What is Mind Meld?

Not quite like that.

Any blog needs an introduction, right? Like we should probably pretend to give you some information about ourselves, so that you’ll be invested in our lives. Or we could describe which niche we fit into, so you feel comfortable knowing that you’ll be getting lots of confirmation bias if you stay tuned, like Mormon-mommy-blogger-who-homeschools-and-never-feeds-her-precious-
spawn-processed-foods or frazzled-but-adorable-recently-married-and baby-hungry-hair-stylist or self-indulgent-undergrad-studying-abroad. Sorry, nope.

We’re going to describe YOU first, because we’re less the type of people who will be what you’re looking for, and more the type of people who will make you realize WE were what YOU were looking for all along but didn’t know it. Clever, right?

You probably don’t mind excessive profanity. You’re probably about as gainfully employed as we are (minimally). You’re intrigued by anecdotal history. You recognize that one cannot be both a dog person and a cat person. You aren’t going to lose your shit if (let’s be honest, when) we use the word “slut”. Hopefully your temper isn’t at short as Anya’s (it’s my cross to bear). Hopefully you’re a fan of ridiculously long, convoluted, and freakishly accurate analogies, as Paul is awfully fond of them. Luckily you don’t mind our widespread use of parentheses. Perhaps you’ll say “my, they have style!”. Perhaps you’ve been searching for a pair of people that are conversant on both the Sound of Music and Walking Dead, The Real Housewives and Game of Thrones, whose tastes run the gamut from the Kardashians to the Kareninas. Here we are! Here you are! If you’re none of those things, but you like pictures of corgis and witticisms, we can try that too.

Welcome.

You may call us Anya and Paul.  We are but two contrary travelers, sharing the same vessel through this winding journey we call life. (Sorry our first analogy is so heavy handed. We promise they’ll get much weirder and more difficult to follow) We’re also going to acknowledge that there are occasionally some potentially alarming holes in these analogies, but good luck trying to convince Paul of them.  Just keep playing along with us, it will probably be worth it in the end.

ANYWAY, Let’s say this vessel is a train. So, we’re all on this life train (we, meaning man/womankind). Ok, but maybe not all of us are on a train.

Some people are probably in planes, nevermind the fact that the service, food, company, and overall experience are pretty much guaranteed to be complete shit, they’re fast and that’s important, right? Those people are going places. There are probably others on cruise ships, enjoying the mediocre entertainment and canned food as they drift across the sea. These people are going to places that are made to look exactly like the place they just left, if a few degrees warmer. Same language, same food, whiter sand. But they like to say they have been places.  Then we have the walkers and runners and bikers, all great, active, alternative transportation methods, but not exactly feasible for long-distance trekking. These people are going nowhere fast. Don’t even get us started on horse people. Most are in automobiles, not caring that they’re trapped in rush-hour traffic, because they are in the drivers’ seats, wheel in hand, and are completely in control of their own lives. They have got it. Yes, we warned you were fucking judgmental. (Didn’t we? We are.)

Anyway, we’re on a train.  Trains belong to another era, but they certainly have not outlived their usefulness.  They’re powerful machines with a clear destination, while maintaining the option to get off at different stops along the way.  It might not be the quickest means of travel, but it’s efficient, romantic, and always carries the (remote) possibility of a murder mystery.  On this train, everyone has their own cabin.  Maybe you wander out to the dining car for a light dinner with a few other train travelers, maybe even the same group of travelers, but you must eventually return to your own cabin.  Alone.

The approximate level of glamour and intrigue of the train.

So, there we are, on this train.  And one day we found ourselves at the same table, enjoying lemon squares and tea (not an analogy, we fucking love lemon squares).  Our union started out with the basics: hypothesizing every minor plot point of Star Wars: Episode III (ah, for the days before Hayden Christensen was hired to overact our dreams into the ground), sobbing over the end of The Amber Spyglass, and acting out our own darkly comic versions of Harry Potter.  We would go on to spend many an afternoon turned evening singing praises of the finest Crawley sister (Lady Mary, obviously) and rolling our eyes at the most self-indulgent and delusional Kardashian (Try as they may, nobody can touch Kiki, did you see that Dragon Boat Race? Classic.).  One night, after scathingly mocking drinkers of kombucha tea (while making plans to try/brew our own), we returned to the same cabin.  We couldn’t tell you how it happened exactly, but we both made comfortable nests in this new joint space. It was a Mind Meld if there’s ever been one.

So, dear reader, here we are. Two bodies, sharing the same cabin on this train.  The cabin here is of course the mind, which we again didn’t need to tell you, but this post is supposed to be a missions statement (a convoluted, multi-paragraph mission statement) and you’re supposed to spell things out in those, right?  Regardless, we are essentially one unit carrying two different sets of experiences.  Do we occasionally differ on opinions?  Of course. One of us hates Jennifer Aniston, the other hates Jennifer Lawrence. Sometimes we’re purposely difficult to each other because we both love the Secret Garden and fail to see “contrary” as a character flaw. But at the end of the day, more often than not when Paul starts asking “But isn’t-” and Anya says “Vicky, Christina, Barcelona”, she’s answering the question she didn’t even let him finish.

We are completely in unison on all important topics, most of which stems from our eternal philosophy that people are completely terrible. Sorry, Anne Frank, we tried. We are of the opinion that if you give a mouse the benefit of the doubt, you’ll sorely regret it (unlike giving a moose a muffin). Yet we’re still somehow holding out that someday, someone will not be a disappointment (ha, right?). Despite this, or perhaps because of this, we are hilarious, poignant, and extremely judgmental, which is great for you, dear reader, because that means plenty-o-entertainment for you.  For you, we’re going to take a page out of Carrie Fisher’s book and use her "if my life wasn't funny, it would just be true, and that is unacceptable,” motto.  Please don’t mistake this for genuine cheer; we still have far too many incidents involving crying over Folger’s commercials and Dance Moms season finales to be real people. Isn’t it scary that there are two of us?

“Help me, Liz Lemon, you’re my only hope!”

 [Carrie Fisher Photo Credit: Cylla von Tiedemann]