Wedesday night (May 30) I’ll be presenting at Pecha Kucha, a showcase for design talent and ideas in San Francisco.

(…I’m getting some help from an architect/designer friend of mine…)

The format of Pecha Kucha is dictated by each presentation — on any topic you like — consisting of 20 slides, 20 seconds each, and it goes down at 20:20 (8:20PM).

This was a natural extension of my 20/20/20 Project.
In order to create a presentation on modern dating, I had to revisit all of my date write-ups in an attempt to draw some conclusions about the influence of technology on love.

While doing the project, I was often asked whether anything came from any of the dates — did I find love through experimental writing projects? No, no, no, I would shake my head, thinking: this was a writing project… I never intended to actually meet anyone! Except for Date #11, who reads my blog occationally (maybe? perhaps no longer?), no one I still keep in contact with –

Er, but I’m wrong. I actually, um, did meet someone. (Crap. Now whenever anyone asks how we met, I actually have to say I met my boyfriend by posting an ad on Craigslist.)

You see, I didn’t think I had met anyone. Date #18 was actually an “un-date.” He never expressed a desire to be part of my Project… just wrote to say he thought what I was doing was… interesting. He read my blog. He did wacky projects of his own. That was that.

But suddenly, I found myself a couple dates short, back there in December of 2005. This dude had been telling me about this zany idea he had for a Project having to do with Edward Furlong. I said we should do it… (“and can I call you Date #18, puh-lease?”)

Well, we never met. Rained out.

Months later I had a couple of friends asking me about this Project Furlong business, when was it going to go down? Shit, I thought, these people actually took me seriously. So I emailed What’s-his-name.

Nothing happened. We lost touch.

Fast-forward a year: I needed someone to sublet my apartment for a month as I was moving out of San Francisco. Lo and behold, guess who was looking for a place to stay for one month? We met for a burrito and the rest, as they say, is history.

Why have I gone into this indepth description of my personal life? Well, to set the record straight: I guess you can find everything in life on Craigslist.

My only warning: if you throw your love-hook into the dating pool, be careful with what you might catch:

For more on love, control, technology, online dating and the 20/20/20 Project, you can see Shannon present at this month’s Pecha Kucha:

30 Ritch St.
San Francisco, CA 94107
Between Townsend and Brannan (SOMA)

Doors open at 19:00
Show starts at 20:20

Driving through town today.
Radio scanning, lingers on male a cappella group singing “Star Spangled Banner.”
Stop to listen.
Take a moment to see the stars and stripes flick in the wind out the corner of my eye. Cotati Veterans Memorial.

Listening to the lyrics, never made the Orwell-Buddhism connection before:

“And the rockets red glare
the bombs bursting in air
gave proof thorough the night
that our flag was still there.”
(from Francis Scott Key’s SSB)

“War is Peace”
”Freedom is Slavery”
”Ignorance is Strength”
(from Orwell’s 1984)

A monk asked Tozan, “How can we escape the cold and heat?” Tozan replied, “Why not go where there is no cold and heat?” “Is there such a place?” the monk asked. Tozan commented, “When cold, be thoroughly cold; when hot, be hot through and through.
(from Zen Koan)

Through something’s opposite a thing itself is defined; understanding of what something is by what it is not. Or, we have greatest proof of the value of our country, our home, our freedom (our peace) when we are faced with its opposite.

This is not a political statement. On this Memorial Day, I am driving around aimlessly to procrastinate working on my poetry, having slipped under a covering of self-doubt. Listening to 98.3 Froggy FM (“real country variety”), I think about why we remember the dead, duality, and how it relates to the death of our selves — and the importance of remembering and then accepting this death. And the need for it.

I know what I am by what I was, am not, and will never be.

Or: Death is Life

There are so many dead of me. Each life I cannot live blossoms wastefully before me — unpluckable. Not able to bouquet. Perhaps I have grown to be a woman of grand accomplishment, a propeller spinning glorious, creating her own wake of energy: she the boat, she the passenger. She: the water.

Yes. I thought I would someday be standing on top of a very tall mountain, my achievements littering the mountain-side like wild flowers. All paths taken, multiple lives lived. There — I would see in the town below, where night has come to kiss roof-tops, only the glow from neon humming: my name in lights.

But instead down below, I, through the graveyard of my possible selves, unborn: “We all must put to rest Possibility under headstones ever-multiplying.” Laying down the flowers.

I could have stayed in San Francisco;
I could have gone to law school;
I could have married my high-school boyfriend;
I could have gone into farming;
I could have worked my way still up corporate america, jet-setting until death by vertigo;
I thought I would be a teacher, an academic, an actress, a writer. I thought I might be skinnier, suicidal, married, have a master’s degree. I thought I’d be living in Spain.

I am none of these things. Instead I am

I have life but one. And sweet that it is this. So now there is no remedy for anxiety of what is not, except for medicating with what is. Mediocrity must be swallowed.

And who is this that wanders, tripping on epitaphs fresh from the chisel? It is “I” and she, too, must be put to rest.

There is a singular experience, yours the grass crunches. Softly, dried carnations: winter not far behind. It is stated. The headstones shrug, silent.

No time for mourning undone acts. Lay down the death of lives possible. Thank them for their death, what they’ve done: they are there to show you what you are not, you are not to know what you are. From death, life.

“True words seem paradoxical”
(from Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching)

And did you know? The “Star Spangled Banner” has four stanzas? Enjoy:

O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen thro’ the mist of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream
’Tis the star-spangled banner. Oh! long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation,
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heav’n-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our Trust”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave

. . . [ ] Memorial day

I went to post today, and my blog didn’t recognize me.

At first with the low rumble grows.

Next to a defensive bark, hurt echoing under.

“It’s me!” I soothed. “Hi there, sweetie. Remember me? I write you?’

Starting in with a wimper, scrunched face: “Where the hell have you been?”

I stumble, “oh, geez. Don’t give me that face… you know I can’t take that face.”

“Well I — I can’t help it. I’m — mad at you.” Lips tremble.

“No! No!” I reach out with apologetic hands. “Don’t now with the tears, look — I’m sorry, sorry, hear me? Don’t be mad. Really, don’t be mad.”

Digital eyebrows curling together, a Kahlo: “I — waited. I waited a long time, but you — nothing. Okay, like every once awhile — some damn post about dead deer or a human bridge or, or, or — stupid YouTube videos — what the hell was that? You don’t have enough time to write but you can fuck off and video tape it and then post it on me?!? How do you think that makes me feel?”

“Look, I — things are picking up again. You know, despite my best efforts, how busy I can get. I’m workin’ on my poetry, writing a memoir, getting ready to travel, learning French, freelancing — I even managed to acquire a boyfriend for christ’s sake! You know how time consuming those can be!”

“Excuses. All excuses — what you’re telling me, the ‘posts’ you’ve done over the last few months… nothing but excuses.” Voice gets soft: “I thought you wanted a venue to write… I thought you were committed.”

I get the back side of her monitor. I reach out my hand, stroke the machine.

“I — I am… I’ll make it up to you, promise. I’ll post, like, a bunch of times in the coming weeks — and not lame shit like before — I’ll actually write something. Promise. Look: how’s this, right now?”

The glow of the computer screen faces me: “It’s a start.”

I know.

I’ve been horridly neglectful – know that although we Penngrovians like to take things slowly, there’s been a surprising amount of distraction in this little country bumpkin’s life, resulting in lack of posts: The second annual SlinkyFest was fun and festive; Grandpa’s memoir has kept me busy; I’ve been working on my poetry (of all things) with new friends Richard Denner and David Bromige, and I’m making preparations for a trip to Turkey.

But I promise interesting tidbits and Not Keeping Score-isms soon.

In the meantime, check out this lovely piece of human beauty compliments of The Smoking Gun. We’re introducted to Bryan James Hathaway, a young man who got frisky with a deer carcass. Note page three, when — in defense — his lawyer quotes Billy Crystal.

(I love people.)