march madness
high-variance living
Things are wildly good, things are unusually difficult, I’m up, I’m down, I’m hormonal, I’m fried, I’m slumped, I’m glorious, I’m reckless, I’m caffeinated, I’m subsisting on stimulants and sisterhood and sugar. I’m still in San Francisco, mostly, and mostly in love, still, but also, for brief stints, back in San Diego (my birthplace and college town, where I feel stupid and endless), in Napa for the weekend (the place I rode out the majority of the pandemic, unrealized and jumpy), and, for the first time ever, in every major city in the Pacific Northwest (for sleep-deprived romping and feasting before committing to being really serious about and good at my new job).
Life started playing at 1.5x speed a couple of years ago, back in the Kagoshima days, when every day felt like summer vacation and I learned to cope with separation and FOMO by spending all waking moments trying to maximize splendor. Actually, upon reflection, what changed was less speed and more volume (both in terms of space and sound), where each unit of time contains so damn much — is so chokingly full and attention-demanding — that it crowds out all peripheral noise. I’m living so much life it’s awesome. I’m living so much life it overwhelms me.
This blog keeps getting vaguer and vaguer, in part for privacy, in part because I lack the energy to write about all the things worth writing about. But this is not for lack of trying, just lack of talent and sustained effort.
In an attempt to be specific, for once, here is this moment: I am in the Pat Graham Reading Room on the 8th floor of the Vancouver Public Library, which is filled with rows of white desks, grey desk lamps, bright blue plastic chairs, and hoodie-clad students drinking lattes and squinting at MacBooks. To my right, floor-to-ceiling windows are letting in cold-cast daylight, the kind that comes with rain, which is currently falling in fat, infrequent drops. I am full from orzo paella and liege waffles dipped in pistachio rosewater white chocolate, which I enjoyed for Sunday brunch with four of my closest friends from university (the fifth having departed before dawn to catch her flight), the final meal of our annual girls trip.12 I am slightly too warm in my quilted orange coat, tingly-brained from too many late nights padded with too many cups of tea. My nerves feel frayed. I desire a hug, but only from specific persons. In the back of my mind, a slideshow of minor worries: overdue texts, upcoming housemate search, fraught social dynamics, progress to be made that I don’t yet know how to make. Front of mind, as I type: the fleeting nature of all good things, gratitude that any are happening at all, the warmth of reminders I belong. I am sweet with melancholy, the way I often am in private moments after prolonged activity. I am touched by this wistful perfect I happen upon over and over.
Last year at a Christmas party, someone asked me this question: If 1 is absolute misery, like the verge of ending it all, and 10 is peak euphoria — deep-seated bliss, what range of emotions do you typically occupy? I answered that 90% of my life takes place in the 5-8 range: pretty good, pretty stable, occasionally strained, frequently pleasant, not much to write home about — the response of a baseline happy person.
But over the past season or so, my range has widened, dipping into the 3s and beginning to grasp what 10 might feel like. I’m learning what it means to lead a high-variance life — to feel more than ever, to grieve deeply and acutely, to be moved by the sudden and frightening stakes that accompany caring.
3 is the night I cried so hard and so long I missed the party altogether, even though I really wanted to go, through my tears insisting that you go without me, please, I can’t be the reason you miss out forever. 3 is keening on the thin, speckled grey office carpet: fearful, pathetic, unable to rise to the challenge of my own life. 3 is understanding why a reasonable person might not forgive me; 3 is knowing I’ll be paying back these debts for the rest of my life.
9 is our servers adoring us even before we tip well. 9 is belting Mr. Brightside in the club, over-ordering because we can, yapping in a perceptively American manner. 9 is being a mirror for how far each other have come. 9 is that weekday afternoon we sang YouTube karaoke overlooking the tiled canal, in the safety of familiar company and the thrill of an unfamiliar city, after tea and cake, after praying for something in your shape, the first time I haven’t quieted myself in company, the first time I understood a person is a world, the first time I trusted that you really do want all of me.
10 is still too sacred to say out loud.
Each year, the destination is different, but the ground rules are the same: be present, be caring, be you, no +1s. One of my great prides in this life is our mutual commitment to showing up for it.
I am reading Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace, hence my sudden interest in using footnotes.