… Freddie

My friend Freddie Baer died on November 12 of this year — two Wednesdays ago.

I’ve been processing it ever since, in various ways. Helping organize some of the stuff in her house. Helping digitize & archive her many works, and setting up a website for that (https://freddiebaer.com/). Writing various announcements. Obviously, looking back through my journals & photos, & talking about her, sharing her with others in my life, & co-conspiratorating w/ Liz Henry, among others. Dreaming, even, that I was talking with her, in her house, about her work & her death…

All this reflecting and processing has helped push me further into a reawakening. For almost five years, I’ve been immersed in one reality — focusing just on one thing, putting everything else in autopilot. I often described my brain like a spaceship that has had a hull breach — everything is blowing out into the vacuum of space, and anybody in the ship is just clinging desperately to whatever they can find. Part of my brain is focusing on the latest copyright news, my work at UMass, the fight against fascism, native plants, puzzles, etc. — but all those interests are just clinging desperately against the pull of the vacuum.

But over the last year or so, I’ve started tiptoeing back into the world — traveling for a reunion with friends in Minneapolis, visiting family in the Bay Area, reaching out to old friends — visiting Freddie in Eureka.

And I’m realizing I need to reclaim the parts of me that have been put on hold — the parts that are still clinging, and maybe some parts that have been spaced. And I need to fix the freaking hull breach, somehow.

So.

Writing has been one way I’ve organized myself over the years, and it’s readily accessible, and affords some discipline. I have no grand ambitions for this blog — “notes” captures where I’m doing.