Twenty eleven. Here we are in the future. With our future communicators and our try-better-the-second-time marriages. My telephone tells me where bars are and when the bus is coming. It tells me when I should be guilty that I forgot someone’s birthday, and when a girl from Ohio is getting her period. But what it doesn’t do is tell you what you want to hear. That’s the dream, isn’t it? The Star Trek:TNG dream. Unisex rompers and consequence-free adventures to the edge of clean, inhuman technology. But nobody ever accidentally sent Picard a link to some porn and had to pussyfoot around him for a few days at work afraid he was gonna get hit with an HR beef. Counselor Troi never avoided getting on the turbolift because Geordi got drunk and tried to push up on her a little too hard at a party. Humanity, it turns out, is a real dirty messy business with lots of agendas and not a lot of transparency.

Every new social tech increases exposure well before it finally creates etiquette (which is frequently ignored). And with that increased exposure, no matter how honest or dishonest, deep or shallow, it is easy to over estimate the true intimacy of relationships. It’s natural, people are machines of want, and want is about possessive desire — we are _all_ natural stalkers of the subjects, objects, and people that stoke our passion. But sometimes, somewhere between the facebook and twitter and buzz and bloggytextfoursquares, the _person_ starts to lose out to the preconceptions you are bringing with you. And when it’s someone you’re romantically interested in, it is easy to wish that every line was meant for you, to wish that they hang on your every response and think about you constantly. To scheme for attention, to scrutinize for meaning, to overthink and maneuver and extort. It’s an insane, singular psychological investment called “emotional frontloading”. This is the insanity that makes you wonder if a girl you’ve never exchanged twelve words loves you. It’s what makes you resent people you like because they don’t understand you instantly, or more specifically because they don’t embrace you unconditionally simply based on the (objectively completely invisible and meaningless) work you’ve already put into caring about them.

It’s unfair. It’s a unidirectional type of affection which is more closely related to ownership than romance. It’s branding, not in the marketing sense but in the cattle sense. LOVE as a leash, a label, and a lash. Again, something that denies the essential humanity of others, attempts to simplify them so they fit into your preconceived emotional/interpersonal destination. Maneuver, maneuver, maneuver. A childlike idea of conquest, that people, like games, can be won completely with sufficient strength and sneakiness.

My only hard-set goal in 2011 is to – recognize when I am; accept the truth of; and finally _stop_ – emotionally frontloading. Treat people like people. Make fewer assumptions. And continue to build my life of purpose and honesty as best I can.

I did not give 2010 a send off. There’s really no way to summarize the year, it was indescribable. No one word can tie it up, no phrase, no length would do it justice. There was an overwhelming, almost global sense of hopelessness that dug in as the economy in my country continued to implode. A small scale morass of betrayals and upsets, arguments and disagreements. There was also immense peace. Moments of real, incomprehensible joy. Moments of utter suffering, moments of clarity. Moments of shame. But what I want to talk about today is moments of realization.

I thought a lot last year. A lot. But instead of thinking about work or math or history or cars, I thought about myself. I thought about what I’m doing, what I need. What I want. Mortality, career, romance, all of the big ones. But that’s all internal. There’s no sounding board to reality on any of that, you just build it into your own little dorodango, a ball of your own mud that you think is perfect.

And then in just two little blips it was shattered. Turns out my mudball was just another mudball. That thought of internal perfection, the building of a logic ladder inside your own head without the challenging ideas of others? It’s lazy. A selfish ownership of reason that denies the essential humanity of others in your relationships. I spent six months mourning my imperfect mudball, trying to figure out how all my focus could have gone wrong. How could all that hard work I put into _believing_ in my righteousness and then be wrong? Because faith without honesty is worthless, and honesty is something that must be both internal and external. You can think you’re being fully honest with yourself all the way until you are forced to think about something you have no context for.

Six months, mourning my broken mudball. Alone. By choice. Hiding behind the hurt, too lazy to work at healing, too cautious to make progress any other way. I hid, from the responsibility of my humanity, behind the things which have damaged me, instead of trying to truly put them behind me. And all it took was two little blips.

These are the lessons that 2011 started me off with. Interaction with other people is both necessary and terrifying. There is no shame in needing others. There is no shame in being hurt but nobody should love you for failing to heal. Pay attention to what is being said but also pay attention to what is not being said. And then, Bridget Pilloud, who is responsible for a startling number of palm-smacking-forehead moments? She set me up for a doozy: Think about others more, think about their problems less. And realize that nobody cares about your bus crash. You should care less about your bus crash too.

I hate it when another one of those old lines comes up, something you’ve heard a thousand times and not ever listened to. And this is what it all comes down to. A song lyric from a cassette tape I played until it was ruined, almost fifteen years ago. A song which gets stuck in my head from time to time even now. Echoing through my personal history, telling me to pay more fucking attention.

I was having this discussion in a taxi heading down-town.
Rearranging my position on this friend of mine who had a little bit of a breakdown.
I said, “Hey, you know, breakdowns come and breakdowns go.
So what are you going to do about it – that’s what _I’d_ like to know.”
- Paul Simon – Gumboots

Pain doesn’t earn you shit, turns out. It’s what you do with it.

I am not a great chef. I’m not even a mediocre chef: I am a passable home cook in my best days, and a roach-palleted philistine on most of the rest. For all my twittertalk of gourmet home cooked meals, in reality it’s mostly me making a meal wildly out of order (dessert salads!) and in bulk so I can freeze it for lunch. But when I have a nice piece of nature’s handiwork that I’m getting ready to cook; a sirloin, a fillet of fish, a portobello — there is only one commandment.

Do.
Not.
Fuck.
It.
Up.

See, food? It’s amazing. Real food is sweet and complex and wonderful, even raw — especially raw. We have so much variety available now, and it’s easy to want to over-do it with wildly overthought culinary craziness. Wrap it in bacon, stuff it with bacon, truffle oil it and sous-vide in early harvest Malbec with creme anglaise and Krispy Kreme reduction. But when you have a line caught grouper steak on the griddle, what you should really be doing is trying not to ruin it, instead of trying to remember where your black volcanic finishing salt is for the chipotle-mole foie whip. Everything you add TO the fish cannot fix overcooked, ruined fish. So you must concentrate not on the darkest corners of your spice rack but on the basics of cookery. The temperature of the pan, the quality of the ingredients, alternating patience and measured attention until you have delivered on your promise to the beast that it did not die to become a Filet-o-Fish. Each thing you do to the meal beyond that is adding complexity and risk, and once you reach the end of your capabilities as a chef? You are just sabotaging the dish, then the meal, then sabotaging yourself. Because NOTHING is less satisfying than working for six hours to make the perfect chive and anchovy sauce to put on some cheese souffle best described as “malted chalk-glue”.

Consciously or unconsciously, these effort- and time-intensive failures predispose us against cooking at all, because if I just want a plain BURGER I can get it at BURGER TOWN, right? And this realization, the simple act of noticing that I fucked up a project because I spent too much time making the pointless gestures and belaboring decisions that make no difference? It has freed me from many failures. Simplicity is Clarity. It’s at the top of this page and at the heart of every blog I have had for twelve years. And every year, I discover in some fresh new way that I have been Doing It Stupid and I should be Doing It Simpler. That applies to everything in my life. From friendships to projects, from food to money, my entire goal is to not fuck things up by making them complicated. Automate it, maintain it, nip it in the bud, do not put off until tomorrow what should be done today, take whatever steps you must to do it right, but do NOT make it complicated.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t cute. The night had progressed weirdly and I needed to be alone with my thoughts. What kind of a girl would do this anyways, a weird guy walking toward the bottom of a bridge at midnight, a foil wrapped sandwich in his pocket. Ask some directions, sure that’s fine. Ask me to get in your car and help you find a place? OK, sure. But the neverending yammer of your jaw and something desperate in the constant laughter ha-ha won’t this be hilarious ha-ha what did i do i picked up a guy rattle that is currently jamming out of her face full force. She wants me to look at her hands, they’re shaking, she says.

Out my window there are the lines and I see one, hair black and straight eyes dazzling and she looks at me and when those eyes bat I _want_ her. I want to tear those buttons off with my teeth and tell her all my problems. I want her to make them better and make me come and thenimbackinthejeep.

She doesn’t smoke, she says, fingering the pack, but four just now in the stress of trying to find her way down. I tried to explain, the streets are in order, like the alphabet. And even if you’re a subnormal you can remember up to G, right? Four drinks, she says, but she’s not drunk, not even a bit, the stress of the drive has sobered her right up as we slide past the lines. They’re turning off their cell phones. Guys do that. When they’re trying to get laid. Right right. Yes it’s spelled like couch but it’s said like cooch. Ha-ha. But then I’m sitting in her checkered seat cover and she’s blasting me just bombarding me with it. It’s in the edge of her eyes that perfect glassy pupil but then something behind it like… broken clockwork. It’s on a loop now and she says she’s so young ha-ha but she just looks young she’s not that young ha-ha and like young but not 18 young. Her hands are shaking and she touches the pack again and I lick my lips thinking about the taste of hay and the red hot receptors currently throbbing in my head just flare. Take one and you won’t even notice it till it’s gone you’ll cough once or twice but no biggie and she says she doesn’t smoke, you’ll probably get the pack. We’ve driven through two parking lots now trying to find a place. There’s nothing on the street, not this late on a Friday. The problem with these lots is, most of them, you see, they just don’t take cards and she doesn’t have any cash and she’s going to pay my cover though at the club oh look at the line we’ll have to wait. I scratch my beard and think about asking her if I look like the sort of person who waits in line at clubs. But then I realize maybe she doesn’t think there’s any other type of person. In her world there are only people who go out on Friday night and wait in line for clubs, and Parents. An uncomfortable silence has dawned since I answered a fourth question in a row with a noncommittal grunt. There are no more line-girls to ogle. It’s not that she isn’t cute, I look at her. She’s fine. Plain. Drunk. I think she is talking about a different club that she was at before. She has totally ruined my buzz. When we park I bail, and she asks after me and I just pretend like I’ve lost much of the english language. We could have a week together, and it would not be enough for me to thoroughly explain why I’m leaving to go walk until I have blisters. It’s complicated, and it starts with age, honey, but that’s really more like chapter three. If you’ll open up the workbook to page one and get out your Mortimer Ichabod Marker. You don’t get that huh. Yeah, see. Again. Chapter three. But you’ve ruined a twenty dollar drunk, and that’s not a good start. She’s got her tiny purse and her daddy’s debit card and the club is this way hey wait I hook a thumb over my shoulder and cannot think of a single thing to say. The walking again, then. A third bridge crossing of the night. Steel, instead of Broadway. I’ve still not walked that one. My phone dies just after letting me know there are no more trains back to the car. But it’s warm enough, and there’s no rain, and I’m thankful.

The socks had to come out two miles from the car, revealing a hum dinger of a blister, which squidges against the cement satisfactorily while I barefoot carefully past the movie theater. Better without the socks, once the sidewalk-to-glass ratio dips unnervingly low, and we’re over the hill now. It’s all downhill from here. Gimme that lemon lime gator, and a black and mild. Single? Of course a fucking single. It’s two AM and you’re a 7-11 clerk at the ass end of Portland do a lot of motherfuckers come in here to stock up? It’s angry now, I’ve processed all the fun out of that booze and now it’s just the pain, throbbing in time with my steps, like when I step on that blister it squeezes red hot pus up into the back of my skull.

I’m back to the car now and it’s something o’clock I forgot to change it with daylight saving. I forget if it’s an hour ahead or behind. It’s almost quarter till something. No need for much precision. Gingerly now on the clutch, use just the big toe, that’s better. Almost home now. To sleep, and dream of an apocalypse, where all my little bullshit problems today seem hilarious and small, and my dream feet throb, as I walk from place to place, searching for signs of civilization.