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. 

Promise Of The West

In the first week of July, the days were dull and gray. I rarely left the house. Reading. Typing. Peering out the window. Watching a fine rain fall straight down, in July. Through the window of my soul — I mean phone — I glimpsed blue skies in the Colorado Rockies. My mom and sister, Nancy and Melissa, out for a walk and the dog pouncing through sage brush behind them. Scrolling further, I spied old friends cooling off in cold-water granite cauldrons lost in the hills outside Los Angeles. Summer life was happening, but not here. 

Luckily, I'd planned a trip. Call it summer vacation. Call it an escape from the specific gauzy inertia of extended quarantine — where days drag painfully slow but also blend together until suddenly you look at the date and you’ve lost entire weeks to a routine of no routine at all.

I needed newness more this July then I have any of the other Julys (or Junes, or Januarys — really any of the months you might suggest). Experiencing newness is the best way I know to slow down time’s passage and keep my mental range of motion. When you explore new paths, your brain creates new pathways. This has always been true. Not just a 2020 truth.

So in search of rich, striking memories, Mark and I stuffed the Nissan Titan full of camping gear and drove into cowboy country. Montana. Idaho. Landscapes that hold the promise of the West. That make you feel small, what Kerouac called an “eager insignificance.”

Regarding traveling during a pandemic, it was fine. We were masked up in the presence of humans, but in general looking to get away from people, to get out and contemplate geology, investigate botony, conjecture about astronomy. I can’t and won’t forget the shooting star that harpooned the sky while I crouched and quietly tree-peed in the middle of the night on the edge of that soft-water, glacier-scraping mountain lake.

Stuff To Do In The Summer

We’re already in the soft part of summer. Thoughts, cool and smooth like marbles, have been rolling around my mind. I have not written any of it down. I’ve worked hard to be flagrantly selfish with my time really. The other seasons are fine for meeting expectations but when the air is all sweet and warm you should do exactly what you want.

I listened to a radio interview recently with a man named Ross Gay, who spent a year writing an essay every day about all the small things in life that delight him. Loitering at a cafe. A kind exchange with your boss. The fore-knowledge of the donut you’re about to procure and eat. The book is pragmatically titled The Book Of Delights. How lovely! I haven’t read it yet but I’m inspired by the idea. In the interview, Gay talked about how when you start noticing everyday things that delight you, you gain an aptitude for it. It’s like building a muscle. Doing sit-ups is always hard until one day it isn’t.

A couple weeks ago Mark and I drove to Colorado. We spent most of our time in the mountains at elevations that left us seeing stars, forever gasping and head rushing. I grew up way up there and it made my primal self feel like itself once again to be walking through all those rustling-leafed aspen glades. Summer vacation — more specifically the ability to take a summer vacation — is no doubt a delight of the highest order. But the trip called forth plenty of tiny delights — the everyday kind that could and should make up my own Book Of Delights.

Like crawling in the tent with the dog and cozying our way through a wicked afternoon thunder storm. Unsettled air is a precious commodity. You can soak in the wild ions and feel electrified. As the booms got louder, Jedda’s ears rotated like satellite dishes and her eyes grew round. We all inched a little closer. An hour later, a sunbeam shot through the tent and we knew it was over.

Like drinking a beer in the afternoon with my mom. In the heat and sun, over food-truck Mexican, there is no urgency and the vibe is authentic celebratory relaxation and the conversation meanders in an inspired way.

Like watching the sun rise over an empty meadow. The wall of golden light moves like a whisper across the grass, setting the seedpods on fire as it goes. You keep very quiet as you watch. This process is a touch spiritual, a tad mystical. You feel like you’re seeing behind the curtain, glimpsing the ineffable. Some secret miracle. And just like that it’s daytime.

A Winter Toast

So much great stuff happened this winter, and I forgot it all. But let me think. There was a lot of walking, and driving. Fires against the cold. Twinkle lights against the darkness. Scenes where the snow blew vapor over the road and froze the pavement into a sheet of ice. Traveling around with my man and dog was my one and only true wish come true.

Fun fact: On New Year’s Eve Eve Mark and Jedda and I slept over in the 8 X 12” shed we (he) built on a plot of land in central Oregon. Outside it was 19 degrees. The trees creaked and grew. It was my first overnighter in the shedquarters, and without being glamorous, it was cozy beyond all reasonable belief.

I had brought DVDs and a laptop so we could cruise through some oldtimey movies, but my work laptop doesn’t have a disc drive? First world problems. It was a blessing, however. Because instead of gazing at the screen’s glow, we gathered around and listened to the Moth Radio hour. Drank camp-cups of wine. Stared into the propane heater it like it was a bonfire. To one of those Moth stories, I may have even cried. And throughout it all, I crept outside into the killer cold many times in order to pee, which is always my favorite opportunity to look up at the stars.

Been reading: Warlight by Michael Ondjaate. I love inhaling his enigmatic stories about love and family set stylishly amidst WWII.

Been listening: The new Eric Bachman, the new Sharon Van Etten, the new Jeff Tweedy.

Been watching: Russian Doll, on Netflix. I’m only 3 episodes in. I don’t know what it’s about. It’s feeling a little pop-culture existential to me.

Catskill Weekend Of Love

I read somewhere that humans are "mostly restlessness and empty space." The lucky thing is to find someone great who calms you down and fills you up, and spend as much time with them as possible, and come away renewed. That's how my friends Liane and Brian are.

Last weekend, we hopped an early flight to Newark, NJ and skirted around New York City, headed North into the soft, deep forests of the Catskill Mountain Range. The purpose of this journey was to watch Liane and Brian get married in front of a lake that perfectly reflects the sky.

We stayed on the top floor of a 200-year-old farm house in Roscoe, New York—also known as Trout Town USA. Also known as the locale where Dirty Dancing was filmed. Roscoe, home to corn fields and shallow, sparkling rivers. Home to tomato vines and cheesemongers. Home to pastoral backdrops bursting with deciduous beauty.

I don't pretend to understand love. It's not something you can buy, sell or own. It's not yours, it's not mine. I know it when I see it, though. And last weekend, it was everywhere.