#i'm30

[lovethesequelbaybee]

me & kurt.

10 Famous People With Scoliosis. That's how it started. I don't often admit that my obsession with Nirvana and Kurt Cobain as a 14-year-old in 2008 came from some ugly html website meant to make kids feel more at ease with their spinal deformities.

It was always cooler to explicate a more cinematic moment; the first time someone puts on "Smells Like Teen Spirit" for you, the first time you see that yellow squiggle subversion of the smiley face adjoined to the serif-font NIRVANA t-shirt on some doomy mall goth, the first time the local classic rock station in town injects "Come As You Are" into your earlobes.

But the truth is though I was abstractly aware of the magic in those melodies and production, I didn't really feel and understand the music until I learned more about the person's life who'd written them.

Seeing Kurt as the only cool, shaggy-haired, and haphazardly-dressed person on the list (also the only dead person), my pre-teen raised-as-a-boy brain was firing and I began watching YouTube docs on his life, his drawings, his art, his lamentations, his sarcastic quips, his gravely low drawl affixed to his dry humor, his blue eyes that burst so lively even in black and white photographs.

Like this dude, I was a skinny blonde depressive, friends with the theatre kids and music kids and newspaper kids and ridiculed with homophobic slurs by the jock breeds. I also lived in a small, lame town that was frequently cold and whose only hangout was a single coffee shop and whose only excitement could be found via vandalism, cursing, Apatow-era comedies, and loud music.

The chronic pain in my spine and my weak frame didn't feel so brittle when I could blast through Nevermind and In Utero in between watching and rewatching live performances, interviews, and eventually reading three different biographies of the man (which, surprisingly, I all rented from my Christian-ass high school library, known to not carry certain books that may have been too edgy or subversive. Fuck, in that town, Pepperjack Cheese was subversive).

I ripped holes in my jeans and grew my hair long and washed it less. I got droopier sweaters with bigger stripes and exclusively wore sneakers.

I don't know that I would've been cognizant of or able to articulate this then, but I had never before seen an artist be so capable of humor and melancholy simultaneously. Around my friends, I was jocular and amiable and the facilitator for hangout or party logistics. Internally and corporeally, I was in pain, deep, constant, chronic pain. Walking, sitting, standing, sleeping, it all hurt. It made me resent the things around me, the people I loved, the books I had to carry.

Every chance I got to implement Kurt or Nirvana into an English paper or journalistic endeavor for the school paper, I would. Knowing the band's impact and lifespan were so immense yet so limited made me crave every single detail, even though so many of them were yarns by Kurt himself. I related, often embellishing my own personal stories and dreams into something resembling a caricature of myself.

I may have been a lithe, witty kid to everyone around me, lustless and harmless to boys and girls who felt no pain and were fortunate enough to experience that "immortal" feeling so consistently and often inappropriately affixed to teenagers.

I was very aware I was mortal, I couldn't think from all the misery my body was inflicting on me. I wanted to die.

But at the same time I felt like if this emaciated and misunderstood kid across the country in some other shitty frigid town could make a big impact on the world and art, maybe I could too. Maybe I could do it and not die. I mean, at the time I honestly was young enough to believe the conspiracy theories about his death. I, like many people used to and many still do, considered suicide weakness, a failure, something someone I loved who was so dead could and would not succumb to doing.

So in the minutiae of Kurt's short life, I would cling to the similarities: On freezing bus trips to neighboring towns for improv and other speech/theatre-related meets or competitions, I would look out the window and reread Heavier Than Heaven and find solace in Krist describing he and Kurt befriending some kids in Iowa on the road while waiting in line for Taco Bell, I would wonder which Iowa town and if my school bus was passing by it on the way to my performance and I would feel an almost spiritual kinship to thinking it might have been that town right there. If I had been the right age and the universe had been kind I might have met him. I wore converse and Levi's because he did, bought "grandma sweaters" as my girlfriend at the time would call them because he did. I drowned myself with all the influences he indicated he was inspired by or straight up "copying": Pixies, REM, The Vaselines, etc. etc. etc.

And though this obsession would fade as I got into other music and issues and as my back surgery in late 2008 quelled a lot of my physical ailments, the flame would fail to burn out over the years. And, perhaps due to my back surgery or all the stress and pain pills I'd had to take over the years, my stomach soon mimicked many of Kurt's stomach issues, IBS a blanket term for what doctors gave up on learning about (according to both Kurt and me now, at 30, having just had a colonoscopy and still not having many answers on why my stomach can handle less and less types of food every year).

It's comical how much of a poser I felt like for getting so into Nirvana in the mid-to-late 2000's, as if it was my fault I was born too late to see them live. Now in 2022 I'll see comments on YouTube videos of Gen Z folks typing about how much they love Kurt and Nirvana unabashedly, praising his prescient feminist, genderqueer, and anti-racist and capitalist tendencies, alongside his knack for high-powered, heavy pop and rock melodies with lyrics that could be stupid and sagacious all at once.

I felt wrong for the false nostalgia I had held onto, felt like I was disrespecting what real grunge kids in the 90's had really experienced. This was before I understood that nostalgia doesn't always have to be one's own; the kids playing teens on That 70's Show were making a living off of other people's nostalgia for god's sake.

And now I'm nostalgic for that nostalgia. For 2008. For the moments in between class where I was smartphoneless and rereading the same passages about the Reading Festival or SNL performance. For my stomach's previous durability and the simple existence of completing homework without a job or taxes or the knowledge of true intimacy with another person.

Being a teen is one of the most miserable times in your life, especially if you're chronically ill, furtively queer, and so full of emotions and creativity that seems to have no vehicle for existence. And I miss it dearly.

"Teenage angst has paid off well, now I'm bored and old" Kurt sang. And I'm happy to know more of who I am now. Grateful to have lived longer than Kurt. But I do miss the spark of that intense emotion sometimes. I have to focus more to try to access it now. Trying to access it is like trying to write when you don't feel like it, it simply can't happen. The "psychodelic angel" from Conor Oberst's "Landlocked Blues" is not always "tugging on your hand." You need a breakup or song or film or conversation to ignite the embers of youth, of intense hormones, of that particular throb.

Part of what he was looking for and trying to explore is what has kept me alive. Part of him lives in me, or so it feels like it. That's an amazing thing for art that was written off as depressing junk by a lot of my parents' generation to do.

Sometimes I'm depressing junk. Sometimes I'm attempting to be the life of the party. I'll probably always be skinny and blonde and physically feeble. But when I'm doing standup or writing a song or editing a script or drawing a picture, nobody can stop me from needing to endure those processes and the catharsis they provide. Nobody can pilfer what I feel.

[julliavasilevna-blog]

Всем здрасте!🙋 . Вас так много стало за прошедшую неделю 😍😍 и это большая радость! В честь этого тык-тык по фото 2 раза. . Давайте знакомиться ⬇️Wellcome⬇️ . ✅Меня зовут Юля, и ко мне на "ты" . ✅Мне 30 лет (самое интересное начинается!) . ✅Живу на Границе с Китаем (Ni hao, ma?) . ✅Замужем за военнослужащим (почти 11 лет) . ✅Воспитываю сына ( копия отца) . ✅Археолог по профессии (знаю все про чоппер и чоппинг) . ✅У меня красный диплом (я все учила,  все сама сдала) . ✅Работаю в крупном банке (таки 5 лет и��торико-филологического прошли не зря) . ✅Рисую иллюстрации для стоков и ПринтШопов (чую это мое призвание) . ✅Фотошопер души (дружим уже лет 18) . ✅Учу English language (Инглиш лангуаге) с шести лет, но никак не могу разговориться (доктор, это лечится?) . ✅Мечтаю  умчаться жить в Тай (да будет так!) . Вот такая картина😆 . ⬇️ . Расскажите уже мне, кто вы? откуда? как зовут вашу собаку? что вас зажигает? с радостью почитаю и зайду в гости . Соберем классную тусовку! . . . Hi guys! . ✅My name is Julia ✅I'm30 ✅I am an  self-taught illustrator ✅from Russia, living down by the China border ✅sell my work on Shutterstock, Society 6 and Redbubble . . . . . #знакомство#обомне#акварель#акварельныйскетч#девушка#мама#жена#дальнийвосток#археология#фотошоп#шаттерсток#мечты#цели#кудаприводятмечты#красныйдиплом#watercolorblog#jul_p#wife#mom#girl#watercolorillustration#блог#shuterstock#funart#aboutme (at Bangkok, Thailand) https://www.instagram.com/p/BqVLnpwHNlb/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=6wl6tgahmrd4

[texasfitlife]

30 feels so good!!!! Thanks babe for my amazing Diamond Sky Vegan Suede Yoga mat that is just so amazing🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩 and my watch ahhhh so exciting!!! Yay 30 #happybirthdaytome #popflexactive #fitbit #I'm30 (at Texas) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0MACTWgtKB/?igshid=1pv7p7c12przy

[tisfortoni]

Be Happy.

A few reflections on my days at a Vipassana 10-day course (notice how I didn't say retreat. It aint no retreat, yo. :-)

I mean -- where do I even begin? I suppose I'd like to start with a question, one that Buddha asked time and again:

How deeply can you let go?

This is what I explored for 10 days, days that started confused and cramped, bewildered that meditation for 10 hours a day could be so painful or even possible. My legs hurt, my back tightened, my hip joints throbbed. Excruciating. How can anyone take this for so long?

My cottage. :-)

And as the shock of the physical pain started to subside on Day 4, (35 hours of meditation in,) and we began to finally learn about the Vipassana technique, a 'storm' as the teacher calls it, emerged within me. It was the last day of my 20s. Another decade passing -- I suppose just a marker, but -- fuck! I was turning 30, and I was still seeking so much with nothing to show for it. Or seemingly. Broke. Single. Workaholic. and 30.

I broke down, grabbed my knees to my chest in the middle of a 2-hour afternoon session, and cried. I cried for myself. I held back as many tears as possible and sniffled quietly in the silence of fans. The anger soon subsided as the bell dung for lunch.

The days came a bit quicker after that, but they were still hard, still completely, totally the most mentally challenging days I've ever experienced. It wasn't because of not hearing any words uttered to me on my 30th birthday, it wasn't because I missed my email, or my bed. It was because I realized how little I can control in my life and how much fear has consumed me the past 30 years because of it. Isn't it strange how scared we can be of ourselves?

Seven days in. A piercing of light, or rather, electricity, of charge, energy started to happen. I won't go into details of what I felt, as I don't want anyone reading this who has not done a course before to have expectations about the experience. But, I will say that no meditation session or hour of vipassana is ever easy. It hurts physically and mentally. A lot. There is always a struggle and with that struggle there is always progress in the way we deal with our inner selves, with our minds, with unlocking the truth. 

In the same way, life is always hard; there are always endless obstacles, and there is nowhere else to run but inward.

There is still so much to learn about this practice, and I find myself thinking, "Why haven't I done this before?" Deeply reflecting inward is something I've tried to do with gymnastics, with yoga, with meditation and breathing courses, and with bikram for years. I finally feel as though I've got it right. This works.

To be humbled by an experience is an understatement. I never knew that I had the potential to have so much patience and persistence, to let go, to really let go, not just on the surface level, faking it for an audience, to explore the inner depths of the mind and surface exhausted time and time again, to realize that I can and should continue to question, to remain vigilant, to seek truth. I learned what truth is and how to seek it. I learned that happiness is a long, arduous and bumpy journey. (And there's a lot more meditation to come...)

But that doesn't mean we should ever stop trying to be happy. And to make others happy. And to learn how to dig down deep into that swamp of yours, into the reptilian foundation of your brain, into the layers of guilt and misery you've piled on yourself, into the core of what you are and what you always have been.

"You are made of stardust," Carl Sagan says. You are strings of energy melodically gliding, vibrating, existing for only a moment in space. And every larger element in your body was created by explosions in and among stars, gas and dust from space. 

You are made of the reorganization of destruction.

But inside of you (and me!) is so much potential, so much light, so much will to do good. I'm pretty sure I've only begun to understand, but what I know now is what I've always known: It's always time to let go. to give. to love.

Day 10! Happy.

For more info on Vipassana courses go to http://dhamma.org. You can search courses in almost any country. I would highly recommend Thailand or Myanmar (Burma). :-) They have fantastic vegan food and are absolutely free, and you can make a donation at the end. "But your greatest gift is Dhamma."

[uhoh-but-yeah-alright]

Saturday well spent

Just watched this week's Community for the fifth time while drinking coffee out of my Troy and Abed in the Morning mug. Adulthood!