You’re Supposed to Be Here

Musings from January 2008

You may think you arrived accidentally. Googled me or a periphery, and presently intrude on secrecy, privacy profane. There are things I wish I could throw away—but not many. However personal and personally meaningful, this is not a diary. So don’t worry.

The inevitability of internet memory was less than a whisper six years in the making and now, nearly six years of deepsicks later, I stand corrected but tall. This website has a long history—from its piecemeal coding to its Frankenstein scripts, a CSS switch mess browser snafu WordPress party mix of amateur awesomeness and dogged shrug-grins hey, I’m doing the best I can self-taught and -talked into the worthiness of this venture, the great experiment adventure of internet self-expression begun when, again, the inevitability of internet memory was a distant threat and unlikely dream.

In 2002 and earlier (angelfire! geocities!), for me, non-techie, barely out of my teens, there were no long-term consequences for behaving badly, or worse, writing poorly. There was no indication of digital permanence and permutation, that I myself would be permanently changing; something clear commanding, indelible telling, firm and affirming, watch your back your cards your mouth, your ftp, mentality, the way you construct the way you perceive you live your life.

There was, eventually, the real world chimes of career-minded shaming one day, you will regret this. Blacklists and blame. Evidence of anything is a crime. And there was no chance that I wouldn’t believe it. I did, and I do.

But there was no one day, you will be proud. Memory and totality and honesty and skill—patience and practice and face plants and class acts—will mean something.

In the depths of deepsicks I read and remember, I linger and suspend. Reminded of an unseasonably warm March day, five years later I feel the breeze on my face. I smell the particle board wood of that attic bedroom space I tried to break dance in the ninety degree days, the hippie girl on South 35 flashing her peace sign for all time, I feel the phantom shocks of my kidneys in rebellion. Watch the car ahead of me leap into the sky and little Eli salt his puddle. I navigate road trips, rapturous flips and losing grips on life only to ricochet, regenerate, relive relearn remember. Friends. Family. Self. No self. Pieces into patterns into perfect circle cycles—new sights, new sounds, new ways of feeling feelings.

The danger of search and exposure, untoward eyes on frank emotion and exercises in silliness, tries to monopolize inevitability, history and longevity. But really… who could predict the gleam, the warmth, the heartsurge satisfaction of creating and sustaining a public space for expression. Who could warn? who could promise but a future self in retrospection: One day your glow will burn out any doubt whether life is amazing, and blessed. Each story a wave, tsunami, hello! and echo on a never-ending Doppler effect.

If everything I’ve written is evidence, deepsicks is proof that I am content.

Whoever you are and however you got here, these are not the things that I cannot hide. They are the things that I want to share. You are supposed to be here.