also it was important for rose to be able to live out the ultimate female power fantasy, which is freeing something large and majestic and abused, then riding it on a terrifying destructive rampage through the corrupt halls of its captors, then freeing it to go cavort in the wild and be free. just look at how women write horses, and dragons, and wolves. just look at the passionate empathy teenage girls have for chained and wounded beasts.
so, i was extremely fucking delighted that star wars finally had a really specifically, quintessentiallyfemale power fantasy in it for once, instead of just more girls stepping into / reclaiming male power fantasies (and thereby reaffirming the universality of male desires and power structures).
i’m not at all surprised that so many adult men are saying ‘what’s the point of that?’ because they’re not the point of it at all. that part wasn’t written for them. it was for girls. even more than general leia was for girls, the Horse Girl Fantasy Ride was for girls, and i love that, and it was great, the end.
Sometimes I think about the future of self driving cars and how everyone I talk to about that future is like “okay but in an emergency we’ll be able to take back manual control, right?” and I usually placate them by saying, yeah, that’s totally how it’ll happen, but actually we’re already seeing the opposite. Cars with “self driving” features like steering and breaking that kick in and take control from the driver if the driver is about to rear end someone or is in a dangerous situation because the truth is computers can think faster and have better reflexes than us and I think about this going into the future and how if the self-driving cars are able to share their data with each other and learn from the driving experiences of every car on the road soon we’ll have cars that are so massively experienced at driving and avoiding accidents and making microsecond decisions and partial degree turns of the wheels and being so damn precise that automobile accidents will be almost unheard of and that’s when we’ll develop the most wasteful hilarious extreme sport in history where a single human driver will go up against an arena of ultra smart self driving cars and just by driving around recklessly try to coral them into crashing into each other and I tell you I would watch that sport all day.
You’re probably wondering what took this one so long.
Or maybe you aren’t at all curious.
Here it is though.
New Year’s Eve was probably the worst day of the year.
I felt stupid, pathetic, like a piece of shit and an asshole. I felt a lot of negative things about myself. I cried. I was upset. I tried.
I tried really hard to make it a good day.
Kirsten and I were going to spend the whole day together. And we did. And we shouldn’t have.
Originally it was going to be just us two.
But my sister was dealing with some things and so I didn’t want her to be alone. So I told her to come over around 8pm and spend the night with me and Kirsten.
I told Kirsten this and things seemed fine for a little bit.
I took Kirsten on a small driving trip. We went to the spot we spent the first night of the new year together. We went to the park and the bench where we would go a lot and talk and walk and sit. I took her to a new place that housed a garden shop made by the people behind the Botanic garden. And then things started to unravel.
Kirsten got upset because we weren’t going to spend the day together anymore. Even though we were. Its that the night wouldn’t have been our own anymore. Which I thought she would understand.
I felt bad. I had told her we would be on our own and then we weren’t going to be but man, the way she finally ended up reacting. It sucked. The whole thing sucked.
She wanted me to take her home but she would have spent the day by herself and I didn’t want that. I should have but then I was afraid that she would hurt herself because of the way she was talking. So she stayed.
I wish Kirsten had phrased it as “Omar, spend time with your family, go be with your sister and I’ll go with my family. Then we can spend tomorrow together.”
Instead it was like “I didn’t want to say anything because I don’t want to be selfish but I wanted to spend the day together and now the day is ruined. I want to be home now and you said it would just be you and me and it’s not.”
I don’t know. To me, the day could have still been amazing! Like, we still had the whole day up to 8pm to spend it alone and together. The last few hours would have two extra people. I just don’t feel that that was enough for her to flip out on me.
And so I felt stupid and I ruined things. I would have loved to have it be just her and I but I didn’t think the whole day was ruined because of the sudden change.
We got into a couple of arguments.
Kirsten was, and still is, going through it.
This cycle is lasting longer than usual.
The day had so much potential.
Instead it was a disaster. I hated every second of that day after she told me why she was upset.
I wanted to make it a good day. I tried making her food. I wanted a New Years kiss. We got sparklers and Roman candles for my nephew. He loved it. My sister made food. There were good movies on. It could have been a good day.
It could have been a great night.
But it wasn’t.
And that was the story for most of the year. The days that were bad, could have been great if it wasn’t for one stupid thing.
And Kirsten might be suffering from things that I only have suspicions about so I’m trying to take care of her and be courteous and let her feel what she has to. But I’m not an expert. I’m doing what I think is right and I get it wrong sometimes.
So when one thing, one little thing, ruins her mood or our day, I’m trying to understand that it isn’t just one little thing. It’s a big deal.
The lesson was learned a long time ago.
I’ve just been trying to learn how to deal with it better. And sometimes certain things work better than others.
But when nothing works, it all falls apart.
But when it works, nothing else matters.
I love you, Kirsten.
PS. “…so much for the light show. Pissing on while pissing off. Sucking in a smokescreen. Selling of a loose knit dream…”
Peace
Love &
Rockets
PPS.
I won’t be doing a 365 project this year.
I don’t have it in me anymore. I didn’t even really have it last year. I know it sucked. I just kept going because stopping wouldn’t have made sense even if continuing didn’t make sense either.
Instead what I’m going to do, after January is over so I can take a break from writing every single day for the last two years, is something a little different.
I bought a website domain. I want to get off Tumblr.
My plan is, and I’ve sort of already started, is to tell a story about myself for at least 300 days.
Good, bad, happy or sad, I want to tell these stories about myself.
And when I get to a good place, I actually want to tell your stories too. I want to approach my friends and ask them to tell me a story about something in particular.
I want people to approach me and ask if I can tell their story.
And maybe, there will be some sort of connections formed with people. Like, “oh yeah, I went through something like that or did something like that.”
I’ll probably hop off Tumblr when that’s started and going.
Hopefully some of you will come and peep the new project.
The first story I’m going to tell is the story of when I bought Kirsten a rose that cost me $20.
So you can have that to look forward to again.
And actually, I want to use those stories to inspire new stickers.
I don’t know. It’s a different way for me to be creative.
Hopefully next year I’ll be back for another 365. I really loved the first year I did it.
I hope Bo is okay with this. Thanks for inspiring me to even start the project.
