Witness Me

One of the clearest things to re-learn this summer - that I knew, but needed reminding of - is how much it matters to be seen, to have people bear witness to your life. I started jotting down some thoughts about this after my early days in the UK visiting friends old and new, and in the past few weeks I've found my mind wandering the same territory, so I returned to those notes and tried to flesh 'em out a lil bit. After the jump, scribbles!

Pictured: human beings in their natural habitat, honed by years of adaptation and natural selection to drink rosé on the quay of a Bristolean harbor

There's something powerful about people you've known forever - or people you've known more recently who cut straight to the heart of who you are - that's exhilarating to me, mostly because those people see you with such clarity that they reflect you back to yourself in ways both familiar and totally full of discovery. At some point years ago I remember reading an author describe marriage in exactly those terms: that marriage, or life partnership of any serious commitment, is choosing someone to bear witness to your life. It makes sense why this can be... intense, I suppose, and as with all such ways of being in the world, there are healthy and unhealthy iterations of it. And at some level, it ain't for everyone. But after a couple of solid months without friends close at hand, I was reminded on my return to the UK of how energizing it is for me to be with people who engage deeply, who want to dig in on the complicated and hard stuff, and who see you straight down to your bones.

People think horses are intuitive and beautiful? Well guess what, chumps, I think, FRIENDS are intuitive and beautiful! Take that, horses, you smelly idiots.

Spending time with Sarah (Glasgow), Emily (London/Glasgow) and Kate (Bristol) was, as ever, good for my heart. I've known them for varying lengths of time, but what I love about each of these stellar human beings is that they share my inclination to kick around experiences/thoughts/feelings, fully engaging in the reality of each other as we figure out what's what on this dopey li'l planet we all blunder around. Part of the joy in this is that people who like to witness/engage/delve are also real good at calling you out and seeing through your nonsense, though the best humans among them manage to do so from a place of love and construction. And I guess that's why my favorite memories of the UK, as much as I can rattle off things to do in London or where to spend your time in Scotland, are almost all sitting at a table with a loved human being, in those gloriously unspooling conversations where you spread your lives out in front of you, cock your heads, and mutter "well gee, lookit that." Not just being seen, heard, and understood, but getting to share that experience and process, to look back into someone else as you commune, is I think one of the great privileges of being alive. It's a vital connection for me.

In short: it's neat!

Look, I know this is a lot of photos of horses for a post that's basically about how it's nice when people are humane and empathetic and engaged, but it's established canon on this blog that I forget to take photos of my friends whenever we're just sitting around having heartfelt conversations (seems like a creep move frankly) so horses it is. 

Being witnessed can be fraught. Laying out your vulnerabilities is an act of trust (kind of my favorite theme in this past year?) and to some extent I think you have to accept that intentionally or not, it's going to misfire from time to time. You'll get called out on some self-serving line of thought, or a half-considered remark, and get that vertiginous gut-drop of failure, Wile E. Coyote realizing he ran out of cliff about ten feet back.

Part of my journey these past coupla years has been about staying open in those moments, still listening, still open, still vulnerable, rather than shrinking from the exchange. I remember feeling stunned at some point in early 2016 to realize how closed-off and emotionally defensive I had become. In revisiting all this stuff in late 2017 I realized that some of that was about falling out of the habit of openness. I'm wickedly grateful (as Bostonians don't say, but I do, because I'm mostly just an annoying chump) for the many people in my life who have, wittingly-or-un, helped me re-acclimate and retrain the muscle of vulnerability.

Those months of solo travel this summer really clarified a lot for me. How much I need my tribe (in whatever geographic iteration it may be) to be happy; how keen my nesting instincts are; how structure helps me get infinitely more accomplished than the wide expanse of an unscheduled day. But I think this act of witnessing-while-being-witnessed was the big one. It's also the one that I've been finding in abundant supply back in Chicago, again with both long-ago pals and newly-discovered humans, to my immense gratitude.

This isn't Chicago (remember? I'm bad at remembering photographs, what a chump) but it's my favorite photo from Bristol, a selfie Kate took while Gillian was facing the wrong way and a woman was rushing in front of Stuart and me. It feels like the truest expression of our friendship as a group.

The city is, in many ways, shifting from what it was when I left; five years will do that, obviously. Rents are rising more than people can afford; chains are taking over once-independent spaces; arts organizations and theatres have vanished or appeared; the cultural conversation is on all kinds of new pages across the city. And it's impossible to know where all this is heading, or what good will be interred with the bad (and vice versa). But today, for me, the great joy of rediscovering the city as my home has been rediscovering the people who share this sense of openness and discovery. It's been the joy of finding people for whom an afternoon spent talking through a million confounding and ecstatic aspects of life is an afternoon perfectly spent.

tl;dr: PEOPLES IS KIND SOMETIMES

Tune in next week (or whenever!) for the very exciting essay "Berlin has some good theatre and museums" and the thrilling expose "the United Kingdom has points of interest for travelers." This blog is mega-vital, how lucky we all are to read it for some reason.

CO-TRAVELERS ON THIS METAPHORICAL "RAIL ROAD TRACK" THAT CARRIES US ALL INEXORABLY TO THE GRAVE PAST ADVERTISEMENTS FOR VINYL SIGNS (A METAPHOR FOR FRIENDSHIP?) AND I GUESS TODDLERS ("BUSINESS ACCOMPLISHMENTS"?) It's naps o'clock here folks.

Site Biz: A quick programming note

Hey cats n kittens!

Just a quick note, to those of you who track such things: it's obviously been slow going around here, as Chicago's been pretty whirlwind. And great! But also busy as heck. So it'll be slower going getting the last few updates from this summer up, though I do anticipate the blog staying live going forward as I get the great pleasure of crafting a new life in this city that's already making me feel real loved and at my best. But as I get up to speed on a couple short-term projects and the larger settling-in project, this has necessarily taken a back seat. I'm still hoping for roughly weekly updates, but we'll see how it goes!

The other note is that thanks to Vimeo's kinda extortionate practices, video may be hit and miss in the coming month. When I upgraded to their paid tier a year ago, they hadn't noted that if you ever step down to the free tier again, they'll remove all but 10 gigs of your uploads (despite the fact that their free tier lets you upload 25 gigs a year). It's pretty transparent hostage-taking, and really took the shine off a company whose practices I otherwise have liked a lot (no forced ads like Youtube, etc.) but while I figure out whether to migrate back to YouTube, re-up with Vimeo for exactly the wrong reasons, or... something else, it's possible that some videos may go missing. If you're looking for those, you can find them here.

Okay! I think that's it for now! I hope you're having a great fall! I'm going to make things with apples this weekend, it's a real exciting time for e v e r y b o d y!