When Faraway Things Seem Close

This post is long overdue.
Originally intended to be a cross-post with Emily, this was written by both of us at various points throughout the 24 hours leading up to Pride Weekend. Intoxicated and driving around my hometown and the surrounding highways aimlessly, we stopped at a CVS to purchase a notebook. And by that I mean I got nervous, shoved two dollars in Emily's hand, and made her go buy a notebook. I don't think we kept this up as long as we intended. Nevertheless, I present to you the chronicle of two really anxious girls overwhelmed by possibility. And Tegan and Sara a little bit.

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June 26 2009 10:30 pm (Emily)

I GOT INTO Katrina’s house last night at 1 am. I went 24 hours without sleep and woke up at 1 pm.

We drove around Rockland aimlessly listening to Tegan and Sara which was so epic it cannot properly be described. We should ideas and dreams and things that would make us happy. I’m having an I-Thou relationship with the road. The roads in America are all the same.

We have the same idols and we constantly bring the conversation back to autostraddle. We auto-dance. We are auto-hot. We are auto-blazed, auto-drunk. We auto-win.

We don’t know how to get there. All we know is that City Girl is the best Tegan and Sara song and it’s possible to be nowhere and not lost at the same time.

The road is magnificent.
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June 26 2009 10:45 pm (Katrina)

WE'VE BEEN ON the highway searching for the overlook for about 20 minutes. It probably would have been only ten, but as I am probably in no condition to be driving, I’ve been going at a steady 40 mph on a 65. This adds a new element to auto-blazed.

I look over at the clock. 10:40. There is so much night to be had. It reminds me of DC, of the apartment, where we’d be too high on uppers to sleep but too stoned to have a real conversation. It’d be 2:30 and we’d feel like the night was so new. 10:40 is so early and I wonder if this is what it’s like to not know you’re young.

If someone asked me how long I’d been young for, I’d say my whole life. If you asked me when I’d stop being young, I would tell you that’s not up to me. When does one stop being young? Do you wake up and know, or is it something that only occurs in retrospect? And if youth is defined by behaviour, I plan to always be young. If growing up means giving up your voice and forsaking your selfish desires , and well... being no fun, then, regardless of the number of years we've actually been around.. well, I’m gonna be forever young. So suck it, Rod Stewart.
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June 27 2009 1:51 pm (Emily)

DRIVING IN THE CAR with Katrina’s parents. We’re listening to The Clash. My heart was pounding at the beginning, thoughts like “holy shit” kept going through my head and I almost forgot where we were going. To be honest, when “Rudie Can’t Fail” came on I felt relaxed, it was a little sound from home, something familiar. Because everything here is new. Every step I take is one into the unknown and it is both exhilarating and terrifying. In fact the past two days have been exhilarating and terrifying and these next two should be so intense I’m expecting my heart to explode at any time.

Except I’ve got this feeling we’re all in this together and together we can deal with anything.

Katrina joked about me sleeping in the car to avoid questions but now her brother is passed out next to me.

We’re about to get on the highway and it’s end to end traffic. My heart begins to pound again. I just want to get there.

I don’t know if the nerves are from pretending to be from Boston and going to AU or from meeting autostraddle and really Riese really. Both options are plausible.

I am having a heart attack again. We are on Lexington.

2:34 pm we are on the corner of Lexington and 56^th.
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June 27^th 2009 2:44 (Katrina)

WE JUST DROPPED EMILY off at Brooke’s which means we pulled off this incredible charade.

Waking up at a quarter to noon and laying on top of the sheets listening to “City Girl” on repeat, we knew we wouldn't be this still again.

Tegan and Sara were singing about me when they said “I know you’re scared even though you say that you’re not”. They know this as I try to stride confidently through my house in my baptism-ready dress and heels, sending secretive, self-assured smirks to Emily, trying to convince her we’ll make it through the car ride.

We will, and we do. Off I go to the house of God.

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Also, if you just read that and thought to yourself, "Well that was cool, but I'd prefer it as a stoner comedy," here's a badly edited video that was never really supposed to see the light of day, due to its bad jokes and continual breathless laughter over nothing.

I'm working on a lot of things right now. While you wait anxiously for them, check out how the rest of this weekend turned out by clicking my link at the top or reading Emily's exceptionally beautiful coverage of the same event. You could also do both.

I Have a Chronic Need to Explain Myself

1. Tonight is my last night in the Philippines. I will miss Biblical flooding and laying on the bed being too hot to move and being too shy to speak too much in public and getting drunk in my grandma's house after she insists that I eat lasagna.
2. Last night was my second to last night in the Philippines, and it was wonderful, and it reminded me feel that I have a lot to come back for.
3. There are gays here. As a general statement, they're cute and always willing to talk to my drunk ass.
4. Have you received your postcard yet? Well that's because I didn't send it. Here's a preview!

For anyone who doesn't know about Katrina 'Asian' Casino Postcard Project 2009, here's a brief explanation.

A couple of days before I left, I collected addresses of people who wanted postcards (this part is relatively straightforward). Now, I was going to write you all personalized rap songs, but as I have a tendency to always insist on being embarrassingly honest, I decided to put a spin on it (the postcard project, not the rap songs. That could come later though). I collected the names, and drawing them at random, assigned the recipients to one another. I also threw in some extra people who I haven't been talking to/didn't ask for a postcard. Just for funsies. And because I didn't have any dark secrets to reveal to some people. Everyone who's receiving a postcard is receiving a confession, secret, or general pointless rambling/crazytalk to another person. Just something I've never told them because I'm too awkward or shy or lazy or I have social tact or something (this is a lie, I have no social tact). Each postcard begins with "You don't know this, but" and then continues on to whatever one-sided conversation I wanted to have. I feel like this post is going to turn into some absurd Filipino post-secret ripoff, but sometimes that's just how it is.















Also I tried to get the tackiest postcards available.
Also I'm a really poor planner, and these will probably be mailed from New York.

So without further ado, I bring you a series of really serious statements followed by really hilarious pictures.

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You don't know this, but...

Sometimes I get a little scared that we'll never be who we were on that first night.

You're one of my favorites, but I'll never admit this to you because I'll always be too afraid to hear I'm not one of yours.

Everyone knows it's always been about you.

And I don't know if you'll ever believe it, but I'm fine.
(The rice paddies that my ancestors slaved on so that I'd never have to wear sunscreen in the summers)

Once I was lurking your Facebook page, and I accidentally liked one of your wall posts, then freaked out because I was way too high to figure out that I could unlike it.
(Alternatively: Meeting you was like meeting myself.)
(Fuck yeah, tigers!)

You and I both need to calm the fuck down.

I'm fully aware that all I really do is break promises to you.

You're the reason I question anything at all.
(Am I the only one who finds proud eagles of all nationalities to be hilarious?)

You're the reason for the flowers in my hair.

Every action that has defined our relationship has also perfectly and explicitly conveyed my deepest personality flaws in a way that I never could have anticipated or expressed.

When I was younger and thought that I wanted to get married and thought that I wanted to get married to a man, that man I pictured was just like you.
(Mabuhay a las Filipinas! We sell slippers, brooms, fans, and...wedding cakes made out of beads?)

Sometimes I find you to be so unbelievably plain that I can't help but find you irresistibly attractive.
(Hello, favorite.)

Though you probably do, I should have kissed you right when I had you.

I love you...not like that, not really, anyway.
(I don't know if I just haven't been paying attention, but I have never fucking seen one of these.)

I'm really sorry we didn't get to talk in the brief time we were together, that time we existed in 3D.
(I have no idea why I don't own one of these hats yet.)

I wasn't even really sure if I liked you until recently.

I think you're really beautiful.

You should stick around.
(Hi, drag show this year plz?)

You're a little boring, but you're so so sincere, and I guess that's okay.

You might well be the reason I don't regret coming home this summer.

(I ran out of photos/postcards, so here's a picture of me getting attacked by a crab at my grandma's house.)

This postcard was discarded because I couldn't verify its truth:

I'D LIKE TO KNOW what you think of this. What you think of that, that thing I just said. I'd like to know if you knew, and if you knew then when you knew and why you haven't said anything, and come to think of it, why I haven't said anything either, but I suppose that's not for you to answer. I'd like a lot of things. I'd like hot nights with rolled down windows and loud music. I want to sing along. I'd like questions without answers and open ends and true belief in possibility. I'd like the fifty-yard line. I'd like a deluge, a rainstorm, silencing the world outside my car; I'd like to drive with no headlights. I'd like to know the corner of your jawline and what it feels like to thread my fingers through your beltloops. I'd like the rooftop where I learned to smoke and sneak and eventually not get caught. I'd like my hometown nostalgia. Fuck, I'd like any nostalgia.

And I don't know if you know this, but when I'm gone, I miss you the most.

What Am I, a Bicycle?

Or, The World Clock on My Phone Means Nothing
Or, There Are Motherfucking Cats Fighting on the Roof, and I Think I Just Heard One Fall Off

I was going to do a pretty dry, straightforward post about what's been going on the past week, but that got difficult as I have too many feelings, and I still can't properly structure any of my thoughts. I go between feeling elated then lonely then listless then frustrated. I can't quite figure out what I'm doing here yet. I think I'm on vacation. I don't know what that means.

Anyway, since I'm obviously going crazy, I've just compiled a couple of stream-of-consciousness deals I've written over the past few days. Sometimes I'm almost coherent, but it's not something I'd like to get used to.

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IF A TRAIN LEAVES from Montreal at 8:30 am on July 23, and a plane leaves from Manila at 11 am on July 24 but also at 11 pm on July 23, at what point will the difference in time zones start to make sense? When will I understand what day it is? What will it feel like when I’m hurtling through time in the body of an aircraft, a time machine cleverly disguised as a plane? What will it feel like when the world unfreezes, again engaging in its perpetual motion, and I am awakened from this listless existence where I am haunted by the shuffling feet of lethargy and ennui? Will my days still blend together? Will they continue to lie before me, stretching out into infinity as if in a perspective study, their only end an early night’s sleep? What day is it now? It wouldn’t make a difference.
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I think that, if I stared hard enough, I could make myself into you.
I think that maybe I’ve been studying without knowing, tracing dotted lines and cutting out patterns. But no matter how hard I try or how closely I look, I will always be only the paper doll version, cardboard clothes falling off at their poorly bent creases.

Maybe what I really want is to turn you into me, because maybe the only person I’ll truly love is myself. The only person who won’t ever leave is me, and even that’s a little questionable. If I turned you into me, would you leave? Or would I decide that I didn’t like myself and abandon you in your paper doll clothes? Probably. I’d let you turn to pulp in the rain, and I would know that you couldn't chase me.
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THERE SHE GOES again disrupting the poetry of her collarbone.
A flash of red is a plea that you’ll remember her face, because she won’t tell you her name.
Her walk is brutal, her hips, her skinny, swaggering boy hips, unforgiving.
I’ll always think she hates me.
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Sometimes
When I am drunk
My thoughts
Move vertically.

This also happens
When I am talking crazy.
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I wonder sometimes if I made you up, or if it was the other way around. I wonder if you made me into you. Maybe that’s why you left.
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Last night I meant to write a series of drunk emails.
Instead I threw up in my grandma’s bathroom.
And knocked over a picture of the Pope.
My cousin passed out on the couch.
And our grandma found her at 4am with all the lights on.
Today a really wide truck tried to get through a narrow street where our car was.
My aunt rolled down the window.
Translated, she yelled,
“What is this? What’s going on? What am I, a bicycle?”

I’m staying here an extra nine days.

I'm Very Big in Asia, Just Like Zac Effron and Korean Pop Stars

Or, Now Is the Typhoon Season of Our Discontent

So I don't know if you guys heard, but 1) I'm on the other side of the world!, and 2) I'm totes a pretentious fuck. That being said, the first installment of my Filipino blog series (maybe they will pick it up as a Filipino tv show complete with games, midgets, and sexy ladies) is an introduction to the cast of characters here (actually, just my grandparents, really) written in the third person. That was really just a device to get the introduction started, and it felt really stupid afterward, but it sort of eventually became too late to change, and so it remained.

I have a lot more to say and a muddled melange of ways in which I may decide to say them, but that's for another time, possibly drunk or in list form or in both. I'm sort of in sensory overload right now, so forgive me if my reaction has been to mute the colors.

H'okay!
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Katrina Casino was not a pen name—you can check, it says it right there on her birth certificate. Katrina Casino was a writer, and therefore, she did writerly things. Absent-minded and spaced out, she wandered through the mundane occurrences of her days imagining the metaphors or complicated verb-adverb combinations that would one day make her feel brilliant, artsy.

She sat cross-legged on couches in the middle of the afternoon while everyone was sleeping, laptop open, coffee untouched, doing her writerly duties—that is, leaving a blinking cursor lonely on a new Microsoft Word document while she spent copious amounts of time on Facebook, Twitter, AIM. She had no concept of time, except when it came to deadlines, and even then, it was a bit questionable. As a writer, a blogger, a music journalist, she touted her hip, contemporary occupation when around those of her generation, but hid it behind a reluctant business degree when talking to elders and relations, as this usually solicited disapproving head shakes and pitying advice.

This was a lesson learned best when she visited her grandmother, a woman who, in her younger days could both drink her brothers’ friends under the table and design and repair her sisters’ dresses. As a mother, she stayed up weekend nights waiting for her prodigal sons to arrive home so that she could beat them with a rolled up copy of that morning’s newspaper and berate them for making their mother stay up and worry. Nowadays she was an immensely talkative and wonderfully cockeyed grandmother whose half-squint couldn’t help but elicit suppressed giggles from those whom she scolded.

“Don’t study communications!” she exclaimed upon Katrina’s confession concerning writerly ambitions. “Everybody knows how to communicate, they all just talk-talk,” she said as she leaned in, widening one eye, as she was very serious, “but business, that’s how you make money!”

It was all very…Filipino.

Very Filipino, just like her grandmother’s tendency to add extra syllables to everyday words like lipstick (lipeestick) or upstairs (upeethestairss), or her aunt’s misspoken invitation to the movies. “Come with us to see Transformer!” (only one).

While all this transpired, Nicasio Costiniano sat at the dining table, smoothing out the creases in the linen. Katrina’s grandfather was now a man of few words, affection and approval coming in the form of exchanges like, “You reading a book?” Yes. “Good,” though years ago he was an engineer, designing runways for the military in the War and playing the piano at bars to pick up extra scratch. Ten years ago he could be found on the front lawn of the Casino household, instructing pavers on how to reconstruct the Casino driveway. Six inches of sand, four inches of gravel, a layer of cement. You didn’t have to, but goddamn, if you wanted to, you could land an aircraft on that motherfucker.

Nicasio could always be spotted around the house in his characteristic white t-shirt and boxers. The women lounged around in loose, floral printed dresses that they called dusters. Everyone knew that this was a euphemism for mumu, though no one really realized they were creating a euphemism for mumu, or that they thought one necessary at all. But fuck if Katrina Casino should ever be caught dead in a mumu, or even a duster—what kind of self-respecting tomboy does that—she donned the boys’ uniform, striped boxers and all.

They Call It Way Too Rowdy, We Call It Finally Free

It's like my notebooks threw up on my wall.
My notebooks hide the contents of my head, thoughts, scrawled out in code, meanings revealed by ink color or placement on the page, once sandwiched into a leather binding, are now hanging up over my desk. Pinned up against the wall as if they escaped from my notebook and found themselves disoriented by the explosion with which they were released.
My lists are on my walls. I can look at them all at the same time. Even if I can't understand what they're trying to tell me. They're overwhelming, but as they sit there staring at me, they remind me...something's happening.

Something's happening. Something's fucking happening.

I should have known it because lately I've been so restless and eager and anxious in the very best way, but also in a way that totally keeps making me nervous. Toward the end of the school year, I used to do this thing where I'd take present me and look back on past me, and almost feel envious. It would never be distant past me, it'd just be like...me three months ago before I knew that such-and-such was going to happen, like I never knew I'd stop caring about money or I never knew I'd end up on the floor of this total beatniky apartment, or hey, I never knew I wouldn't regret coming home for the summer.
Anyway, what really characterized the me in the past was that she never knew that her life had the potential to go somewhere else. I mean, she knew that there was growing to do, and that growing meant change, but this girl never felt what I feel now...like I'm on the brink.

Things just keep fucking happening.
Before I was always expecting my luck to run out or for things to slow down or for me to try to have to be a real person. But it's been all ups. And I'm finally starting to believe in it.

What I'm trying to say is, I just had one of the best weekends everever, the weekend that was supposed to be the peak of my summer, and though I did go through this two-and-a-half day period of real/fake/real devastation when it was over, what I'm beginning to realize is that what happened this past weekend isn't over at all.

So here we go. Starting off with a little vocabulary:

gaygrounding (n) - a common punishment for teenagers of the homosexual persuasion, where the subject in question is not forbidden from leaving her home, but from leaving her home to...do gay shit. This may include Pride events, hanging out with that girl with the short hair from down the block, or secretly running downstairs to watch Logo every time the parents leave. This last part, of course, still continues, as that is the point of secretly running downstairs. Gay grounding is usually highly ineffective and tends to promote increased homosexual behavior, but with a sexy, vindictive edge.

See: X, KC Danger

Gaygrounding is what I narrowly escaped this weekend after a blowout of sorts with my parents that almost kept Emily out of my house and me out of a momentously absurd pride weekend.

But. There are some things that are worth modeling through it for.
And one of those things is Autostraddle.

I think I mentioned before a few of the reasons why I love this fucking site and how I can't possibly believe I'm lucky enough to be working (I've been told that's sort of an inaccurate verb, interning perhaps?) for them. It always turns into gushing. Just to be sort of repetitive, this place isn't just a website, it's a community. A community run and organized by some of the smartest, wittiest, most interesting, self-assured, and unapologetically fucking crazy (and potentially superattractive, who knows, oh wait I do) queer ladies I've yet had the privilege of knowing. Like, I thought in a group of lesbians, there's always the one really cool girl who sort of rallies and carries the rest. But in this group it's all of them. And they're the ones giving a new kind of lesbian, bisexual, or otherwise inclined women a voice. They can have fun and get shit done. And it's just nice to know that that exists.

Oh, and did I mention that the interns are totes bomb-ass too?

And did I mention that both those groups of people hauled ass to New York (or, y'know, bused in like 20 miles like me) for dinner and a parade and a spoof on Tyra mail and a Rodeo Disco Party? Because that happened. And it was glorious.

Here are the vague concepts:
1. Meeting People from the Internets
So bitches always be like, "Isn't it weird that you don't really know any of these people? Like, won't that be weird?" Well, let me answer that for you. I do know these people, and they are weird. And crazy as shit. But there's too much love to deny it. The thing about meeting people on the Internet and then meeting them in real life is that you've already got it out in the open--we're weird. Like, yep, we exist pretty functionally in 3D, and maybe we've got jobs and friends and school and shit, but at the end of the day, I don't have to second guess what you're doing, because I read it on Twitter. I didn't have to be there for your last significant experience. Read it on your blog. Let's just talk about it, how we're all kind of weirdos who feel the need to broadcast our lives online. And we're unapologetic, because we wish other people would do it too. Give 20 people like this a weekend together, see what happens.

2. Drunk
The number one feeling of the weekend. There was little/no time to not be like this. I think most of the interns ingested their daily amount of grains through liquids this weekend. But why not? I mean what better way to get to know someone than by getting all loud and getting all touchy and getting all honest and covering each other while peeing because the line in the men's room is shorter and ending up in a room full of juice bottles in the corner of Stonewall Inn? Were those last parts just me? Woops, sorry then. What I'm trying to say is good times all around.

3. Persistence
In flyering alwaysalwaysalways, in getting up before noon despite wicked hangovers, in believing that eight people can stay in one hotel room. In fighting gaygrounding because we that what we did wasn't wrong. And in sneaking back into a bar over and over again, only to be escorted out by the same cowboy bartender three times.

4. Embarassing Honesty
I've got this tendency left over from DC that goes like this: amphetamines + alcohol = rambling honesty and an abundance of feelings/the need to tell them all to you. And so I did. Sitting outside Mason Dixon for two hours while the party reached its peak and eventually cleared out, Emily and I were visited by various members of Team Autostraddle who shared a number of drunken gems and relics from their young gay past (no, we totally heard everyone's coming out story, and it was all really cute, especially since everyone was in cowboy hats). We sat out there for two hours and watched everyone go by, half dazed, never sober, always talkative, and half in love with everything and everyone and the feeling of a dream finally realized, though realization didn't mean an end.

And it's all just so fall-against-the-wall-and-take-it-in-because-what-if-you-never-feel-this-new-or-real-again. ((But you do and you will and you know it, but you don't thikn you're allowed to admit it just yet)).

5. Withdrawl
It was like having everything happen at once. And the fastest of events make for the slowest of goodbyes, and after two straight days of being surrounded by peoplepeoplepeople (rather, girlsgirlsgirls), waking up alone in an all-too-spacious bed just doesn't do it. All day I can talk and work and run around my town, but when I finally stop, all it is is, why is my bed so big, and why am I the only one in it? And where are the other ten people I've attached myself to in these two days? And why aren't we getting stared at in public? Where are those naked feathered guys who walked behind us in the parade? Why aren't the following my car around? (Actually, if someone could arrange this, that'd be great). I miss everyone; I never wanted them to go back to 2D.

Everything's a little duller now, a little muted. But at the same time, everything's a possibility. Everything is what it could be, or could be again (and again and again), because maybe the apex is just a plateau, and we're all just really into climbing.

Have a Great Summer

There's no best part about quite literally not living anywhere, because every single part is the best part. I mean this totally and completely. I carry my life on my back, I have absolutely no responsibilities, I fall into the stories of the people around me, drink beer, and live my life so well that I cannot even comprehend it. My every day is enhanced by the excitement and mystery of where I'll fall asleep that night and what I'll do when I wake up the next morning because for once, I am free of obligations and may really and truly do anything.

I'm calling it urban backpacking.

(Partially because the only reason I can afford to do this is because of my privilege and my parents' permission, but whatever. It's the end, not the means).

The worst part is that, being the last one to leave of those who are leaving, I have to watch everyone go. I have cleverly evaded this by occupying myself just enough so that I've managed to not say goodbye to the majority of people who have meant the most to me this past year. And I would almost feel guilty about this, but I don't. Goodbyes don't mean much to me at all. I mean, they do, but not nearly as much as my time previously spent with a person that made an emotional goodbye expected or worth it at all. I don't say goodbye because 1) they're rarely permanent, and 2) I don't want the last time I see a person for quite a while to end up being some awkward, fumbling, sad attempt at a summary of what our friendship has meant, and 3) you already know that I want you to have a great summer. That's basically it. I love people too much for goodbyes, and my verbal skills often fail me, leaving me with a lot of regrets and "I wish I had said's," and that's not anything that anyone needs to bother with.

The last time I saw you, I probably just left it at "later."
Because that's really all it is, you know?

As Far As Waking Up in the Beds of Strange Girls Goes

I think this one may be my favorite.
Probably partially because it wasn't like that, but also because free housing in Montreal is the shit, second only to finding out that that connection you thought you've been making with someone without ever seeing them is actually real and staying up until 4 in the morning watching/mocking The L Word is completely worthwhile.

Anyway, her name is Emily, and we sometimes have similar thoughts, though she's a little more music/photography-oriented and sometimes writes in a more stream-of-conscious style. Read it though. She's got a maple leaf tattooed on her arm, and that's how you know someone is worth your time.

This post is also about Canada.

Lately I've been doing this thing where I'm really cautious about throwing whimsical statements into the air because I've picked up this habit of actually following through.

Among the results of this are my previously mentioned night at the Potomac, thirteen hours of travel for about a day and a half in Montreal, and a rediscovered affinity for girls in v-neck T-shirts. These are a few of my favorite things.

Montreal was immensely rewarding. It taught me that the exchange rate of spending time with people in other countries is about double (potentially because of travel time), that swing dancing is difficult, that there are lighters so tacky that they shock even me, that you cannot make right turns on red in Montreal, and that, yes, I can speak enough French to negotiate last-minute sleeping arrangements in the corridor of a hostel under a bookshelf containing both a French translation of 100 Years of Solitude and the Dr. Phil reader. Brilliant.

Traveling for no reason. It's the only reason.