This weekend, my mother and myself will be juice fasting. For the entire weekend. That is, two whole days. Of juice. And if that weren’t scintillating enough, I’m going to attempt to live blog it. Assuming the hangries don’t keep me locked in my cupboard.

Huh? Why would I do that? Why would anyone? Does it make really make any sense at all to start blogging in earnest in an era when blogging – real, authentic, non-corporate, personal blogging – has grown passe?

But why is the personal blog (as opposed to the curated mommy/style blog with slyly apt ads) irrelevant now? Have we really lost our need to connect with other human beings on a deeply personal, confessional level? Do we no longer have that sweet, raw yearning for affiliation? I’m less than inclined to believe that. I think now, more than ever, we need to be reaching out to each other in any way, with urgency, and need, and joy.

I imagine all of the lonely people, walled off in cubicles all day, walking through darkened streets to a home with only their own company. All of the inside jokes, wry observations, sweet half-smiles, and frustrated tears that never find an audience. How is that not a tragedy – maybe not a great one, but one that is small and hugely avoidable.

Just a castaway
An island lost at sea
Another lonely day
With no one here but me
More loneliness
Than any man could bear
Rescue me before I fall into despair

I’ll send an SOS to the world
I hope that someone gets my
Message in a bottle

A year has passed since I wrote my note
But I should have known this right from the start
Only hope can keep me together
Love can mend your life
But love can break your heart

I’ll send an SOS to the world
I hope that someone gets my
Message in a bottle

Walked out this morning
Don’t believe what I saw
A hundred billion bottles
Washed up on the shore
Seems I’m not alone at being alone
A hundred billion castaways
Looking for a home

I’ll send an SOS to the world
I hope that someone gets my
Message in a bottle

Sending out an SOS

-Sting, “Message in a Bottle”

I started thinking about stories that teach lessons, morality plays, fables and tales with morals today. The Bible is the obvious answer when you ask the class for examples of such things. Aesop’s Fables, the Grimm Brothers Fairy Tales, pretty much every Greek and Roman myth (“don’t sleep with any gods” being the primary lesson there – okay, check.) We’ve gotten weirdly reductionist about this in all our advanced, modern advanced-ness. It seems, at least to my eye, like the only lessons that we’re receptive to any more are all of the “if you do this bad this, this bad thing will happen to you” variety. What gives? I’d always thought that positive reinforced learning was the more difficult to extinguish. Are we getting denser about learning life lessons?

You know what I find simultaneously annoying and irresistible? The umpteen thousand or so articles out there on “life hacks.” See “50 Life Hacks to Simplify Your World,” “99 Life Hacks to Make Your Life Easier,” “40 Life Hacks That Will Change Your Life!” Yes, yes, and yes! All of the above! Who doesn’t like simplification, ease and change? Not me. And all of this actually came from a practical place. The first “hacks” out there seemed to be genuinely useful things – how to tell how fresh an egg is, how to use a post-it to clean the crap out of your keyboard. But recently I’ve seen hacks for how to get to know a person fast (!!), how to learn a foreign language, and how to feel confident (????). Is it true then, can anything be hacked? Is there a hack for writing a beautiful poem (um, is it called haiku?) or creating a piece of art?

January and February were big thinky months. Partially because I spent the vast majority of them holed up in a two bedroom condo with an excessively clingy dog. ‘Holed up, why?’ you might ask, say, if you live in Borneo or Iceland. Or maybe somewhere in the US where the collective bitching and moaning of everyone in the Mid-Atlantic cannot reach. Snow is the great, angry god of forcing you to stay home and get all pensive. A pensiveness that inevitably (if you are me) turns toward an intense paranoia of being snowed in as a very old woman, alone in the world and unable to walk to the grocery store for V-8 and pickles. I started looking at my dog with a fearful and knowing eye. Knowing because I was running film reels in my head of her munching down on my poor, lonely, dessicated, elderly corpse. Fearful because, well yeah.
Anywho, the point here being that being snowed in along sows the seeds of pensiveness about one’s respective step on the great, herky-jerky escalator of Life. Now move to the right, all you slow boats! And maybe the whole ennui is bolstered by just how long and bitter this winter has been. It’s the kind of winter that makes you yearn for a wood fireplace in every room. And a pot of soup on the stove. And bread in the oven. And your grandmother smiling in the kitchen, even though she’s been dead for a really long time now, so maybe your mom instead. And makes me yearn for a baby to rock and snuggle with in the evenings, and perhaps a set of strong arms to hold me.

I had a good feeling about 2014. I got all wrapped up in the newness of it and let myself get carried away. I felt hopeful. I felt enthusiasm. Dare I say, of the unbridled variety…? And now, barely a month in, and it’s starting to feel like the same-old, broken-in year that every one of them finds a way to turn into. Maybe it’s just this weather. The staleness of another winter. This snow has been hanging out for weeks now, it’s the color of cobwebs. My car is crusted with a thick lace of salt and road grime. I know this is bad for the paint, or the body, or something. I’m sure someone’s told me this. (Car sits, unwashed.) I don’t even have to wash it myself. By “wash the car,” I mean get in the car, drive it to the car wash and pay someone to wash it while I stand around and shoe-gaze. And yet such a thing seems large, insurmountable. I need something. I need a transformative experience. And yet, I also know that I can’t simply expect such things to happen TO me.

The telling of a story is an attempt to make sense of what has happened. Internally or externally. Someone’s inability to tell their own story denotes a continuing coming to terms with it. This is generally a good indicator that you’re still fighting the fight. That this particular chapter is still being written.

I thought a lot about what to title this post. Probably too much now that I think about it. After all, what is a title? Is a passage defined more by its title or by its content? My inclination is the content but, if you think about a blog post/short story/book/etc. as a thing that you put out there, that’s now existing independent of you; I’m sure many people do evaluate it base on title alone.
Anyway, September 11 took me by surprise this year. For some reason I’d been fixating on having a Friday the 13th this week and managed to forget the more inauspicious date. Like many people, even those with similarly non-traumatic memories of the day, every moment of that day is etched so clearly in my memory that it seems incorruptible. I’ll always remember driving home on a near empty 270 after spending hours at a friends from work’s house watching news coverage. How I was convinced the entire thing was a hoax that morning at work while people were flipping their lids all around me. Waiting for my roommate to get home from the school where she taught, not being able to reach her by phone. Wishing I’d said more I love yous, looked more deeply into the eyes of the people I cared about and let them know how special they were. These are things I want to remember. Things I need to.

Then I think of my aunt. How fast she’s losing the memories I’m sure she thought were enduring. How she lost days then years, soon lifetimes. How do we hold on? Is it even possible? Is it enough to have lived it, do we need the souvenir of a memory?

For who you could be and for who you are when you’re not trying to be who you think you should be.

Go on. Do it. @camillekirsten