On blogging.

The whole concept of baring your soul via virtual reality goes against my grain. Which grain is my favorite? Amaranth or Quinoa for their awesome nutritional properties... No, not that kind of grain. I know, it is just me involved in this conversation. So, to the point I go...

I never _ever_ imagined myself writing on-line, or navigating, or sneaking around stealthily, skulking, snatching moments from other peoples lives, but my god! what have I been denying myself all these years? I am so tragically un-hip that I can do very little here anyhow, except write and write and write, but here I am, doing all the things I never thought I would.

The truly fascinating part of this, as I am a virtual *virgin* of virtuality (but certainly not virtuosity), is the bizarre dichotomy of public/private space. This of course is not a new concept, yes, as I said, I am eternally behind the times, but it is new to me... (so bored veterans be gone) Here's to losing my virginity! round two (or three if you count the other kind;)

But this is supposed to be about blogging. Yes, little distractible me... So why is it working so magnificently for me? Well, while there is the implied possibility of an audience (and, it seems, I _actually_ do have one - say J, J,M, M, M and K... among others, even if only my non-virtual friends catching up), there is the underlying inherent individuality of the undertaking. I realize that people do end up reading this (motivating factor? clarity factor?) but as I am writing, I mostly forget the world and everyone but myself, being more honest than I might be otherwise (thanks for the analysis J!) in real life situations with any one given individual. Plus, I am reminded, or notified (kindly) that I am too damn prolific, blogs don't usually get updated this often or with this much narrative (pooh - I always do shit wrong - it is just my way)

All this is true. But I am still terribly dissatisfied. What else is new? I think that constitutionally (no, not the document that is being shredded as we speak) I am more suited for quiet introspection in a natural setting than this über-artificial one. I am reminded of my long walks in the woods (of which I can no longer partake, having less than suitable transportation and a companion whose pace can only be urged on, like when we visited Muir Woods, by searching for duende holes...) in the pine forests. My dreams still bring me there, the soft crunch underfoot, the pungent pine-needles carpeting the ground, the clearings where my life would be perfect - perhaps this has more to do with literary infiltration from a young age - the damp leaves clinging to one another, as they have fallen, mingled in their ochres and reds. I recall the longing that Thoreau inspired in me, and I also remember a really amusing anecdote which transpired in the summer of '96 at none other than Walden Pond (akin to the place where I should be writing, but am not)...


A year before, I had met one (of the many) loves of my life. He was coming off a bad acid trip (and I was the one responsible for its upswing), and I was with my brother and his new lover (the one who I would later visit and travel up the PCH with) and we were new to New England, having returned respectively from Miramar and Bordeaux. Knowing nobody, we decided to visit Cambridge, as it held many a fond memory of earlier explorations, on visits to our younger cousins' on their Bat Mitzvahs. There was a motley crew of spare-changers, drifters and soul-searchers, up against the wall, resting in the alcove entrance to a closed bank, right in front of the sunken circle by the newsstands and the T-entrance. They had a guitar, which was enough for me, we sat down and sung... and made a bit of spare change too. Mikey, with his shaved head, blond and beautiful, with his floppy jeans and looking just like an ex - Gabriel, but for the fact that he immediately set off my gay-dar. He had the richest, most melodious voice and we fell instantaneously in love. It was mutual, and platonic, nothing like the joy of a relationship where sex cannot possibly cloud the issues.

So, Mikey introduced me several months later to Ara, a clever girl, left very young to her own devices, living on cloves and working as a nanny, painting murals on her walls. She and I were quick to befriend, and the excitement of venturing out weekend after weekend from drab, safe, suburbia to spend the weekends alone, unsupervised in their apartment in Somerville was enough to keep me from going nuts in my seventeenth year. What did we _not_ do in that apartment, before the gentrification of Somerville, before the pseudo-ritzy hipster bars and cafés, Somerville was still affordable for the poor, if they pooled their resources.

Now we won't recall here the hilarious episodes of the triple New Year's celebration, nor will we recount the time Ara and I spent the day on the bench in Davis square, ending in a wild orgy on the living room floor, although it might be germane to introduce one of its participants, Lisa, (the other being an inconsequential male figure whose name I can't remember who I do recall had a gorgeous white dog with blue eyes - that being the only reason we brought him home with us). Now Lisa, it would turn out was the first girl I would ever kiss, but by the time we went to Walden, there was no tension whatsoever between us, she was more than slightly agoraphobic, so this trip out was quite a feat for her...

Three girls in the aging, awful, American, Dodge Caravan - mine for the using for a little over a year, before it conked out at exit 4 on 93 in NH, after returning from a James Brown concert in Lowell. It was stiff, and boxy, but it got us from point A to point B. And that night, a steamy summer one, point B was Walden Pond. We arrived, and parked stealthily up the street. Of course the park was closed after dark, but that was, in fact, the tantalizing transgression. We walked down the hill, sliding on the eternally present pine-needles, indiscernible in the darkness. But upon arriving at the sand, having walked by Thoreau's tiny cottage, our faces were illuminated by a monstrous, low-hanging, glowing orange ball of a harvest moon. Good thing, we had no flash-lights. We trekked to the far side of the pond, and judging it safe, we removed our clothing, what little of it there was, light Indian fabrics, no doubt, and raced into the tepid water. Nipples surely retracted in delight. And there we were, three wood-nymphs splashing in the water, we could have been plagiarized from a Roman Frieze. In that moment we were all free, not bound by any desires but the ones we were living out. Basking in the darkness of the forest and the luminescence of the smiling moon, in our girl-hood, all the hurt and aggressions momentarily erased from our collective memory, our bodies cleansed, our souls purified, if only for a fleeting, evanescent moment.

That is why I will never fully give myself over to this sort of virtual existence. I just need more.