Electric

If you live here in the North then you know that it stormed last week. Copious rains and a big wind storm, which started when apocalyptic gusts blew tin cans past me while I was on my afternoon walk. The fence? The fence simply did not make it. It had been on the last of very many legs, and in the face of such wind, it keeled over and gave up the ghost. Under cover of darkness, I sat on the front porch and watched pale clouds scoot quickly across a larger, blacker backdrop. The air was electric.

As a homeowner, storms like this make gray hairs grow out of my head. As a human on planet earth, I love these storms for the wild energy that they bring.

Luckily, I have very lovely friends who came and helped me fix said fence with their magical tools. Also luckily, the sun came out on Sunday and I did naught but ride my skateboard. Take a peek at that backyard setup pictured below and ponder what it might be like to have a tiny skatepark in YOUR yard instead of those handful of rose bushes and that patch of grass for the dog to pee on.

Reprieve

It's the first of December, the 11th hour of this weird, wild year. I traversed the long holiday weekend drinking, eating, dancing, shivering, watching the sun rise and fall quicker than I ever remember it doing.

Thanksgiving was had at the Bracewell residence with some of my very favorite dogs and people. Everyone arrived with a bottle of wine and a casserole dish, so that when all the food was out, no inch of surface wasn't supporting a bottle or steaming bowl. Mountains of food. The dogs played for hours, slobber-mouthed and wrestling in the middle of the floor and providing grand entertainment to a room full of people who wanted to be entertained and yet to move very little.

Sunday was so bright and ferociously cold that the mere act of living burned up all your calories. Skating in it tore teardrops from my eyes. I was exhausted by 7:30 p.m.

Really, these long black nights are a gift—a reprieve. See, I'll take a potent allergy pill (doctor's orders—I'm not an abuser) and sleep the sleep of the dead, or of the very innocent. Of which I am neither.

Brrrrrrr.

Favorites 11.24.14

Waterfalls: Hiking to them, specifically. In the rain, specifically. I don't even wear a rain jacket—just get my clothes wet all the time. It's senseless. Except, it's not. Because you become one with the water at some point. Lightening flashes. Thunder booms. The dogs' ears go back. And then around a corner, there it is: magnificent whitewater pounding forth and turning the dark pool pale green.

Macadamia nuts: The most extravagant of all the nuts. Say you're eating them for their selenium and essential fatty acids. Ignore how much they cost.

The Moth, in person: Sitting in a bar listening to people tell 6-minute true stories in front of a microphone. Laughing if they're funny. Misting up if they're sad. Allowing the entire evening to shame your own fear of public speaking.

Begin Again: I did not hate this rom-com with Kiera Knightly and Mark Ruffalo. And Catherine Keener. And Mos Def. And Ceelo. And guitar music. And a non-typical Hollywood ending. Plus, my old pal Josh Zickert randomly riding a BMX bike past the camera. Hi, Josh!

Cold Crusade

For a mind clogged with the debris of life, a few clear, cold days are all you could hope for. On dog walks, for instance, the wind rakes everything away, mentally speaking. The sky is either azure or, if it's past 5 p.m., especially starry. "Every walk is a sort of crusade," says Thoreau. And it's true.

Also, the Christmas cactus is blooming. Just when one needs it. When one might go out and buy oneself flowers. Thanks, plant. Sorry I never watered you.

Cold Wind

A poem, today. For you—and for me.

Cold Wind, by Jim Harrison 

"I like those old movies where tires and wheels run backwards on
horse-drawn carriages pursued by indians, or Model As driven by
thugs leaning out windows with tommy guns ablaze. Of late I feel a
cold blue wind through my life and need to go backwards myself to
the outback I once knew so well where there were too many mosqui-
toes, blackflies, curious bears, flowering berry trees of sugar plum
and chokeberry, and where sodden and hot with salty sweat I'd slide
into a cold river and drift along until I floated against a warm sandbar,
thinking of driving again the gravel backroads of America at
thirty-five miles per hour in order to see the ditches and gulleys, the
birds in the fields, the mountains and rivers, the skies that hold our
10,000 generations of mothers in the clouds waiting for us to fall
back into their arms again."