carry

I always liked the idea of being prepared for anything, so when I was younger I used to carry everything with me in a little black messenger bag. Some lockpicks. Some tools I thought might come in handy, a multitool that actually did occasionally. A notebook or two, some pens to go with it. A camera (I still haven't gotten a smartphone and I certainly hadn't back then). A knife, a paracord bracelet, a compass, a flashlight. Sunglasses. Chapstick. My wallet. A medkit. I kept my keys on a carabiner on my belt and they had a bottle opener and another multitool.

There's a rule of thumb for backpacking in order to get your kit lighter: make a list of everything you bring, put a tick next to it if you use it. If you don't use it, don't bring it next time. And every time I hear someone say that I'm thinking: but what if you need it? I may not use the compass every time I go out, but what if I get lost? Or the medkit--that's something you hope never to have to use but if you don't have it you're fucked, right?

But slowly, over the years, I started cutting down on these things. The tools were the first to go. I always envisioned using them to explore abandoned buildings or something, but that never happened. I never took pictures so I stopped carrying the camera. And lockpicks--look, I like picking locks as much as the next gal but it's weird as hell to carry them around everywhere. Then I ditched the paracord and the compass and I lost the flashlight at a music festival and just never bothered getting a new one.

I used to think you could tell everything about someone by the things they carried, you know? Like, everyone carried some thing that if you looked through all their stuff you could have an "ah-ha" moment. And, you know, maybe that's still true. But I'm looking at all the things that are still left in my little black bag, and wondering: is this really who I am? Am I a sensible notebook, a collection of nice pens stolen from offices, and a cheap pocket knife that's in dire need of sharpening? Am I the bottle opener on my carabiner, or either of the multitools I still carry around? Or maybe that's not the question. Maybe the question is what will people see if they look through my things. Maybe all of that sends a signal I don't even understand.

thanks, i guess

So there's a story I haven't really told anyone. Not properly, anyway. Which isn't that remarkable--if you buy into the lie that a human life is really just a collection of stories, like I do, everyone has stories they don't tell. It's not like it's shameful or anything, I just hadn't figured out how to tell it.

This was back when I was still in Boston, back when I was younger and prettier, and the bones of it, well. I was walking to the T station from a friend's place and decided to try to catch the bus because I was tired and probably a little hungover. Smartphone bus-tracking apps didn't exist back then, so catching the bus was a bit of a gamble. It could cut a thirty minute walk down into ten to fifteen minutes of travel time if you time it right. If you time it wrong, that thirty minute walk starts looking pretty good.

Today it was one of the days where the timing was right--I saw the bus coming down the street, moved closer to the curb, and, naturally, it just drove right on by.

I ran after it for a bit and then stopped and shrugged and resigned myself to walking, having successfully wasted five minutes or so waiting for the bus. Then a cab pulled up, and the driver said, "Did that bus just blow past you?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Here, get in, I'll give you a ride."

"Sorry, I'm flat broke, man," I told him. Which was true.

"No, no, it's fine, get in."

And that was that. He drove me to the T station, I thanked him and apologized for being broke, and then I got out and went about my day. And I never told this story properly because it felt too clean. It became a quick throwaway anecdote because I was uncomfortable with telling a story with such an obvious moral as "sometimes people are nice." It's off-brand, you know?

I forgot that the whole time I was wondering if I'd really said I was broke, or if I just said something like "I don't have any cash," or something like that. That when I left I had this nagging fear that I'd somehow wronged this man, that I had cheated him out of payment, that I should have just said "it's fine, I'll walk." I didn't remember making the decision to get in the cab. I remember muttering the destination, still not quite sure what was going on. Was I about to find out how much money I really had?

And that's the real story, the real moral, the version that's on brand. The world we live in makes someone doing a nice deed for someone seem suspect at best. That in my mind, surely somewhere down the line there had been a miscommunication. And some part of my mind clearly knew that this was all nonsense, that what had happened was exactly what it looked like, so whenever I wanted to tell the story, it's the clean version. The version where I'm not a neurotic mess.

Or--and this is the part that gets me--maybe I'm imagining all that. Maybe I have such a hard time picturing something good happening to me, when I recalled the memory, I added in all those bits, all the uncertainty and anxiety and obsessing about the possibility of miscommunication.

Still, after all that, years removed from the event, my mind has finally allowed me to accept that surface interpretation. That sometimes, despite all of my bullshit, good things still happen.

risk, reward

For a while I was obsessed with payoff matrices, those little boxes you see in game theory which tell you who wins and loses. The concept itself is unremarkable, but once I learned about it it was like I could see these numbers floating around every decision. I'd see people going through their day picking fights and getting angry and I wanted to just grab them and pull them aside and point at the numbers. They're losing out here. This isn't a good strategic move. You can do so much better.

I finally asked a friend who'd just finished a heated argument, and he said that it's not about winning, it's about being right. It doesn't matter if you convince the other person, you have to let them know they're wrong. "You should try it sometime," he told me. "It'll do you some good."

"Okay," I said, and decided to take his advice right there. "You weren't right in that argument. I think you just think that being angry is the same thing as being right. Most people do."

"Man, fuck you," he told me.

Neither of us, the numbers told me, were better off for this exchange. And that's the real problem with game theory is it always assumes we're rational actors. That our behavior is always calculated to maximize our payoff. Risks are only taken if they come with great reward. Poor strategic decisions are never made, because they are poor decisions.

Eventually the numbers went away. They were largely useless anyway--of course I knew that humans are self-destructive creatures at heart. But now I'm starting to wonder if perhaps the numbers were wrong.

so sweet and so cold

Forgive me.

Sometimes I find myself hoping, when the snow starts falling, that this will be another one of those years where it just never stops, where the whole city is buried under the snow, stopping transit, closing roads, taking out power lines. Where everything vanishes under a thick white blanket. It's been like that since I was little. Most girls my age were probably less interested in playing Natural Disaster, but it was my favorite game. Earthquakes and floods and hailstones and terrible winds.

It's not one of those weird survivalist things. I mean, I know I can live a few days in the wilderness if I have to, but I'd rather do that on my terms, somewhere with a nice view. Running water is good. Losing power sucks. I think it's just the way it reminds us that we are here at Mother Nature's sufferance. It's something primal.

I'm not sure anyone's noticed the way my eyes light up when there's a storm warning. I'm not sure what I'd say if they asked. But there's a storm rolling in and I know I'm going to be sitting here with a thermos full of hot cocoa praying to the God I don't believe in that the power will go out and leave me alone with the blizzard and the cold.