I recently attended Vibecamp, an annual event wherein ~500 loosely coordinated internet acquaintances engage in hijinks at a campground in rural Maryland. It was kind of like adult summer camp, but if adult summer camp required you to believe at least one of the following three statements in order to attend:
While there, I asked a member of the kitchen staff what he thought brought this particular group of people together. He lowered his voice a little and told me how the venue had always been accepting, how they hosted LGBTQ+ retreats before it was cool and never minded when teens wanted to indulge in a bit of marijuana. I think this was his covert way of saying, “Though it is hard to deduce exactly which weird thing bridges you all, it is not difficult to deduce that the thing that bridges you all is weird.”
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In “Tea at the Treedome,” the third minisode in the pilot of SpongeBob SquarePants, SpongeBob visits Sandy Cheeks’ home. You probably remember how this goes. Sandy, being a squirrel, breathes air; SpongeBob, being a sea sponge, does not. He immediately begins to suffocate. The majority of the episode consists of him vehemently refusing to admit he is in the process of slowing asphyxiating to death. After a sequence of nail-biting denials, SpongeBob (and Patrick) completely dehydrate. Sandy returns from the kitchen to find their shriveled corpses (cue hyperrealistic photo signature to SpongeBob’s visual comedy) and resuscitates them by providing water helmets. Then, everyone has a good chuckle about it.
Supposedly this is humorous to watch. I find it agonizing, both now and when I first saw it as a child. I need it, shrieks SpongeBob, finally accepting the reality of his dependency on water. Holy fuck, our time on earth is bound by mortal constraints, five-year-old me suddenly realizes, and I worry that I am failing to act with the corresponding amount of care or urgency. Or something like that. I recently celebrated my one-year anniversary back in the States after two years living in rural Japan. I wrote the first of these pieces the week I returned. I wrote the second this morning.
I. By the time I awaken from my jet-lagged slumber, it’s too hot to run. I've been getting a full eight hours, just at the wrong time: 3 in the morning until 11. In California, the sun is golden but parched, not like the tropics, where I was before, where heat is first filtered through an everpresent wetness in the air. As an undeserved but flattering side effect of presenting loose opinions as definitive statements on the public internet, people occasionally mistake me for an authority and reach out for advice. Because I love secrets, and because I love people, I often choose to hear them out. The most common genre of problem I encounter goes something like, “Should I vocalize what I want?”
Hi from Sebastopol, where I am buying overpriced groceries from bulk bins at the artisanal co-op, stomping in rain puddles at apple farms, and drinking Bi Luo Chun at the local spiritual-coded haunt surrounded by patterned tapestries, various pan-Asian tea paraphernalia, and a distinct lack of people of color, all of which are good indicators that I am in a peak hippie town. Tomorrow, I will head to Harbin for a healthy hot springs soak, continuing my quest to relive even a whisper of the former glory days when I was a 10-minute drive from a dirt-cheap, naturally-fed onsen at any given moment, then eat wellness food that brooch-wearing white women swoon over and finally force myself to learn what “ayurvedic” means. I’m coasting on the high of discovering that I’m a glutton for physical affection (goodbye lifelong shyness around unsolicited hugs), the deliciously nourishing cuddles that have followed (goodbye cringing at the word “cuddle”), and the bittersweet gratitude of snail-mailing an old friend this news when I wish he was here in person so I could tell him whilst holding both his hands in mine and sitting cross-legged across from one another in my living room.
More and more, I structure my life around collecting novel experiences: good, bad, euphoric, disquieting, depressive, uncomfortable, wacky, common, real. Doesn’t much matter what it is, as long as it’s authentic and teaches me something. This makes me high openness, amenable to abetting crime, and someone who says “yes” more than they strictly should.
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