double feature: is this for me or for you? & desert thoughts

note: two blog posts in one b/c i forgot to post the other [short] one here and you can't backdate posts on spacehey !

desert thoughts [dune & anza borrego]

the last few days have been a bit hectic. i feel at peace, but incredibly sleepy [a word i like to use to differentiate a good tired from something like exhaustion]. my immediate family & a couple family friends & i drove to anza borrego last night so we could spend the weekend exploring the superbloom out here. it's so beautiful, but it started to rain an hour or two ago, so we've sort of wound down for the day

we found one field of flowers that was absolutely covered in white-lined sphinx caterpillars... every plant had at least 10. it was an odd sensation to come across them-- so exciting at first, and slowly more & more overwhelming as we realized just how many there were [and just how little we knew about what they were, their danger, etc. at the time]

it's sort of beautiful to think about, though-- something about coming across the place where they likely all came to mate & lay eggs & begin again as a species. we stumbled across a community, though simply a biological & ecological one

i saw dune yesterday before we left, so i've been thinking about the giant sand worms. they're such odd creatures, but they've always captivated me. i never fully read or cared for dune [though now i want to give it another try], but i know i watched the 1984 version with sting as feyd [a casting choice i can more fully appreciate now], and the image of those giant lurking worms has stuck with me since. there's something so special about the vastness of arrakis and the way these giant creatures lurk beneath the surface, entirely in tune with its movement alon

having watched the new one, my main questions surround the logistics of worm travel [i know how one person gets on, but knowing that, how do they set up camp on one? how on earth do they get off?] and how those worms sustain themselves. i saw a post somewhere theorizing that because the worms don't use their muscles to squirm & move like snakes do, the only feasible way they could manage to burrow through the sand is by eating & shitting sand at incredible speeds in order to propel themselves forward, which makes me laugh. i sort of hope it's that. i guess death of the author & all means i can decide it is

anyway, i've had some really wonderful food today-- a really nice golden milk & cinnamon roll, some pizza, and we got an apple peach crumble for later, too. i'm excited to have some... i'm sure it's gonna be so good

it feels weird to be back in anza borrego. it's been a long time-- since i was 8 or so. i have distinct memories here, and suddenly i'm much older and re-experiencing it all in such a different way. i got sun sickness the last time, but i adored it all, too. i remember buying a little woolly mammoth stuffed animal & a t-shirt last time, and this time i bought myself a nice zip-up hoodie & a trucker hat & lots of other small goodies. the hoodie's keeping me nice and warm so far

is this for me or for you?

i feel like i so often starting these blogs talking about how long it's been since i've written one, and i'm not sure quite what that means for me. i think i dwell too much on responsibility-- the need to write regularly and consistently, for an audience instead of myself. so much so that i stop allowing writing to even be fulfilling

i feel like some part of it just has to be the fact that i call it a blog, and that i have a ‘notebook’ which i allow to be less grand… it makes it harder to really view this space as something that can be casual. i wonder if treating it more like a miscellaneous writing page and less like something that has to be a uniform BIG UPDATE will do something good for me. maybe i’ll try that

anyway, i haven’t written in quite a while, and i’m okay with that this time. this page doesn’t have to be consistent. i’m not trying to perform for you or keep you up to speed on all the biggest things in my life. you don’t have to know anything about me in a linear or narrative sense, really. i’m not some character in a novel. that’s freeing

i’ve been enjoying the way i’m updating my notebook page a lot, actually. i’ve gotten a bit better at it as time goes on, which i can tell because my favorite entries have been the most recent. i'm writing a lot more in general [lately on heat sensations & a dream-like sleepless night and a trip to anza-borrego & seeing dune part two in theater]. it’s exciting to watch myself feel freer & more open to express myself how i’d like– slowly learning that there’s no pressure to be entirely raw & ‘authentic’ & unfiltered or to be poetic & eloquent & polished, and that i can be as incomprehensible & hard to follow as i want, because it’s all for me

on a slightly contradictory note, i’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of rejecting digital voyeurism and how a lot of people– turned off by the algorithmic nature of most social media and the way we’re asked to brand & advertise ourselves– have completely rejected the idea of including others in our online experience. i understand the sentiment & respect it on the surface, and even want to integrate it into my own approach in some ways, but i also think there’s some loss of the true beauty of online experiences when we think that way

i mean, as far as i’ve always thought, the argument around social media has been somewhere along the lines of

“the internet is amazing because it brings people around the world together & allow us to express and explore ourselves in a different space with people we might not otherwise meet, but is that worth the issues it brings with questions of safety, bullying, self-image, addiction to the quick dopamine hits, & mental health issues it raises?”

i think in some way, a lot of people who ‘want to bring back the old web’ or just want to get away from corporate social media in general have lost that idea that internet can mean community in a beautiful way, too. it doesn’t just have to be bad connection

it’s definitely difficult to find that balance of creating for ourselves & trying not to perform who we are [especially in a space that’s kind of intrinsically asking us to encapsulate & perform ourselves] and creating for a sense of community & sharing with some aim of connection & feeling like we’re not just screaming into a void, and i’m not even sure if it’s possible to find that perfect balance, but i think it’s worth it– at least for me

obviously, not everyone wants or needs community online, and sometimes a digital scrapbook is all a website has to be, but it’s sort of sad to me that a lot of people are rejecting the idea of sharing & community because of our sort of collective trauma with online performance. i like trying to find my balance, y’know? no, i don’t want to obsess over followers and whether a page i like enjoys mine, too [which is something i’m still working on], but i also like having a little community of people who comment back & forth on each others’ stuff & want to connect & feel a sort of camaraderie and care. that’s why i love my little ‘neighbors’ page and my muse ariadne club so much, i think

i’m not sure. there’s so much to consider when it comes to how we interact with online spaces. as much as it’s changed over the years, the internet iss also an incredibly new invention in the scope of like… the human race. we’ve got a lot to learn, i guess. i’m not sure how long it’ll take to figure things out, or if we ever will. if the way we’ve ‘figured out’ other societal issues/concepts/ideas so far is any signifier, i doubt we will…

this is a pretty sharp turn in topic, but i was thinking earlier tonight– on my drive back from anza-borrego– about a conversation i had with friends a long time ago

i’d had a lot of issues trying to stay friends with my best friend because we were high schoolers and their mom hated me for ‘turning them queer’ [an issue i’ve had with most of my best friends so far…], and i felt like even though i loved them so deeply & they understood me so thoroughly, we’d grown apart a lot because of it. it was one of those things that couldn’t be helped, you know? trauma like that changes things permanently sometimes, and there’s not much you can really do about it

anyway, i’ve been thinking about this one moment we had while we took the train somewhere after school with our whole group of friends [sort of the only way we can spend time together], and we got on the topic of summer plans, and i sort of casually, half-jokingly lamented that they wouldn’t be 18 until late summer, because if they’d turned 18 earlier, we would’ve been able to do whatever the fuck we wanted together

there was this stale silence right away, and i watched their face sort of sour, and another of our friends [who’d gotten much closer to them since we drifted because of the issues] made an ‘eh–’ sound, and a sinking feeling in my gut that i’d done something bad got even worse. i don’t even know how to describe the sensation, but that other friend sort of explained that no, we wouldn’t be able to do whatever we wanted, because they don’t want to make their familial relationship difficult or lose college money or make things harder, and i remember stammering for a moment– little “no, of course”s and “i just meant that-”s as i tried to explain my way out of it

i remember how utterly ashamed i felt for thinking that my friendship might be worth the difficulty, let alone that it could be a given that we’d try to fight for it. i still can’t quite put a pin in what that moment taught me, but i really feel like it taught me something. it’s been on my mind a lot lately

i’ve never been angry at them for it [even if it was something that would get me upset, they weren’t the one who said it anyway], nor did i really expect it from them, but it’s sort of odd to reflect on. i know i have people in my life that would fight and say ‘fuck you’ in an instant, and i know i have those people, too, and i don’t think that it’s something every relationship needs to have to be valuable, but it’s still sort of a miserable experience to try and figure out who’s who

there’s not really a point to sharing this publicly, and i’m sort of glad that i was able to write something purely for myself– for the catharsis it might bring. the word catharsis feels a lot like chrysalis or cocoon to me, which i love. it has that intense imagery of rebirth & emerging & the transition from the hard encasement of a shell to just the soft, gooey encasement of whatever’s surrounded and protected us within it

this blog was a really long one, but i hope you got anything at all from it. if you want to share random thoughts & ideas, for me or just for yourself, you can always email me at canineical@gmail.com. you can ask me to never read it if you want, or we can talk. anything you’d like. thank you for being interested in what i have to share