate to a luscious hot bath in Oakland, California that only exists for the invisible college and/or anyone lucky enough to find it and gain access. 

 

A working class white girl from middle American gave up her dream of being a museum curator to work for IBM. I met her at a job I worked part-time while I was working two other jobs part-time. She told my neighbors I'd never worked a full time job in my life. But she was grieving her dad and her dog, so I'm gonna cut her some slack. Besides she wasn't much for small talk and when you're mingling with successful business owners and the only obvious commonality between you is socioeconomic class, it helps to have one other person to talk about besides yourself. 

She told me about 5-10 years ago that it doesn't matter what you know, it's how you get your information that matters. She was talking about meme culture and the hierarchy of social medias. She was possibly being backhanded, but I was too slow to catch its sting. And now I see that what she said was a gift too.

It does matter how you get your information. You can get it in front of a screen, in a book, or you can get it through lived experience. All of those ways are going to produce a different lexicon. 

That's it. We're just walking around with different lexicons, different branches of stuff we think we know and remember. 

It reminds me of a song my child learned while attending a scuola non scuola far outside of the city.

Sono un albero che camina...radici i miei piedi...la terra è la mia madre... il vento è il mio padre...frutti le mie parole...uccelli le mie idee... bosco la mia famiglia

Bonus: This last one is a guide for Prague written by a fellow traveler at a hostel I worked and stayed at in Nürnberg.  I've never used it, because I've never been to Prague! But maybe somebody online will find it. If they're lucky these places might still exist. They're from over 20 years ago!