In the Hippie School class last week, for a few days we talked about Personal Performance in Everyday Life, or something like that, which mostly means considering your dress and facial expressions and small interactions with people all the time, public and communal and private, and how these things are all part of how you express your intentions. Like, if you have a self-stated intention of encouraging people to make art, or wanting everyone to be joyful, or wanting to fix poverty, how are the elements you put together and call your Self working toward that? I haven't thought about this before: a lot of the interactions I have, I tell myself I'm doing the best I can, where mostly I try to be kind and friendly but feel shy and don't know what to say beyond surface greetings. That was my main critique of the discussion and the method: that it doesn't allow for shyness. And that is a thing that interested me. It doesn't allow for an explanation of shyness in our behavior -- and so what? If the way you're making yourself isn't leading to the outcome you have said you want, why not try something else? Maybe it'll sound obvious, but Just Try Not Being Shy is not a thing that occurs to me usually. It seems unfair to say to anyone, given the way we usually explain our personalities, but... well? But. I continue.

And then we had ten minutes to write some notes about ourselves: what we wear, how we answer the phone, how we think we talk. And to go backward, to look at the intentions a person might assume we are acting on, based on those views of us. And what I came up with -- now this is not entirely new to me but I don't like to think it explicitly because it makes me sad -- is that most of my actions are tailored to stay out of people's way, and to not force them to change their own intentions. I tend to agree with people in conversations, or to find some way for the talk to come around to mutual pleasantness. If I pass somebody on the sidewalk, I try to catch their eye to say hello, but if they don't look back I don't just yell hello at them; they might be busy and what, I'm gonna intrude on their life like a jerk?

And I got to thinking, maybe that mindset I have sucks. Maybe-definitely. Some people, notably some people I like and want to be friends with, literally like to be argued with. They look for it. They say what is the point of existing in society if you're not going to engage with people in ways that might feel uncomfortable? They say how do you ever make something new if you don't break something that exists?

All of which is not to advocate spending time with people you hate and who hate you, or scraping your knees just to see them heal, but... it's something there, I think. I go around hoping things will be blandly pleasant, that we'll all feel great about the way things are going, that I won't ever have to cry, and then I still do because I don't talk to anyone and I know that's not what life is for. And I should remember that growing and making and remaking is difficult and ugly and also necessary.

People I Wonder about That I Can't Find on Facebook

1. Jane from College: Did she marry that awful boy? Or get hand-fasted or whatever the pagans do? Did she get away from her toxic parents? Is she alive?
2. Sabine from livejournal! From Germany, I mean, but I knew her from livejournal. She was so pretty and had a way of getting into relationships with glamorous older women who were either cabaret stars or her professors. I wonder what Sabine is up to! Recently I friended a bunch of dark-haired German women named Sabine who came up in a search, but none of them was her.


People I Am Friends with on Facebook Who I Know for a Fact Are Now Dead
1. Leo, who I once made out with in a tent at Camp Trans. I figured out he had died from his facebook page, where childhood friends and cousins and whatever came to write sad things and they all used girl pronouns. Actually I had only recently heard that he was a boy, so who am I to judge.
2. Morney from London, who I never met really but we were friends on livejournal for a long time and together we wrote some hilarious fake blogs in the guises of famous poets. I guess all that is mine now. I was thinking about going to London to see the queer nightlife and try to hang with this performance artist I met at the femme conference, and I thought maybe I could also try to find where Morney is buried.

Would that be weird?

You know what is kind of funny. I am doing this Hippie School class for a couple of weeks -- we sit around and talk about revolution and language, etc. -- and after the morning session there is a communal lunch that we all signed up to make at some point during the session. The other day I got all excited about what I was going to make, and then wouldn't you know it, Susan up and left the very second class was over, no lunch no nothing. Which is not especially remarkable -- people have things to do, I know -- except I rather have a crush on Susan and maybe my best way of showing people that I care about them is to make food for them. So, it was still a good lunch -- spanakopita! buttermilk cakes! everyone said they liked it -- but I was a little bummed, because I had been thinking all about how the lunch would go, like you do when you have a crush on one person in order to focus your confusing and multiple attentions in a new social situation.

So just now I was sitting around at M's house talking with a few people, and M. asked how the class session was going and I said it was pretty good but you know who never eats with us? And she and another person were both like, "Susan!" Apparently it is a thing, like mostly she doesn't eat around people. Which I can understand! I like eating with people, but if I am the only one with food (like I am late to lunch and everyone has finished, not like I am an asshole and brought myself a sandwich and nobody else gets one) I mostly cannot eat. Maybe it is like that, maybe not. I actually wanted to ask Susan about this but then I had some thoughts about how people sometimes have/have had disordered eating and it's not always okay to question their habits around food. So I didn't!

But then in light of what M. had said I remembered how one time I was at Susan's house and she shared an omelette with me. Which made me feel slightly special! Small wonders. Maybe she caught on to the fact that I don't usually look at people when I am talking to them. I certainly don't like to be looked at while eating. Huh.

That's all I guess.

FRIGHTENING TRUE TALES OF THE MIDWEST