mareht

Like any good goth, I keep in mind the saying "The Scene isn't what it used to be. The Scene is never what it used to be." as a reminder that things are always in motion, that nostalgia can blur recollection, that life is always moving in all directions all the time. I will admit some fear that I'm a bit of a dinosaur, a longform text creature in an image/video age, but I am currently still holding onto the idea that *we* make the Scene, thus here I am, and I will remind people there is welcome.

Making the Scene looks a lot different these days, I'm coming off a long illness(not Covid), so long that I actually went to the doctor, just in time for that to be the morning my fever broke. Congestion pricing has made Manhattan streets a little lighter in traffic, but I can't help but notice those who do pay the fee apparently have decided that means they will do entirely as they please, to hell with the laws of gods, man, and physics. My EDS is having some seriously deleterious effects on my spine, which is playing hell with my movement. I urgently need to start working out my lower back, as the pain is intense, and exhausting.

All is not horrible, though! Getting well again after a long illness is honestly a source of great joy, I have so much *living* to do! Today was spent in various errands, including the wallet-horrifying wonder of a flash sale at the Astoria Bookshop, my local indie, to help them with a flooring issue - the sale is both to cover the repairs, and ease the process, giving them fewer books to move. I went completely, utterly *ham*. As soon as I got home, I cracked All the Beauty in the World, and just put it down, after leaving a deeply loving, grateful review on Storygraph. Most of the spoils of my trip are nonfiction and poetry - I have been having a difficult time reading fiction for a few years now. Sometimes I can read a romance, or a gothic horror, but anything reflective of this world and its ills? I just can't bring myself to keep turning the pages, which feels oddly like failure. My eyes and mind are certainly reading the story we're living, and I tell myself that's enough.

Reading poetry this much is actually a newer habit, I started in early sobriety, but have increased the pace. I'm actually writing, too. There's a group called The Queen's Poet that does an open mic at a local event space the first Saturday of the month. I went in January, and it was really nice. Very warm, sweet vibe, and some really good poets and singers! I'm...actually planning on reading two poems I've been working on Feb 1. IF, IF I can stop editing the fucking things and actually feel like they're done. Gods be with me.

I don't honestly know what I'm doing. I have always, always been told I have a talent for writing, but I have *never* had a plot. I can bang out a vignette pretty easily, get a picture in my mind and draw it out in words. Sometimes I can turn an art review into a pretty decent essay, or dress up my thoughts in fancy clothes and waltz them across a glittering ballroom. Where to go with that? Ambition in the arts was not something I was permitted. "It doesn't pay the bills." was what I was always told. My bills are paid, and I still feel like I want to put my thoughts in a ballgown and take them out on the town.

It's always been quite clear that the planet of the internet is no more or less real than the sidewalk outside my window. The ways in which it mimics the city I live in are endlessly fascinating, the wide variety of accents, languages, cultures, and customs I can immerse myself as I walk block by block, or from Instagram, to Bluesky, to Youtube. Gentrification and over development are only a bit slower here in a world of bricks and concrete. My natural desire is to plant my feet, immerse myself in creating a solid, unmoving place to live, but the digital world reminds me more of houseboats, and the currents change rapidly, causing decision points to come with more and more frequency.

In a way this feels like a return, and though my hopes are not as high as they might be, I remember the community building of Livejournal quite fondly. Ages and ages ago, and yet the people I sat with through our screens, many of them are still very much a part of my life, some I have still yet to see their faces in physical space, some of them have stayed nights under my roof. Has the world moved on from this sort of long form text based connection building? Will it move back? I don't know, our story is still being written. I know I deeply desire a return to a place where we talk about our worlds, tease out the points of alignment, find ways to understand a celebrate the differences, and just keep trying to understand ourselves, and each other.

Of course, in this moment in history that does seem on its face facile, uncomprehending of the myriad forms of violence that are only seeming to increase, but then, doesn't finding clarity in ourselves become all the more necessary so that we may find ways to protect each other from that violence? If we don't know ourselves, and each other, how do we know what we need?