New Year Energy

On the winter solstice of 2020, I was driving through the dusk-purpling snow of northern Utah. The way was cold and calm, lit by Saturn and Jupiter — so close in the Southwest sky that if you squinted they became one doubly bright celestial body. An auspicious alignment: the “Christmas Star” of lore and legend. 

It got me thinking about those Three Wise Men who used the same chilly light to find their way across the desert in Jordan. “Good news!” they proclaimed when they saw the “star,” or so the story goes. I was looking for my own good news in this dark season, and I remembered that the Three Wise Men, as well as The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (which also features the Christmas Star), teach of reprioritization and hope. A big ol’ lesson of 2020.

After a hermetically sealed drive through the Western United States, I spent the winter holiday season in Colorado with my family. It filled up the reserves. It provided the change of venue I needed — out from under the Willamette River Valley rain cloud where it can get dark, too dark to see at times.

The calling of our generation is no longer the perfectly orchestrated Instagram post. Look I’m just a hypocrite like everyone else but on my better days I’m here for the radical connection. Not to stay locked away, but rather to show up. My family bond has never felt tighter. My connection to the world has never felt weightier. When I meditate once or twice a week at five minutes a pop (no mindfulness high horse here, just an attempt-at-an-examined-life mini pony), I try to send it out to everyone I can think of. “It” being vibes. “It” being rays from the core of my tissue. “It” coming from my biggest artery — straight to you. 

Dylan once said: When you’re surrounded by love, you can do anything. 

It’s the new year and I want to do something. 

Me At 43

This is me at 43. I make my living thinking and writing. I still got it. I still want it. I was a little girl who grew up big. I’m a kid inside, but I’m not the same person as when I was a kid. Life’s interesting and continues to astonish me. And I like gettin old. 

As the years go by though, I miss my family more and more. There is a couple days’ highway between me and them, out where they are in the Rocky Mountains. But at least the distance isn’t further. At least I can cross it now and again. And hey, I do see them often in my dreams, which is a cool kind of consolation.

Last week’s dream: We were in Glenwood, Colorado — an old-western town at the mouth of a chasm where the Colorado River rages through. My sister had wild long black hair that caught the light as she rode a prancing black stallion. She was a kind of powerful warrior I think. 

Me, I was tasked with saddling up a soft and friendly bay mare. I had to ride it through the canyon eastward to our old home, alone. At the mouth of that canyon, there is a tunnel, and I was afraid to parade my poor horse through it amidst the rushing interstate traffic. Dad was there, and he dreamsplained to me: “Just keep her in the median.” 

“Sounds like something I would do,” he said the next day when I texted him CliffsNotes to the dream. 

Sooooooo anyway, here I am, at the mouth of my 43rdyear on earth, ready to clip clop through the tunnel of winter and endeavor to carefully “keep it in the median” as a pandemic/recession/social unrest/fiery apocalypse all rage by in the lanes around me. Dad, I’ll give it a try. 

Took It For Granted, Want It Back

Where are we on collective effervescence? Here on the brink of emerging from confinement when anxiety about being back close to other humans is a helium balloon about to pop, I’m remembering the magic-est together moments that might not come again any time soon.  

I remember this past December being squashed into a coach bus seat next to Brian Nally passing around a tear-drop-shaped bottle of whiskey on the way down from the mountain. We all shouted at each other down the aisles and the music was too loud. It was our work Christmas party. A few days later everyone got the same sinus cold and didn’t care. 

I miss sweaty and 90 degrees on the 4th of July, pawing through a cooler of cold beer and La Croix, skating the mini ramp and hugging your friends when you leave early before the fireworks start, as you always do, along with all the other dog owners.  

I miss the dark and heat of a punk house basement watching our buddies' band Donkey Lips play. Guitar shredding. Ravaging of drums. Rampant shirtlessness. Glee.

I miss posing for pictures by putting your arms around people, cheek to cheek, and always hugging people fully and warmly and hard, enthusiastically—a weak and awkward hug being the equivalent of a warm-milk limp handshake.

I miss scampering up the street to Conquistador after work for rambling happy hours to celebrate festive news like people getting engaged instead of sad news like people quitting or getting laid off. 

I miss the coziest holiday potlucks where none of your friends bother to respond to your party text so you think no one is coming, but then everyone shows up and you pack in the kitchen sharing huge plates of food, mainly mashed potatoes and cookies and finger food, and then continue drinking and grazing with unwashed hands and unfaded smiles, while a toddler climbs onto the coffee table and dances for your entertainment into the wee hours of 10 p.m. 

You’re Innocent When You Dream

I was lying in bed during the small hours, thinking about how a co-worker had told me that memories are stored in the same part of your brain as where dreams are created. So, if you ever can’t sleep, you should meander back into your memories and before you know it, you’ll be in downtown sleeps-ville.

I wanted to go back to sleep. So I pictured the house I grew up in. After my sister and I moved out, my parents sold that log home they’d built with their bare hands, and the new owners flattened it. A life metaphor. You can’t go home again. 

In my mind I saw the front sidewalk, cracked and home to many ants. I walked up the steps, built of railroad ties. Mom’s flower garden was to the left, peony heads hung heavy as melons and the bees hummed in the sun. Grasshoppers in the mint patch. A sandstone wall near the patio. Up onto the porch, where the wood swing was strung. I never sat on that porch swing, I only ever slouched with bare dirty feet on the top porch step in a patch of sun — which is where our fat tomcat Nutmeg also liked to sit. The cats and I always hung around the same places, a bunch of wild animals who nevertheless wanted a little warmth.

I passed the porch and moved into the house. There was the kitchen table and the old iron woodstove. On winter afternoons after school I’d to crawl into the space behind the stove where it was warm and where, again, the cats reposed. There I’d sit eating dry Cheerios from a mug. 

Floating through memories, I moved down the long hallway into the back room I’d shared with my sister. The floorboards were cracked pine and in those cracks lived a million black earwhigs. Once the light was turned off, they’d emerge and reign fearlessly over the nighttime realms of the bedroom floor. We used to tiptoe to the bathroom terrified of brushing a pinchered bug with our pinky toe. But that was back when I had a robust bladder that didn't call me to the porcelain every single night at 3 a.m. 

Which is how I found myself lying awake in bed the other night, trying to find sleep again after having got up to pee — remembering a person and place and a time that no longer exists. And you can’t trust your memories I’m told. 

Live Deliciously

Sitting at my desk again and thankful that I have work to shape my hours.

On the scrolling platforms, everyone’s sharing their highlights from the last decade. A lot of these posts begin with “The last decade was full of transition, of highs and lows…” (hint: THEY ALL ARE). That’s time. It’s just transition — a pile of pearls falling through your fingers. 

Calendar-wise, the 1990s was my teens, the 2000s was my 20s, the 2010s was my 30s. It’s tidy the way it turned out — and helpful for recollecting, too. 

When I look back I don’t blame myself for anything I did in the 90s. Lil’ me did my best with what I had on offer — access to rugged wilderness, MTV and a high-octane hormone-flooded brain. 

My 20s and 30s were cool; I wasted too much time, though. I spent whole hours and days building barriers and spiraling away from my authentic self.  

Now, as I enter my fourth decade I’m fiercer and softer than ever. I don’t “give a shit” but I also cry when grizzly bears fight on the nature shows cuz I want them both to live and “be alright.” 

Today, I hold my self ruthlessly responsible for every second lady time drops in my supplicant palms. Not like I need to be busy all the time; I see it more from a value perspective. There are times when “doing” is the worst thing you can do. 

“WOULDST THOU WANT TO LIVE DELICIOUSLY?” Asks Black Phillip, tempting an innocent lass, in that movie The Witch.

Yes, yes, yes! That’s all I’m ever trying to do.