intellectual properties

carpe amor

everybody wants to know “the secret”.

but i don’t believe in unconditional anything and really all i can say is that if there is a secret on my part it’s that i don’t believe in tomorrow.

happy 14th anniversary to the one who puts up with this.  <3

2/1/98 – 2/1/11

13 years

it’s hard to not have high expectations of someone who is capable of so much.

so much passion. so much life. so much beauty. so much spirit. so much love.

but expectations get us no where. only trust that it all will be.

if i have faith in anything, it’s you.

a dozen

12 years ago today jay and i went on our first date.  i can’t tell you where the years went, or “how we do it”, or what it means for our future.  our relationship has been minute by minute, day by day, month by month, and now, year by year.  i won’t say it’s easy, i won’t say it’s perfect, and can’t even say with any certainty it’s forever.  these expectations have never been there with us, yet here we are, years after other promised marriages have failed. is that the key?   i can’t even tell you that i know what love really is.  all i know is that every day i wake up next to my best friend,  and i can’t imagine my world without him.

besos to you, darling.  and many more.

bleep.

(….)

thursday 1/22 – transportedSF – got to visit the 2 SF ballparks. well, the areas nearish to them anyway. because i’m not a sportsfan, i’d never really visited either. it was nice. i like things after-hours. with dancing.

friday 1/23 – left work early not feeling well, missed the event at the deYoung, tried to take a nap but couldn’t, went out dancing @ 1015 but left kinda early.

saturday 1/24 – the edwardian ball.

sunday 1/25 – clothing swap with the ladies. scored some new black shirts.

monday 1/26 – went to work, went to the gym.

tuesday 1/27 – we went to hear dalton conley speak about his new book – interesting, but not mind blowing. the discussion went very wide and covered everything from how the Obamas having grandma move into the white house is a positive sign for family values to how the large proportion of women in the modern workforce makes this a different economic-domestic situation than the 1930s (related) to how the $value$ of education has changed (specifically, the ROI on tuition and what it means for the future of education) to how the protestant work ethic has affected american value systems and consumer habits and how reprioritization is going on, partially due to the economy, partially due to generational shifts and technology, and whether or not the increasing overlap between work and play is a good thing or a bad thing (americans are reportedly working more hours a day than ever, many of them from home at odd hours, and more causal workplaces and ethics are resulting in fewer strictly-professional relationships). or something. i’m not sure, really. there was a lot of talking but not a lot of points to be made. the notes i took include phrases like “ecclesiastical insecurity”, “protestant curmudgeons”, “convestment” (the blurring of consuming and investing, e.g. home improvement projects), “imaginary wealth”, “the intangible economy”, “relative disparity”, “neo-tribalism/neo-feudalism v. individualism v. institutionalism”, “meritocracy”, “frolleagues” (friends who are colleagues), and “the myth of transparency” (how online phenoms such as facebook that are set up to increase social interaction might actually increase our isolationist tendencies and neo-feudalism, allowing us to filter and group people in ways according to information we formerly didn’t have insight into, and also how the mediated interface allows us to avoid both meaningful interaction and meaningful confrontation). tangentially related should-read: the macropocalypse and what is “smart growth”?

thursday night 1/29 we went over to chef joe’s new house in el cerrito and he made us dinner. southern style, of course. quinn played the blues, then we all sang guns&roses songs loudly and badly.

friday night i stayed home because i was tired.

saturday 1/31 – jay and i both got haircuts and then we spring-cleaned the house for hours and hours and i colored my hair back to red (and black). my other hair was just not syncing my current internal/external theme, which can maybe be vaguely defined as 80s glamrock/rockstar. you know – axl rose and such. that’s what i’ve really been feeling lately, and my hair wasn’t looking very rockstar. now, it most definitely does. the reviews from the peanut gallery have been mixed (not everyone is into the long fauxhawk), but i don’t care. i woke up this morning and my hair looked better than it has in months. that’s the kind of haircut i like. anyway, was going to go out dancing saturday night at party nearby in the san antonio district, but somewhere between cleaning and hair-coloring i developed wicked headache (too many fumes?) and so stayed home. heard the party was very good, but a friend got mugged/physically assaulted walking to/from, which makes me agitated. she’s ok and the thief got scared off, but i really hate feeling like we can’t even walk down the street around here.

sunday 2/1 – we had an anniversary party. it was sunny, we have awesome friends, it all turned out quite well.

fell a little off the exercise wagon last week; need to get back to the gym tonight.

coming up next, jay‘s got a DJ gig tomorrow night, the I Love You Because… gallery opening on thurs 2/5, helen’s sock-puppet party on friday, jay is DJ-ing this awesome fashion event @ Mighty that you should come to saturday afternoon: LoveBomb, and then there’s some other party jay isn’t playing saturday night.

so happy together

11 years and counting: 2.1.98 – 2.1.09

why? because.

10 years gone

so let me backtrack a little bit now that i’ve posted the travel details of the trip to palm springs, and talk about the reason for the trip.

longtime friends and readers know that jay and i have been together for 10 years (i have a whole other related post brewing in my head about that – 10 YEARS. oMg. am getting old, and oh the number of ways i feel it!). we met in college in 1998, and shortly after graduation, with no jobs and no plans and no strings attached, we hopped in the car and drove west. we weren’t really thinking at the time, i guess, and more than one person (esp. parents) were like “you’re doing what?!” when the plan was revealed. but it’s the american dream, isn’t it, to head out into the unknown and see what happens?

we arrived in san francisco a couple of weeks later, after spending time in great places like boulder, CO and the grand canyon and joshua tree, pretty much completely unaware of the whole dot-com bubble happening, and i’ll admit it was pretty hard that first year, living in a small shitty apartment and trying to find jobs in a supercompetitive housing and job market. i think when my parents visited for the first time they were a little worried still about us ‘making it’ out here. but we pushed through, learned a LOT about ‘the real world’ (oh the naive mistakes i made upon first arrival!), got decent jobs and gradually moved up in living conditions.

in the last 10 years we’ve cycled through ‘scenes’ in the bay area, seen dozens and dozens of friends come and go, moved, changed jobs, dabbled in various hobbies, and have really enjoyed the happy accident of ending up here. through it all though, it’s always been us. the two of us. we’re extremely compatible and we have similar ways of doing things. we respect eachother and admire eachother. but there’s always the issue of space and room to grow. this has probably been our greatest challenge, as the years between 21 and 31 are extreme personal growth periods for most people, moving from adolescence into adulthood, figuring out who you are and what you want out of life and what you want to be. that’s hard to do alone, and in some ways having a partner makes it easier but in other ways it makes it harder. what if you want to grow in different directions? for some of us chameleon types, 10 years is a long damned time to ‘be the same person’/want the same things, even if only in basic ways.

i won’t lie and say there haven’t been some rough moments (or days, or weeks), where the various stresses on a relationship took their toll, but we’ve never broken up. we’ve always worked through, probably because the thought of losing your best friend is worse than losing a lover, and we are most definitely best friends. even so, maintaining a long term relationship is work. whether it’s hard work or easy work depends, but it’s still work. relationships don’t maintain themselves; unmaintained they either stagnate or fall apart. it’s especially hard, i think, when living a semi-alternative lifestyle, like we do. at least, it’s alternative for people who’ve been together as long as we have: not married, no kids, incredibly active social life. we don’t have anything tying us together except wanting to be together. we don’t have a legal binding or a mortgage or childcare. the only think keeping us together is love, but it’s quite enough.

people ask ‘how do you it?’, and generally all i can answer is that during the frustrating times i try to remember what’s important, and find ways to resolve the issue/meet whatever current needs i have but integrate that into the whole relationship. unless someone seriously violates trust in an unreconcilable way, i think most things can be worked through IF YOU WANT to work through them. you have to want to. like i said, if your partner is your best friend and not just some lover, reminding yourself of what your life would be like without that person is a pretty strong impetus to resolve whatever temporary issue you have. even if there are those moments when you think maybe you want to take the money and run, those moments are brief and usually ill considered, and if you can step back long enough to check the impulse and get some perspective, it’s not hard to see what the choice is.

viewing our relationship with respect to so many others that we’ve seen come and go during our time together makes me incredibly grateful for what we have. i like taking long roadtrips with jay, such as the one to palm springs, because it gives us time to just BE together, without jobs or distractions or social commitments. we just hang out together and enjoy life. it’s what we like to do.

however, even though we love being alone just the two of us, we also rely heavily on our friends and community to be part of our lives and our growth, and to sort of keep us sane in terms of having other important relationships and outlets (to drive other people crazy, not just eachother). so, tomorrow afternoon we’re having an anniversary party at our loft, and many (uh….maybe too many) of the friends we’ve made over the years – old and new – will be here to celebrate with us. i expect it to be a bit crazy and crowded, but i think everyone will enjoy themselves and hopefully walk away with a warm fuzzy feeling inside, also grateful for all the love in their lives.

rainbows in the desert: words

travelogue: oakland to palm springs and back, January 30 – February 3, 2008 for our 10 year anniversary.

wednesday, 1/30: i was still sick as a dog, spent all day at a work meeting, and when jay got home i was in bed and hadn’t even packed. got up, threw all kinds of random stuff into my bag, and we hit the road. first stop: fresno, ca, 40% of the way to palm springs and also the site of a job jay had for solar city. stayed at the radisson in downtown fresno.

thursday 1/31: i stayed at the hotel in bed watching the pre-election events on TV (we don’t have TV at home, so was the only time i’d seen any of the debates or commercials or commentary at all) while jay went to work on the job site until around 2:00p. drove to palm springs, bypassing the usual route through the traffic hell of LA by taking 58 east from bakersfield to barstow and then 247 south. highly recommended alternate path. the moutains between bakersfield and techachapi were a really beautiful surprise (i was expecting flat desert the whole way), dusted with light snow. stayed at the caliente tropics hotel, but it was too cold to enjoy the tiki bar/polynesian pool. had dinner at peppers thai cuisine and it was really good – excellent fake meat and thai vegan food – and the waitstaff where really friendly and helpful.

friday 2/1: actual anniversary started the morning with brunch at manhattan in the desert, which was decent standard cafe food. the waitress was really nice and brought me some free OJ to take with my dayquil. while eating brunch, we perused the local “what where when” guide to try to find things to do. the only thing of interest (to us) that was happening was that Stevie Nicks was playing at one of the large casinos in the valley that night. we got pretty excited about that – i’ve been a fleetwood mac fan since i was a child, and well – IT’S STEVIE NICKS in a small venue! even though it said sold out we called the venue anyway and were put on a “waiting list” in case any tickets were returned to the box office. we figured that would be a really fun way to spend our anniversary evening, singing along to Edge of Seventeen. alas, no one ever called back and there were not any extra tickets.

checked into our swanky hotel – the movie colony hotel and got upgraded to a two-story “townhouse” with a private deck. despite the high price tag and overt attempt at interior design chicness, obvious shortcuts, like the old dresser that had just been spraypainted silver, and no tub in the bathroom. also, serious road construction happening just outside, which the hostess said “probably” wouldn’t be happening on saturday (wrong. started just after sunrise.)

in the afternoon, we went on the palm springs aerial tramway, which goes from the valley floor to the top of mt. san jacinto. the trams are little pods that are pulled up the mountainside on thick cables, fitting about 25-30 people, and the inside floor of the tram rotates as you go up so that you get a 360 degree of everything. (the construction of this thing was considered “an engineering marvel”.) it takes about 11 minutes to go up about 6,000 feet, and in the winter that takes you from desert floor to wintery mountaintop, which i wasn’t *quite* expecting. i also wasn’t prepared for what going up 6,000 feet in 11 minutes will do to someone with a significant head cold, and oMg i thought my head was going to explode when we got to the top. my ears wouldn’t pop and i had a sudden and extreme pounding headache for about 20 minutes until my head pressurized. they should have warnings about that. seriously.

at the top, we had to wait a while for the sun to melt the ice off the walking paths, but when it did it was a beautiful if brisk scene. we spent some time hanging out in the sun and snow and watching the kids who had brought up sleds. had i not been sick and we had been more prepared, we could have gone snowshoeing into the larger state park. maybe next time. with us being a big confined to the short walking paths and me feeling sort of sick, we only stayed up there an hour or so and then hopped back on the tram for the fun ride back down the mountain. i went back to the hotel and took a long nap.

that evening, for our anniversary dinner we got a little dressed up and went to the fanciest restaurant in town, le vallauris. they had a beautiful heated outdoor garden/patio, and we had a nice time sipping wine and eating fancy foods.

saturday, 2/2: feeling a bit better, we went across the valley to The Living Desert, a botanical garden, desert animal reserve (zoo), hiking park, and miniature train exhibit all in one. it was a very nice day and we spent a lot of time wandering through the many different cacti gardens, animal exhibits, and pathways. we left just before sunset, and on the way back had a late lunch/early dinner at native foods vegan restaurant, which was super yummy.

we spent the rest of the evening wandering “the strip” in palm springs like tourists, stopping a couple of times for food and snacks and did a little shopping, and then went back to the hotel, because there was really not much happening in terms of nightlife. the outdoor heated pool and hot tub were uninhabited, so we spent a little time swimming and then went to bed.

sunday, 2/3: it never fails that the day you have to leave, the best weather arrives. even though the forecast was for rain, we awoke to a gorgeous warm sunny day and spent the morning hanging around by the pool a bit and then after checking out went back downtown for some brunch. had a semi-decent breakfast burrito at some nondescript tacqueria but nice because we sat outside in the warm sun, and then went back to one of the shops we had wandered through the night before – crystal fantasy (a new age hippie store full of crystals and fairies and tarot cards and smelly candles, etc) – because jay wanted to buy a “desert rose”, a very cool mineral formation that occurs in the mojave and other extremely arid deserts. the one we got is a cluster of 100+ of the rosettes and weighs about 15-20 lbs. it’s pretty cool.

as we were reluctantly getting ready for the 8 hour drive back to oakland, we noticed the wind was picking up, and then on the way out of the valley, we could see a serious dark cloud front approaching. we stopped for gas, and when we got out of the car i swear the winds were blowing 60 miles an hour – stronger than any wind we ever felt at burning man. i mean, the kind of wind it’s hard to stand up in. no wonder they have a huge wind farm right at the mouth of the valley. as the rainclouds approached and started dropping precipitation in the distance, the most amazing rainbow formed over the windmills, and everyone was pulling over on the freeway to get out in the driving wind and take photos. it was surreal and sublime. we stopped a couple of times to take photos from different viewpoints, and it was the very last shot that i took before the memory card was full that i think is the best one. it was an amazing end to our time in the valley.

driving out, we headed right into the wind and rainstorm as we drove through barstow, the wind pelting the car with sand and rain and making it sort of difficult to drive, and by the time we were back in the mountains near tehachapi, it turned to snow. we had to stop for gas, and getting out of the car into freezing driving sleet it was sort of odd thinking of sitting in the hot sun that morning eating brunch, just a couple of hours earlier, and of playing in the snow at the top of the tram the day before. i guess i should have expected a dynamic mix of sun and snow in the desert in february, but it was really quite novel when you’re not prepared for it.

the rest of the drive home was uneventful – the roads were pretty empty due to it being superbowl sunday- and the last stop was at an applebee’s in tracy for a late night dinner. arrived home around 10pm, and happily collapsed into bed.

rainbows in the desert: photos

i love the desert. the vast skies, still vistas, stark contrasts, dramatic weather and survivalist flora and fauna are sources of great beauty and inspiration.

smooch

today is our 9-year anniversary.

i don’t know what to say, other than i love you, and i hope you like your box of chocolates.

8 days a week

8 years ago today jay and i went on our first date.
then, i basically moved into his house a couple of days later
and we’ve been wandering around aimlessly together since.

i don’t know much about love, as i think it’s subjective
and mine seems to change every day
but what i do know
is that when it finds you
- true love –
it sticks
and there ain’t no getting rid of it.

everyone wants to know when we’re getting married
as far as i’m concerned we’ve been married in our hearts for years
and the truth is
i’m just too lazy to plan a wedding.

plus, weddings aren’t for everyone
at least according to some people
and as long as those people continue to determine what marriage is,
i don’t want one.

anyway,
back to us.
happy anniversary to my best friend~
i love you more than chewing gum.