Thank you. I’m really looking forward to your writing about Philadelphia…
Michael just replied to a comment I made on his post about Formstone.
Apologies for being so free form with this. I sat with myself, wondering what Michael was looking forward to. I did remember, realistically I never really said why am I choosing Philly. I’ve never truly explained why the fervor to bolt from the bay area seems so so strong over the last 9 months. I haven’t explained explicitly what magic there is that has inspired the largest dumps of film I’ve done in any locale in this short of a period of time. Something is calling me to say look. Look harder than before, harder than you ever have, at something. I’ve loved what I’ve seen so far is the simple answer. The simple next question is clearly why not more?
The simplest thing I can say is love brought me home. There’s comfort and familiarity old and new with what I’ve been seeing. It’s the environment, it’s thinking about what for better, for worse, comes from this foundational city in a crumbling empire. I’ve walked through spaces and see a life I can envision for myself there, despite the odds of this moment. There’s ‘team players’ that are happy to pull me off the bench there. I’ve stopped dreaming about where I grew up, ever hoping that I’ll ever be allowed to fully ‘grow up’ here. You can’t love without dreaming I’m guessing. Clearly I don’t have an answer yet. I’ll say love that lingered from coast to coast makes me write about Philadelphia. And death. The city is a Scorpio after all.
I don’t want to divulge all the explicit details of personal conversations. Surprising for some, I do try to thread the needle of discretion. There’s something about the blend of sacred unspoken when you keep certain words to yourself. If people want to know any truth of me, I’m probably conveying the deeper meaning with an image anyways. I’ll say that in all of the fractured relationships I’ve had in my life, only one felt genuine in their hopes of repair when I was in the hospital with the new Heart Failure diagnosis.
I had an argument with Ted over some instagram post he made about 7 or 8 months prior to me being stuck in that east facing cardiac unit room. I went the typical route: the blocking, the unfriending, the ways that the internet flattens all parties involved. The way that the internet too easily makes ephemeral upsets permanent. We don’t pick up the phone anymore, sit down and write a letter, we often find ourselves too busy and too far apart to have a face-to-face heart-to-heart. This one friend wanted to right the internets flaws back into the court of real life relationships; potential presence and explicit care. I wouldn’t have expected that while I found myself in limbo between realms of life and death that I’d get a little bit of light from the 19139 zip code.
Cobbs Creek.
It’s where Ted & Theo’s home is, that they share with their dogs. Canela, Nella, the princess to make the short story long is an aging gracefully and gleefully pit, loving drools from a pink mouth with bright eyes. She’s as cinnamon sugar as a cinnabon with too much icing. Wiz more an apple cider donut, still very much the poutiest twink of a mut I’ve ever met, but I love my spoiled brats. I love them with all of my heart. From that happy family came the only person that 1) heard through the grapevine and 2) reached out to explicitly repair the snapped cable that had made communication possible across the continent.
Ted said I didn’t owe him forgiveness. Ted said he had sorely missed our digital version of whispering dirty jokes in each others ear and relishing in the absurd. I had missed it too; it had softened me for years, made me desires something to wink at rather than shy away from. It introduced me to that delightful tickle of the body when the joke won your heart, fried your brain in the best way and potentially made your dick hard. Ted was absolutely incredulous that I had chose Portland of all god forsaken places when I fled the Bay Area 7 years ago. It’s nice to be wrong sometimes.
I didn’t know how to tell him, or anyone really then I didn’t have the confidence to fake it ’til I made it back east, then my eyes on Baltimore. I didn’t want anyone to see the shy child that had gotten to 35 fighting for themselves more or less the whole time. There had been invitations no matter where Ted & Theo lived, up by Chico or when they were at Black Butte. It was loudest when they moved to Philadelphia shortly before I moved to Portland. It got louder later. It withered under the weight of the first year of COVID-19, Ted being blunt that we didn’t really know each other yet. Yet we kept on trying to connect, sometimes leading to arguments that have solidified our respective low roads as me being petty, Teddy being polemic.
When I was at my most lonely, my most stuck, IV drips and heart monitor, Teddy tried again.
There’s only one man I can think of that has tried harder to have me in their life. This one I know has been honest with how important that is to their spouse. There’s east coast frankness, not midwestern deceptions shining on the affairs of the heart here. It must be understood, within this I slowly, but surely came to believe that I had to learn more about the place in the world that produced someone fighting so strong to have me included in at least a sliver of life. Ted once showed me a plate of fried chicken he made once that looked better than anything any of my Aunties or Grandmother cooked. You gotta find out about a place where a gracefully aged Twunk with an affectation for Subaru Outbacks learned how to fry better than Mrs. Loretta still rolling around in a LeSabre.
Last December I ate an Apple Cider Donut, then another, then another, from that stand at the Clark Park Farmer’s market. Something is astonishing about a fresh batch of carbohydrates that feel as warm as the winter sun feels against a lightly stiff breeze. I brought back Apple Cider Caramels to brag to everyone the simple joys of that morning, for the donuts wouldn’t carry.
I knew I’d like Philadelphia by what I already knew. I had a cursory glimpse of the cityscape on I-95 on the way to New York in 2017. I remember how Tammi Terrell’s voice is one of the first vocalists I remember from childhood. I remember her animated face and percolating eyes on that well worn video clip singing ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’ with Marvin Gaye. Gaye was from the DMV. The both of them are filtering words by the New York duo Ashford & Simpson. Its recorded with the Detroit precision that’s always been the backbone of our pop culture for a good 60 years. That’s an awesome combination of powers.
What if I get better at connecting what I love by being on that soil? Tammi Terrell is so in love with joy in that clip, knowing too well she’s lip syncing to her peerless take on ridiculous vows of romance. What is this land that created someone that could camp up Shakesperian concepts of the delights of affection? Someone that had been suffering from headaches since 12 that lead to a cancer diagnosis at 22 that lead to her death at the age of 24. She found joy and shared it with others despite her pain.
Ted had a bout with cancer. Anything you read about Tammi Terrell is that she valiantly fought to the very end. Her death was more than 50 years ago, there’s better treatments now. I always smile a big smile when Ted shares a rockclimbing video. Watching him still go despite it all, makes me want to keep going too. I don’t think Ted knows how much I can recognize in myself how devastating it would have been had I not had the current if he had passed away. I think of how I’ve followed the evolution and the magic of his writing. It has always made me pause for a moment to get clearer understanding of someone else’s existence.
It has always made me better at relationships, to break beyond my own defensive distance that leaves me in my own world. It makes me always think of what little things can I say or do to get to know Ted, or anyone else, better. What brings anyone joy. It has often found us in shared joy. It’s not a lesson I was explicitly taught where I grew up. I grew up in the absolutist truth, the suburbs of Stanford. Those insecure environments want to still cosplay as the bastion of upmost intelligence. Silicon Valley grows even more cancerous in an artificial environment that does not acknowledge, truthfully how simple natural bonds should reign supreme. The more I try to get to know someone, ironically the easier it gets. The more joyful it becomes. What does my life become if I hang up being a ‘Townie’ and try somewhere new where love already exists?
When you think of San Francisco, the ‘crown jewel’ of my birth region, it’s none too hard to see manifest destiny written all over the visible landscape, natural environment be damned. It has put glass tomb Eichlers at the top of 950 foot hills. It’s in my character to bulldoze and build what I feel on an emotional landscape, damn the desires of others inhabiting the space. It’s what my environment taught me to do.
Similarly, I restrict access to the more tender parts of it-me just for myself. It’s just as haphazard the impact of our Save The Bay campaigns were in the 1960’s. Ted always asked me to do it a different way, not do it by my default. I can recognize more clearly what is ‘comfort’ and what is ‘joy’ as separate concepts under the umbrella of happiness now.
I have to wonder what would happen if I had kids, by whatever means that means being a disabled 43 year old queer person. What would they learn if I also sent them to Germantown Friends School… What if I was honestly open to extending my concepts of family informed by space? It hasn’t ‘happened’ in a desirable capacity or consistency that feels right where I grew up.
So Mike,
You know what? There’s a lot I do need to write about Philadelphia.
There’s dreams and there’s bewitchings that haven’t happened yet. There’s some notes and stories I have hidden away. I’m unsure when or where I’m gonna give them all away. You know there’s more incoming. I have a Mamiya C330 bookmarked again knowing I should risk the purchase now since there are limitations to what I can do with 620 rolls on the Kodak TLR gifted to me last year. I dearly love you for saying you’re looking forward to hearing what else I have to say about a whole new city that promises to build an ever improved version of me.
You’re going to have to bear with me as it’s going to be multiple chapters of my life. I appreciated when I ran down my plans on our drive to get Crabcakes about a month ago that you nodded. You smirked in approval. You said that it sounded like a good idea. Thank you for the assurance. We don’t know each other as well yet, but you don’t know how important it was to get that.
I know how you pay attention to the details, plans, by use of words. This matters when I feel irrational for wanting to explore relationships more by just being around people that are supportive of how I carry out my life. It is a great light in a dark, dark time. It’s the night that the internet is aflame with concern about Jimmy Kimmel being pulled off the air for stating the obvious. I state the obvious, I think, so often. It was nice to hear I seemed correct from an impartial observer.
I’m still sorry I didn’t chose Baltimore 7 years ago. I feel sorry that I didn’t give the relationships that I had there the chance to flourish earlier in my life. Baltimore is still sometimes too much a genteel southern lady waiting to unleash her wrath at confusing intervals. I’m not as sure of where I stand in Charm City, despite its clear charms. She laughs that whiplash off still a little too easy for my immediate taste. I’ll always love that pretty lady and that sense of humor tho. She’s always up for a good laugh. I’ll be close enough.
All I can say is, the variety in styles of love and care that I’ve received from people that were culturally raised on that almost even split between the Mason-Dixon line has been the happiest admixture for me. There’s a view on the Surekill Distressway as you go northbound past the Philadelphia Museum of art as Manayunk rises from the river that is one of the most majestic river views in the world. I didn’t crash that Malibu or veer out of lanes, nor did I pull out my phone in that traffic to memorialize it.
Someday I’ll find the right overpass, the right overlook to find the shot I want of it. The only competition for spectacular freeway day dreaming I’ve seen in my life is the slip and slide of The Warren flirting with the stars at the top of Oakland, and the Tilt-A-Whirl effect of the Jones Falls coming in from Roland Park into the core of Baltimore. You were still looking for old cars for us to shoot when I was around in August. Damn well you’re finding Corvairs now, trust me the one I’ll arrive in will be a hoot on either of those stretches.
I think of each time we get people to stop for portraits and how people really show you who they are when you stop and engage them. You know there’s the thread of tight community to both cities. We’re both curious about the respective landscapes that create such open people. I still smile at Wilder cracking that all of his cars are pieces of shit, no pretense, no loyalty cause a car is a car. I have to face that reality myself. You love something despite its flaws. Commitment means showing it love and it’ll love you back how you want it, without expectations.
Again, apologies that this went from a response, to a letter. I’ll make a promise of I’ll let you know first when I’m done about writing about Philadelphia. It might be a while. I hope I’m not testing your patience.
