HAPPILY MINNEAPOLITAN

Today’s title is apropos of everything. It’s about the conceptions we create in our heads about the ideal life and the fact that our lives are really defined more from need if anything.

I’m done whining is my point. In fact, I’ve been too busy to whine, and if there was ever the Shut The Fuck Up pill of human existence, it’s simply this: Have way too much shit to do. Being buried in work is the best way to just shut up and live in the now.

Inotherwords I’ve been busy. Moreover I am done analyzing how my life should measure up to my ideals and instead I am focusing upon what things can I do today, now, immediately, that serve some sort of need. To myself or to others. How can I not just take up space and be useful?

All the solopsistic meta stuff aside, I’d like to share with you a bit about the above image. I created it in 1997 when I was uhh…21 and messing around with 3D rendering software. Back then I was still reasonably nascent at the computer graphics stuff and visualizing about my California Future(tm) somewhere in the bay area living the Nerd life and spending my weekends in Napa jaunting in a convertible gaymobile for the perfect bottle.

Didn’t happen, and that too, is by design. But this house stems from that dream. I designed this thing using POVray and a bunch of math equations, plus a modeling GUI of some kind. I suspect I used to be smarter back then.

What I find so fascinating about this Barbie Dreamhouse that I created is….it ain’t half bad and it still represents some of the ideals that have survived the minefield of my 20s. Sure, parts of it look like Johnny Rockets, but that was the hot aesthetic back then, everything was 60s kitsch. I like this house. In fact, I say for 10 years of evolved tastes, I’d still live in this thing, though I’d likely tear out that portico for something a little more understated. And Ken would naturally have his own place across town with the better bed.

Ehh… it still could happen. I could one day find my way back to California, or even Mexico or Costa Rica with a giant pile of money and bark on the phone with my contractor about the tile selection for the masturbatorium (what, your home doesn’t have one? Oh honeh…) but i’ve resigned myself to the fact that such fortunes will come purely by chance. It’s not for me to worry anymore about what happens. Live for today, be useful to others, steer the rudder for tomorrow, check the heading and hope you get there by next wednesday.I’m going to shoot for the future and stop worrying about it.

I was on the fence about renewing the domain name for this site, and I decided to. I don’t think I’m done yet, and if I have this space (and spending what I spend to host it, etc.) I should use it. But like a non-renewable resource I have decided to be more judicious about it’s use, and not just use it as a place to take a poop. You, dear reader, should be spared from that.

Anyway, somewhere between optimism and crushing pessimism is just boring old reality. And I live in that reality, and it’s not about how things are the same or different or how young or old I feel. (BTW, great catch with the “Saturn Return”, commenter guy from the last post…. I wiki-ed that and it’s awesome.)

The boring truth is that I am just not having any fun. And if I had more fun, I wouldn’t complain so much about everything else.

I need to figure out how to have more fun. I’ve concluded that I more than deserve it.

But I have been a blogger with a bad case of writers block, stuck in a summer of simmer. It’s a crisp autumn now, and There Will Be Changes(tm)! Starting with a bit of good news:

I very recently started dating somebody with a smile that looks like cupid riding across a forest glen on a unicorn that shits rainbows.

Lets see how I manage to screw this one up.

Professional asshole Fred Phelps and his cadre of dentally challenged blood relations from the Westboro Baptist Church will be coming to Minneapolis to inform us of God’s special hatred of truss bridges, hot dish and all things Minnesotan.

Let’s be sure to give them a special Minnesota welcome when they arrive. I’m thinking death by lutefisk. Thoughts?

A bridge collapsed downtown as the world has come to know. I like Minneapolis for it’s overall distance from calamity, and to see this tragedy happen makes me very sad. This is not a place where people are supposed to die on their commute home.

I was in an urgent care clinic when it happened, and was bumped back behind six other patients suddenly due to the doctors suddenly being put on call. I didn’t know it at the time.

What I did know was that I was ready to put myself in a hospital because I couldn’t swallow or breathe. My throat was inflamed to the point where swallowing was bringing tears. I was also fighting pneumonia. Still, it was probably best I had left an ER bed open and stuck to waiting.

I am usually healthy and try to take care of myself. Earlier this week I tested negative for HIV and was very relieved to hear it. I exercise regularly and take a quality multivitamin daily and try to avoid stress, though I usually fail at that.

So to suddenly get a pneumonia diagnosis was a bit of a shock. To get really slammed with an illness to the point where I was in a fetal position from the sickness and pain was new for me. I had a massive bacterial invasion, and if left untreated, I was going to die. The azithromycin pills I was already taking might as well have been M&Ms for all I cared.

So after a 2 hour wait, I was taken in, examined, and given an IV drip with prednesone, strong antibiotics, and saline.

It was the sickest I had ever been in my life, and suddenly I was magically cured the next morning. I have never gone from so sick to so normal in an eyeblink. I am cured. Modern medicine cured me. It may have taken an IV bag full of magic, but it worked, and how.

100 years ago I would have definitely died from this. Given where I was yesterday, I anticipate I would have most definitely have been dead by Tuesday if untreated.

An illness people can cure with a medicine bag. My good luck.

The people who lost their lives on that bridge. Unlucky. And most unfair.

There’s no conclusion to be extracted by any of this. Other than it’s good to be alive, and that saving other people from death is perhaps the highest calling one can have in life. With that in mind, say a solemn prayer for the dead, offer a helping hand to the living they left behind, and thank a rescuer and practitioners of medicine who all facilitated in rescuing more from death.

As for me, I’m thanking God, the physician, the nurse practicioner, and the manufactures of the drugs that went into my veins for another day of life and an untroubled sleep. I wish the same for the world.

Just racked another year of gaitey, through no fault of my own.

It’s interesting, this little milestone. It’s not 30, so there’s no wow-another-decade bedazzlement around it. In fact, 10 years ago, I was a 21 year old buying my first case of beer with my old college dorm mate. I was also a “straight” man back then, unable to even reconcile or admit my sexual issues. In fact, it would be a few days later, on the fourth of July of that very year (7/4/1997) that I walked away from a beautiful girl who was heavily coming on to me at a friends party, and I went home — alone — sat down in front of my computer, and wrote a journal entry. This entry is now unfortunately lost due to never backing up my files in those days, but the jist of it was this — “I think I’m gay.”

Times have changed.

I used to think in those days I’d one day help young guys emerge from the closet who were facing similar issues, but these days, I don’t think they need help. I think *I* need help more than they do, society is just so accepting now, and younger guys just seem to yawn through adolescence with a kind of self-confidence I had to scrape together in my own life from hundreds of little victories. Even during the Clinton 90s, the hostility and fear of those days were just so much more palpable, and even before — I still remember one day in the year 1991 when my high school health teacher glossed over the textbook entry on homosexuality with the quip: “Personally I say send them all to San Francisco and wait for the big one”. This didn’t damage me as I always felt the guy was an asshole anyway. I think what did damage me was the yearning I had for my pretty male classmates and no safe place to put those feelings for many years, since even I wouldn’t allow those feelings to be acknowledged, let alone evaluated.

I can’t even imagine how bad people had it a generation before, or before that. I was lucky. They were less lucky. Generation Y is even luckier.

But now I am an adult, and in charge of every aspect of my personal being, even though I had a late maturity and am still dumb when it comes to interpersonal stuff as a result. But overall, I am…oh, what’s the word: Proud.

I’m proud of being gay, but I’m most proud of being mature. I’m will continue to be proud as I take on different roles and say good bye to the old ones: The straight college guy; the 23 year old closet case struggling with difficult truths; the 26 year old self-satisfied lothario, etc. I’ve been lucky enough to have had two great loves in my life in my late 20s and in my 30s I am sadly in a bit of a holding pattern but holding out for the best.

So I’m hoping that this year — not a decade marker, but at the very least a mersenne prime number — is the year I get to use all the best parts of me and finally have a long overdue celebration for becoming everything that I am.

Read this article:

http://nymag.com/news/features/33520/

I am fascinated by this even though it strikes me as a slightly alarming revival of phrenology. But if it’s statistically accurate, it deserves a closer look.

I have the gay trifecta too, it seems. Let’s review:

counterclockwise hair	made only more fabulous with spendy hair product
‘gay’ index finger to ring finger ratio	yet no ring. So sad.
left handed	good for masturbating while operating computer mouse — this may one day prove to be an evolutionary advantage

It’s interesting to know something so manifestly in my head is also practically printed on my body. I think I like this.

As you can guess, I’ve been staring at the backs of men’s heads all day now.

I promise you I will write something even if it means writing complete drivel. Bear with me.

First off, two major dates are coming up. (1) My birthday. (2) My first year in Minnesota.

Let’s start with the birthday. I will be turning 31.

Just when I’ve gotten used to being out of my 20s — a period in which I thought I’d stay 20ish and cute for damn near eternity — I have managed to pile on another year in my third decade through no fault of my own. Mercifully, a daily regimen of drinking human blood has so far kept me preternaturally young and pretty.

Still, after finally wearing my eyes out from excess computer use*, today I purchased READING GLASSES for the first time! A $16 pair of black emo-looking ones from the impulse purchase section of Whole Foods next to the jars of valarian root. I am using them now and giving my eyes a deserved break while bearing a likeness to Rivers Cuomo.

Now, the bit about being in Minnesota for a year:

MOTHERFUCK!

Tempus fucking fugit. I spent so much time bellyaching about what my long term prospects might be like in this place only to discover I already am a long term prospect. If this measured one year already, then what’s another? And another? And so on?

I will say I’ve made some wonderful friendships here and have a healthy work life and am just enjoying the hell out of spring. Yes, Minnesota boys remain as recalcitrant as ever, but I am doing a better job of matching their tempo and not coming off as a pushy east coast headcase, even if i remain one.

I suppose the theme of today’s drivel is the passage of things and the observance of time. And now being single for quite a while now.

I am so not making this up: My upstairs neighbors are jouncing a bed as I finish writing this. Blech.

*source code and goat pr0n

Autostitch continues to be a fun little piece of software to use. It doesn’t matter how haphazard your photos are, it will still assemble them into a tidy panorama. This here is an old flour mill on the banks of the Mississippi river. In the days before electricity, they harvested the river currents to power the mills, leading to the construction of St. Anthony Falls, etc. Anyway, it’s a pretty place to bike.

Apologies for being so quiet these days, but frankly I haven’t had any great new insights to share — if I ever had one. Rather, in true northhand form, I am trying to keep my whining to an absolute minimum.

I promise I will post an update in a short while. I know. BAD BLOGGER! BAD!

Minneapolis is trying to make amends for a crappy March and April by showering me with gorgeous weather. I’ve tried to take advantage of it by biking a bit, and also taking a few photographs. Since every Twin Cities photo has the obligatory downtown IDS center shot, I thought I’d try something different: I thought I’d photograph the virtually un-photographed western bank of the Mississippi.

It’s the new header for my site. (Don’t worry! Little sad banana guy ain’t going nowhere!)

It’s worth mentioning that this panorama shot was made possible via an ingenious piece of geeky software called Autostitch. It will assemble any collage of photos in any order without any preparation whatsoever. All they need is a common overlapping region.

Don’t worry folks! I’ll be back shortly with an update.