Everytime i re-read the things i write here, I cringe.  Not the entire time, but at pieces; different ones at different times that sound stupid and young and reveal me in a certain light at a certain time to be a certain way.  It’s funny that that effect still stands, after all this time.  It must never go away.

[don't worry though; i'm not doing anything about it. just confessing.]

It’s 2 am and I’m in a really old hotel in El Paso, TX.  When I hear that name, El Paso Texas, I think of Kill Bill and the tale of the bloody bride.  Amused, I let a smile spread like a spill across my face, alone in front of the mirror behind this laptop screen.  I’m hearing airplanes overhead.  I’m wondering if I’ve been absolutely destructive to about 3 people I really care about and whether I’ll ever get it right.  I feel shitty for not talking to Char for 2 1/2 weeks.

I have a flight in 7 hours and I’ve promised myself that I’ll get up, run, maybe consume something of a protein nature, but probably I won’t.  I make this same promise to myself every morning.  Ask me if I trust myself.  Although I brought a garment bag this week, all my clothes save for two work/blazer/jacket things are wadded up in a pile on top of the zipped-open bag on the king-sized bed with my grandmother’s synthetic flowery bedspread on it.  I decide I’m letting them stay that way, wadded up and wrinkled zipped inside the bag, and sleep co-pilot tonight on the opposite side of the bed expanse and deal with it all in the morning.  I had to tear it all off their hangers because I was given 10 minutes to vacate the room I’ve been in for the week, 40 miles away in Las Cruces, NM, to come here to ELP, on account of my early morning flight and the drive.  I was driven here and dropped off.

I’ve spent the week at the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight and afterwards, at the X-Prize Race, Space Elevator Race and Lunar Lander Challenge.  Every single day I’ve considered a “Blogging the XPrize” piece here like the things I read during the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and every single night I’ve crashed, face barely washed, in a spent, slightly buzzed state, into the softness of white sheets and pillowcases to wake up 4 hours later and do it all again.  On Monday, I met Sam Donaldson and the number 2 guy at Virgin Galactic.  Sam was much more entertaining than I imagined.  I like him and his iconic eyebrows.  The Virgin Galactic guy charmed with his British accent and dripped with money, honestly.  He had all this built-in admiration from the crowd, bigger than a dot-com rock star, and let a few patronizing remarks slip out about bringing a future to poor Western states and opening the eyes of this risk-averse America.  I think they want to take over the world.  He wore really expensive clothes everyday.  I don’t know what kind they were, but they fell on his frame in a way I’ve never seen before in my life.  His shirt collars did this new thing I’ve never seen before.  I decided it must be the norm of the billionaire crowd.  On Tuesday, I met Buzz Aldrin and we talked about hucksterism for a moment before his handler delivered him into the handshake of the CEO of Kistler Aerospace.  Every single day we worked our asses off.  Every single day I saw the sun rise behind the Organ Mountains and every single night I saw the sun set.  No one told me how amazing the sunrises and sunsets are out in the desert.

I’ve loved the desert this week.  Theres no humidity!  When I wake up in the morning, I smell the smell of the West, honestly, and i taste dust in my mouth.  There is this particular smell.  Its been so cold here in the mornings, and so sun-shiny in the afternoons.  I did not at all pack correctly.  In fact, I’ve been screaming in my head for gloves and a scarf every morning and actually got sun-burned today watching the sky for the rocket launches.  Wednesday was a rain-soaked hell though.  So many things were ruined. 

I want to come back to New Mexico though.  I want to visit Taos and Santa Fe and the Gila.

The week has been a blur of dinners and lunches and suarees and receptions, shaking a hundred hands and meeting and speaking with thousands of people.  Everyone has an idea here; everyone is trying to be the first.  And everyone is trying to make a buck.   A Japanese designer is here with an interestingly trendy Japanese film crew following her around.  They wear amazing clothes casting even better silhouettes, but we smiled when we noticed an outfit recycled, because they were CLOWNING us.  It must be a looooong way from Tokyo to Las Cruces, NM.  She began a fashion design company for space suits and one for space weddings. You should see the stuff.  The outfits are designed to do certain eye-catching things in microgravity; float up and away, looking crazy galactic 5th element.  She plans to have a catalogue for space tourists so that they can choose their attire.  She’s already held a contest and received hundreds of designs.  Anything is possible in this mindset and with this kind of money. 

One guy on Thursday, Ricardo, with an engineering firm I’m not familiar with, sat next to me during a lunch and introduced himself by saying, “I’m sitting here because you girls are astronaut magnets.”  It was awkward because he was serious, not joking or trying to sound cute.  My boss bit him with, “So what can we use you for?”  I mean, we all could have had a laugh there if anyone had a sense of humor.  Why did they lose their sense of humor?  But she was wary. (it’s b/c we work w/ abt 20 of them, and they all happened to be there, “getting in on the ground floor” like we were trying to do).  I met all these people from the Japanese space agency and one guy, Kashi, I might not ever forget.  He enthusiastically taught me how to count to 10 in Japanese in most creative and hilarious way.  I took a picture with him before leaving.

Everyone out here is talking like personal spaceflight is more than the next big thing, it’s the biggest possible imagined thing.  They’re talking like it’s the dawn of the Internet/tech era; honestly, I’m serious as death.  They’re saying everything I remember hearing 10 years ago with the dot coms, using the same words, words like “democratizing” and “profit profiles”, “access”, “market entry”, ”committment” and “dreams.” I’m not forecasting because it’s so creative and exciting, but there’s no denying the two waves have much in common.  They’re saying they’re creating an industry, and they’re dumping gazllions into it.  They’re creating companies that make millions, then using that windfall to fund new, shiny, risk-laden jet-propulsed toys (their dreams!), making deals with states to build spaceports with taxpayer money, arguing about liability issues and insurance, and hoping their dreams, their new toys, will become investment-worthy and profitable.  The governor’s office is too afraid to miss a potentially lucrative partnership, so they’re bending over backwards and sideways, anything to please the new cowboys.  They’re cheerleading each other and competing with each other.  It’s so goddamned interesting.  And it rubbed my NASA dinner host tonight the wrong way.

Do you know what the lunar lander challenge is?  It’s a prize award for a private company to test a proof of concept vehicle to orbit, hover, and actually land on the moon.  It shouldn’t be any big deal, but the reality of the idea was a mental hump for me to grasp; it sorta blew my mind for a few days.  I mean, it’s not the same as building rockets, which are terrestrial and familiar.  Can you picture that?  Commercial entities doing moon landings?  It’s happening; they’re building them as we speak.  I watched one hover and deploy parachutes today. 

The other week I linked to a guy with a rocket pack on his back.  I had never seen that before, thought about it or heard about it.  It was just outside my world.  Today I saw two dudes actually do it though.  Dressed up in their leather outfits, countdown to ignition, then take off, on their own, without the supposed saftety of a vehicle.  Flying men.  I’ve seen so many concepts for rockets, vehicles, landers and “experiences,” I can’t imagine what an exciting time it must be to a designer or engineer these days.  

But I’ve also never been around or seen this kind of male intensity before.  It’s extreme living, these aviators.  Men walked around all day in various versions of flight suits, some, honestly, actually strutted a badass rooster strut.  One guy was this leggy, leather-clad Perry Farrell with bug sunglasses and a swagger.  I don’t know where he could have possibly come from unless is was Sacha Baron Cohen secretly playing a role.  Or Perry Farrell himself.  I met French and Italians and Argentines.  The Argentine brought a Sophia Coppola lookalike girl but with long hair and a really good ass, and was all over her the entire week.  It was amusing to watch.  Other than the couple, it all seemed really intense.  I understand why people get into it, why guys get into it, why people want to be extreme pilots.  I’ve just never experienced it first hand or been exposed to it before, ever, in my life.  One guy said this to astronaut Mario Runco: “I’ve dropped bombs from 40 feet, and I’ve dropped bombs from 40,000 feet.  I’ve been a fighter pilot.  I’ve been in the catching position when my son was born and I’ve climbed mountains all over the world.  Tell me then why I should pay thousands to millions to see what you’ve seen.”

I think he just wanted to brag that he’s dropped bombs.

Today I looked up the words “prole” and “saturnine”, the term W.A.S.P. (got the connotation, I just didn’t remember what it actually stood for), and this speech, written by William Safire.  I’d heard the term before, part of the general vernacular, but I had no frame of reference for it.  I didn’t even know he was once an administration speech writer.  From my general reference, he was a NY Times columnist, contributor to the magazine on the subject of language, interesting sometimes, moldy mostly.  It’s interesting discovering your own lack of history.  Even in the tiny, meaningless things.  Jay recently explained to me the excesses of Marie Antoinette, explaining what the point was, the ridiculousness during her time, showing me his photos from visiting le Petit Trianon, her Petit Hameau.  I wish academic study never stopped after I graduated.  Certainly we’re always learning, yes.  I just want more directed study too, though, for all the classes I never got to take.  Mental note, add to list.

The Departed is honestly a WAY better than average film.  I really couldn’t believe how good it was, how completely impressed I was with Scorsese’s latest.  How much I just liked it.  I’ve grown to absolutely love well-choreographed movie violence.  Did I just say that?  I LOVE IT.

And small gratefulness; there are bars in this town that I still like.  Poison Girl; so 60’s-era-playboy-in-the-girl’s-bathroom fantastic.  Absinthe; for too many reasons I love you.  Onion Creek; honestly, thank GOD for you. 

In fact, the secret, always low-visitors, always low-to-none tourist traffic, always there so you can walk up 2 inches from the canvas, free, completely accessible hidden breathtaking art collections and the Alley Theater’s resident company of actors are by far my favorite thing about Houston.  I just can’t believe how lucky we are to have them.  The talent is legitimate; the stagings are smart and dynamic.  This weekend we took in such a refreshing and creative FREE staging of Much Ado About Nothing that the Shakespeare didn’t seem arduous.  There were hot-air balloons on the set.  The princes were balloonists.  The costume and stage design was from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  It was so fun.

Because of this, I realized recently, I feel like all the rooms in the Menil are my refuge.  My running-away-from-home-tall-tree-at-the-end-of-the-road to leisure through as I need, escape to at any moment of the day.  I have grown so familiar with the pieces it’s as if they were mine, as if I knew them from my whole life and where they hung on what wall, regardless of the changing shows.  It’s so personal, so goddamn amazingly accessible.  So there to escape to at any time, any day [besides Monday!] that I may ever want.  The grounds, the sculpture, the grass for my blanket and book.  The CAMH, the Rothko Chapel, the Byzantine Frescos, the Center for Photography.  All such a part of my relationship with this city, all free, all so fkking worth it at every single visit.  I don’t mean to effuse, but I’m in love.  I’ve become dependent on their existence in my life.   

I’m on this Maggie Gyllenhaal thing.  I’m just interested in her.  Who is that girl?  What’s my impression of her after a legitimate audit?  I started last night with The Great New Wonderful, which I never knew existed.  It was interesting; about the year in NY immediately following 9/11.  I’d forgotten what that year was like, my personal version of it and my awareness of others’ versions.  Already.  Geez.

I put a never-finished journal and a favorite pen in my bag today as I left my bedroom.  I bought it in a book-binding shop in Florence in 1999.  I want to spend some time in it today after work and after working out and hopefully fully exhausting myself in the sauna.  Articulate thoughts so that I know what I’m thinking, maybe come to decisions faster.  Making it a practice.  I don’t know every reason.  I just want it in my life today.

rocketbelt pilots!

A girl I know, a young one, writes for the Wall Street Journal. She contacts me to contribute to her stories and sometimes I just can’t help myself; I oblige myself to do so for all these numbers of reasons. Because I’m impressed with her abilities and how she writes and her grasp of the language. Because I want to see what she’s done with all the input she’s collected. And talented people tend to carry along with them a crowd of admirers and despite how I’d like to think of myself not so starry-eyed, I am one of those, one of the curious awe-struck-at-her-ability-especially-at-her-age ones. Also because she’s offering a voice for my age group. And probably because she emails me personally, and at generally frequent intervals.

I offer opinions. I explain what’s important to me and why on the subjects she proposes. I sometimes think of different avenues for consideration. And at other times refer her to someone amenable to being quoted.

Our last contact was on the question of when and how one knows when to get married and what influences that decision. The article came out today; it’s the one linked above. I didn’t respond to that email at all. I deleted it; I wanted it to go away and fast.

[So strangely,….]

Because I’m not sure, still, what my opinion is. I don’t want to make conclusions from my limited life experience. I have opinions on the fear of loneliness. I expect when the time comes for me, I’ll have a tincture of panic mixed in with my excitement. I’ve recently changed my opinion on it in fact. I’m afraid that saying, “you know, sometimes, I think I never want to get married and there have been times – not always, but times – when I thought I’d be fine to never have children. I think that limiting yourself to one reality at the beginning of your life is really a strange sort of net to inflict on yourself, especially if one views life as a field of infinite possibilities that one doesn’t even know about yet. Are they not mutually exclusive? Aren’t the concept of marriage in your twenties and belief in possibility contradictions?”

I’m afraid that I’ll come across as selfish and naïve. Unenlightened. Juvenile. You’ll say, “she doesn’t get it.”

But as I said, I’ve changed my mind recently. I’ve come to terms somewhat with my irreconcilable theories. I’ve come to understand how one gets to that compromise, and why, and where the big important joys are rumored to originate from.

I told someone recently that I wish I could be honest on encantada. Not that I’m dishonest here, but to be a person of tact and discretion, a person learns limits. Plus, I care about people and I’ve regretted things. When I started this blog as a 23-year-old, I used it for that though – unrequited stupid-sometimes expression. Even when I regretted it; even when I was wrong and revealed myself to be an ass or a snob or a worse, a mental child throwing a spoiled brat tantrum, whatever my fears were, I wanted it to be assumed that I was committing to being human and revealing myself because we shouldn’t be afraid to be known. And I wanted to reveal myself.

In later years I most definitely did not want to. I didn’t like the loss of control. I didn’t like the self I was showing off. I got tired of people in my life telling me what I was like. In fact, I despise being told what I’m like. I think it’s an implication of smallness for that person; a sorry lack of imagination to matter-of-fact-ly decide that you’re this limited thing en totale. You’re pegged. Because who the fuck are you and what’s that story about pointing fingers (?) and open your mind and give a chance and all that.

One of the first problems with revealing yourself, besides the loss of perceived control of how others view you, is implicating other people in your life. Like if I say, “I wish I could meet a brilliant soccer player painter novelist visionary music-writing physics philosopher genius artist developer designer appreciator…,” it implicates that what I have is lacking. And that’s not something I ever want to do.

Yet still, if I can be honest here and understood as human yet still grateful for the current love I’m given, I have to admit something. I don’t believe “the one” exists. I have never wanted it to! It’s antithesis to what I like the most – nuance, difference, passionate attempts, little victories, learning. I’m attracted to different mixes and texture and eye-opening and how could a single human have it all? How could I? In fact, it was my own infallibility that led me to reject the existence of perfection outside of nature. But I also won’t argue against the possibility because I don’t want it to be self-fulfilling. How’s that for naïve superstition…

I’ve seen the movies and heard the songs and the discussions and the conflict. I know this shit is age-old.

Love is such a crazy remarkable thing. It is mixed with so much hope and so much acceptance and it can never be done right and two worlds can never be parallel and it can never be articulated. I’m always trying to get it right though; get it clear. And that’s impossible. It’s the resignation part that gets me. That’s where peace is supposed to come from, right?