Hey Fortuna / Love Elise

Fortuna,
Here is a report on tonight’s gig

Things I did well:

1. Getting regular laughs
2. Mic-handling
3. Remembering all of the new material
4. Smiling/ positive energy
5. Engaging with audience
6. Wearing a white t-shirt, which enhanced effortless vibe

Things to improve on:

1. Fidgeting and wasting time at the start
2. Some jokes need to be exaggerated - to lift them to the universal and funny, from the particularistic and uncomfortable
3. Tighten up the transitions 
4. Make the filth filthier

This post is really for me, isn’t it? But good to be accountable. 4 and 5 in first list could probably be combined.
Love Elise
  

Elise, 

I had a dream last night that Sven returned from a long absence, and I was still living in our apartment. Except it wasn’t our lovely little cottage in Berkeley; it was some Soviet-style apartment block with barely any furniture. Almost like a massive dormitory. 

It was awkward and sad. Like we both had forgotten that we were broken up, and were embarrassed when we realized it. We moved around each other in the small space with great care and deliberateness. What you do when you know how much each step and word matters - what effect it will have in the future. Kind of a foresight/hindsight combination.

We realized we had been paying rent all along. So we had to make a decision. Renew the lease or something. And out of a desire not to cause any more hurt, we seemed to have decided to continue to live there. He called the landlord, and I tidied up. We assumed our gendered roles.

But somehow we knew we didn’t want things to be the same. I suggested an apartment on the opposite side of the complex, where we might be closer to the shops and touristy district. He wanted one on an upper floor with a patio. We both seemed to be expressing our inner desires - me to break out of our unhappy world and be around other people. He to break out of our unhappy world and be more isolated from people. Either way, we both wanted something different. Something other than what had been. It was a crime scene, that apartment.

And then something happened. In the dream I realized that I was dreaming. But not only did I realize that, I also realized that every apartment we were looking at, even the touristy street with shops and arcades that I romanticized, were from previous dreams. In my dream, I realized that I have been having recurring dreams. For maybe my entire life. In which I find a perfect apartment, in a perfect town, and I struggle to make it mine, to make it fit, and always wake up before that happens.

It’s so obvious, it’s weird. All this time, I have wanted the same thing. The perfect place, the home that reflects my desires and meets my needs. But I have run away from it, hopping trains across the South, hitchhiking across Europe, riding a motorcycle across Africa. None of that was getting me any closer to the home I craved. 

Maybe because the apartment represents me. It represents finding myself. My perfect self. The self that feels like home. Not a physical place, but a psychological place.

So I woke up feeling foggy and confused, and realizing that my subconscious is an awesome fucking place. As in awe-inspiring, not cool. I stumbled into the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee and accepted the fact that I’m still searching. Even if I’m back home in the Bay Area. Even if I find an apartment I love and find a dog to put it in it.

Dream on.

Fortuna

Elise, 

Your view is breathtaking. I hope your novel takes advantage of this setting. My balcony looks out at a train depot in Oakland.

Settings are really important in writing. I have started my book in earnest. It’s about 20% written. I decided I would just write it and let it be bad, and worry about making it good once it was a good-sized stack. Kind of like the thesis. 

I sometimes think of all those days I spent playing my banjo on Broad Street for the tourists and shopkeepers on their lunch breaks, and I wonder if those were wasted hours. After all, I’m not putting out a banjo album in this lifetime. 

But then, maybe none of it is wasted. Not the pointless PhD, not the months backpacking across Europe and Asia. Not the time with Sven, even.

Love, Fortuna

PS Fuck the ass-critics.

Elise, 

Henry David Thoreaux said: “Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.” 

Maybe getting to that lowest point, lower than you ever thought possible -  more lost, more confused, more lonely, more afraid - is the only way to become the person that you want to be. The person who can go on a dirty hippie retreat. The person who can forgo some of the material things in life in return for getting the emotional support and creative fulfillment that you crave. I don’t think any of us can have it all. We can’t design it, is what I mean. We have to learn to let some things go, throw a few things off the boat in order to prevent it from sinking and save ourselves. 

I know exactly what you mean about the weird way in which relationships are less forgiving in your thirties. In your twenties there is something romantic about being lost, troubled, damaged. Probably because we are not any of those things. We’re just starting. We’re stupid, inexperienced, unaware, despite searching for meaning and awareness. Maybe the men we meet think it’s cute, manly, adult, to take care of us as we winge, fight, and claw our ways through our various emotions, as we try to make sense of our selves and our dreams.

Things certainly change in your thirities. Once you’ve lived a bit, being lost is like wearing a sign that says, “I haven’t figured it out yet. I’ve squandered my time.” It’s sad and pathetic. It’s like you weren’t picked for the winning team. 

But that’s the lie. You see, because being lost in your thirties - for a period - is saying that you get it. You realize how important and fleeting it all is. All the options are flawed. Spending a decade working hard and having no free time to reflect, to search, to be, is a poor choice. Spending the time drifting and struggling for a childhood dream is also kind of a poor choice. There are loads of poor choices having to do with love, family, sex, and friendship too.

So the person who turns away from you when you’re lost (Sven, Nick) is showing weakness, really. I don’t mean that to be self-serving. I really believe it. They are still stuck in the illusion of winning. 

You can’t win, you see. That’s what I’ve learned. You can only stop running, hold the stitch in your side, let the others pass you, and take a minute to enjoy the breeze and the sunny blue sky, and the horizon. Because it wont last for long. And you wont last either. 

That’s what it means to find yourself. It’s not a permanent state. It’s a second, here and there. You grab a piece of air out of the sky and you hold it. Then it’s gone. Maybe you grab another piece, and then that is gone too.

Fortuna

PS I lied. At my lowest moments I’ve totally prayed and begged for mercy from the heavens. I stopped feeling that anyone/thing was hearing me, and realized that at once I must have felt that there was a recipient on the other end of my internal dialogue. So that must be faith. 

And I must have had it and lost it.

But now, some new kind of faith is emerging. Could it be faith in myself? Or faith in the fact that I’m flawed and will fail and just accepting that? Could that be a type of faith?

I have to tell you something weird. I have been going to acupuncture. And I swear it has changed my luck. My friend Leilani totally gets it. Do you?

PPS I started collecting Virgin Mary figurines out of superstition, I think. And perhaps a longing for the ritual of religion. 

Dear Fortuna,
Your comment a while back about my bruised soul being lovely made me smile again today. I was cruising about the shining suburban streets in my Dad’s car and Nick’s generosity came to mind. (He tried. I hate how they do somethings right, a spectacular shit would be easier, for me, to get over.) At some point, when I was getting killed by love and my thesis, I started to believe that I had to hide, if not completely fix, my injured heart, and quickly. I feel like I am not allowed to be shit. In my teens and twenties, when I actually was quite shit, it didn’t occur to me that I couldn’t be. Men in their 30s seem to be pretty quick to scowl if you trip on an uneven part of the footpath, let alone show any fear. Forget about ever mentioning any unprocessed childhood stuff. That is a straight red carding, straight off the field. Anyway, I am lucky to have you, friend. And I’d rather be celebrating your successes in a beer garden, than dwelling on my lost love, or whatever it was.
 I wish I could take a photograph of the view from my room in my parents’ place, but it’s too dark right now. If you could ignore the eucalpytus and palm trees, you might think I lived in an Italian fishing village (but in Asia).
 I’m actually the best dancer in my dance class, and the teacher winks or nods at me when I master the foot and hip work. I should point out that I am the youngest by a good ten years, in some cases, forty. I’d also like to say that I’d be full of hissy judgement if I saw myself on a public dancefloor doing almost any of the moves. Many of them involve an arched back, a simian bottom and mouthing the words.

Love E

ps. Re. Faith. Tell me you didn’t sheepishly pray at least once - bargain-style - for God to get you through the thesis in one piece? What did you offer up? Also, what made you start collecting Marys?

Fucking hell, Elise. It worked! I can’t believe that it worked. I asked for what I wanted and the universe….

Well, probably too soon to make definitive statements, but I had a feeling. A feeling that the old, strong Fortuna was back. She went on hiatus for a couple of years there. You know, getting her heart broken, losing the path, being humbled.

Where are you girlie? I wish you were here, and we could go out and have a beer to celebrate. It’s absolutely gorgeous here. The late summer has extended into autumn, and the restaurant patios and beer gardens are brimming. 

Love you, 

Fortuna