Okay! First of all, I posted this on facebook a while back, but waaaatch it:
So pretty!
Bien. Well, I had the world's most exhausting delegation, went home for the world's most disastrous visit, and then came back, had my heart broken a little, and started a new delegation today. Everyone is really cool and I look forward to hanging out with them, so that's exciting!
I have a few thoughts to share in this post, on drunkenness, restaurants, and love.
Let's start with drunkenness. A few nights ago I went to an art opening with Betty. These things are always awkward for me, since I don't know anyone and really don't know if I want to know anyone, so I resolved to have a beer and head home. Then this weird man started talking to us, and then he bought mezcal shots and things escalated rapidly. We were talking about letting life flow, and I had an epiphany that I should try to be an actual art photographer. Then, I came home and tried to use the telephone. Ahhh, mezcal.
Restaurants: so ever since I was little I've kept fastidious notes of all the different chain restaurants I visit, because I'm fascinated by the variations among them. Also, I really like it when people say things like "that place has bad Coke", or my real favorite, which is "that place has great ice." Some places really do have superior ice, and in truth, no detail is lost on the discerning consumer (obvi I am one). These are the details that matter: I don't really care so much about the obvious things like menu offerings if the details have been carefully monitored: availability of Splenda? Gross. Availability of different types of olive oil for my pizza? Awesome. This has led me to a careful study on the two fancy pizza places in Oaxaca, which I continued today. I will have to make more visits before I can present findings, but I just keep eating lame Margherita pizzas.
Also, even though most mornings are still very hot in Mexico, I insist on drinking coffee. This is sort of tragic, because even though Oaxaca is a big coffee-growing state and there is delicious coffee grown here, an actual cup of coffee isn't THAT easy to find, and usually it sucks. This makes the classic breakfast (which I am now told is to be referred to as a "silver bullet") of coffee, water, and orange juice (you know, the "food" element) very hard to find. The worst is when they bring you Nescafe. The worse worst is when they bring you Nescafe and it's 100 degrees outside and you are nowhere near air conditioning.
So. This brings us to our next topic. This morning, pitty came into the house with a bird in her mouth. This was an awkward moment. Were we evolutionarily stepping all over pitty's game if we took the bird away before she killed it? How dead was it? She didn't seem to have a plan of killing it anytime soon, choosing instead just to bat at it. I don't know what this means for our relationship with pitty, but it did get me to thinking about certain things in my life.
I know every few months or so I have some epiphany on the subject of love that I feel the need to express here, but here we go. The world is full of suffering--the type of suffering that could be cured with some medicine or food but above all else the simple type of love that tells you to DO something. I know this is a disgusting oversimplification of the world's problems, but bear with me.
I think my anxiety is a feeling. I think my depression is a feeling. They are clouds that I float in and out of, and when I am in them, they affect my life. When I am out of them, they don't. I don't think love is this type of thing. I think love is more than this type of feeling: I think it's a decision to live a certain way, and do certain things. I think the particular way and things vary from person to person. I think to me, love means wanting to make things with someone: art, pies, jokes, life, all that stuff. As I see it, this is what I have to offer, and it is simple. I've discussed before the magical phenomenon of people not informing you when they are done fighting the good fight with you. I don't really know what that's about, or how it is that people manage to weigh down love with all this bullshit existentialist baggage in a world of such urgency and misery, but this time around I feel sort of like the bird pitty was playing with today. So, as I've decided many times before, this time I will redirect my need to make things to a cause that can accept those things with openness and honesty, and I will distract my twitchy hands and heart for a while.
As for the bird? We freed it, and it flew away.
