Ah, the truth reveals itself…

I had my first Ketamine therapy session last week. The trip is moved along and kind of chaptered by songs on a playlist and I felt I was wiggling my hips to the music, so strong was my urge to dance — I thought: Don’t move too much or you’ll knock your airpods out. But afterwards my psychiatrist said he had never seen anyone lay so still during a session. But I was smiling, right? / Not at all, he said. (I was sure I had smiled a few times — a smile of Ah, the truth reveals itself…)

As I felt it coming on I asked to hold his hand (!? not something I would usually do) and then, after a few minues, I felt good so I let his hand go. I was glad to be floating around mostly as just a soul on the loose and I was aware of the exact nature my soul (or core essence) — it was, wait for it, curious, confident and playful (makes me laugh to write this down because it’s such an obvious un-revelation — but still true!) I kept thinking I AM SO CURIOUS IN THIS LIFE! And WHAT IS THIS? and WHAT AM I TO DO HERE ON EARTH? No concrete answers but I understood that I feel so free on stage because it is this all-soul feeling; I’m not hemmed in by worldly constaints. More than once on stage I’ve thought I could levitate or dance virtuosically (mostly recently at the Chicago Humanities Festival) and have been surprised to discover, in front the audience, that I don’t have these skills (in Chicago I gave up and started doing push ups, determined to do something physically impressive.) Being on Ketamine (or on stage) is like a dream in this way. Although, I would argue, there are incredible things you can do on a stage if you feel yourself to be all-soul up there, that’s what’s special about performance and performers (I’ve witnessed this from the seats.) Elsewhere in the trip I realized I had broken a lot of hearts and I tried to say a sort of blanket apology to the long line of people I’d been romantically involved with (I’ve never had this thought in real life; I don’t see myself this way at all! But when I described this to my psychiatrist afterwards I was crying, so great was my remorse.)

There was more but that’s all I’ll write here.

I was down for a couple days after the trip, crashed out, and then on the third day everything integrated and I felt like I could move through life more easily. I did not want to do all the desperate little things I usually do, I had a natural resistance to them. I do think I often get stuck, creatively or in life, by believing I have to do something and getting more and more worried because I am not — whereas if I enter through the curious door, just kind of feeling things out, I tend to arrive somewhere. I guess because curiosity repels anxiety and without anxiety the body stays loose and so you actually have a tool to work with — in thinking or in any kind of creation. You can make things with a tense, anxious body, but that’s swimming upstream.

Last night Isabelle and I tried to answer the question What do you never want to do again? A lot of things came to mind actually and some of those things were the things we had, historically, wanted most. We also talked about Florentina Holzinger’s work at Venice and how we feel about it (we feel great about it).

A couple hours later I said Do you smell smoke? We immediately looked at our Watch Duty apps to see if there was a fire nearby but didn’t see anything. We made the decision to call the fire department, because what if everyone smelled smoke but no one took it seriously? The fire department said there were no fires in my area and to call back if I saw smoke, smelling it wasn’t enough. I hung up feeling sheepish, as if I’d called to report a whiff of perfume or some stinky breath or something supernatural –a ghost or preminition, a sense of deja vous. It was the smoke from the Simi Valley Fire, that’s now clear.

If someone is having trouble sleeping I reccomend these Traditional Chinese Medicine capsules called Calm ZZZ. But first you might also have to change your life to get out of fight or flight — I tried these a year ago and they did not have the same effect.

Since Beguiled #2 featured stunning Lucky, I imagine that several Pacific Northwest queer couples have had serious conversations about if they are ready to bring a third into their relationship (that’s what Lucky wants, a relationship with a couple.) Even if you don’t ultimately reach out to them (there’s still time!) I’d love to hear more about those conversations.

And many of you wanted to know how the Beguiled experience played out for our first Beguiler, Lisa Hanawalt. Here’s Lisa:

“Miranda asked me to give an update on my Beguiled experience, the people NEED to know! My friends thought I would be inundated with responses, but it was just a small handful — all cool & interesting people, most of whom live far away. I wrote back to a few I felt a particular kinship/potential friendship with, but haven’t met anyone in person, yet. I’m sure I will at some point! I did start seeing someone (I met him at a party at a bar, then asked him out via instagram DM) and I sheepishly told him about the Beguiled thing, which he thought was cool. Then he filled out the questionnaire to surprise and amuse me — he put a lot of effort into it and even texted an ex! Some other respondants skipped that prompt, which is interesting (I thought it was the most exciting part because it’s a bit awkward). Anyways, it’s all very new, so who knows… but I found it romantic that he did that. Beguiled works in mysterious ways!”

Amen.

I know I’ve brought this up in the past but I just want to circle back with this update: I AM ONLY GOING HARDER WITH THE VOICE MESSAGES. It is rare that a day goes by when I don’t leave or recieve a voice message for a friend and they range in length from two to twenty-seven minutes. Whole lives are being played out in this medium that is less like letter-writing and more like film or performance. Especially more like Swimming To Cambodia. I would like some hard data on how many people are using this medium on a daily basis and then some theories on how it is changing the way we think. As of today we all still apologize for length. We don’t don’t apologize with such shame when writing a long text-based message. I wonder if the voice message feels more female-coded, more gossipy, more emotional, more indulgent, more ephemeral, less serious or useful. I like it for all these reasons.

Relatedly, the Voice Memo fuction on the iPhone now has a Copy Transcript button (ok it’s not that new, since late 2024) — so you don’t even have to look at the transcript to copy it, you just tap the button and then open your text document and Paste. This is important to me because I take a lot of voice notes, every day, and I have been using my notes app, Evernote, for voice recording but the Voice Memo accuracy is so much higher it’s not even funny.