First World Problems Of Mine

Look, it's October, and you and I both have gutters to clean and those juice-bursting, perfumey Asian pears to eat.

However, last week my refrigerator broke and I was forced to put everything in a cooler to wait five days for a repairman, and the cooler being small, I had to throw away a crap ton of food like the Heinz relish that's been chilling since 2008 at least.

Also? Instagram's (only) cool because it makes you think creatively (maybe), but I realized recently that I'm too lazy to take out my phone and snap pics of cool shit anymore—instead, having fallen into this slovenly habit of just screen-grabbing other people's shots who were in attendance to repost in an "I was there" sort of way. Pathetic,  huh? Or maybe ... maybe I'm just living my life?

This Time Last Year

This time last year, it was a lot stormier. Remember?

There were torrential downpourings that caused almost-floods in my basement (thanks for helping me bail water, Nick!)—leaves and tree limbs littered the streets.

The days were cooler. There was already an acceptance of fall, an acceptance that longer, darker nights are restorative—that “rest” is allowable, that sitting on the couch under a blanket under a cat is a more-than-fine way to pass an evening, that all the “going” and “doing” you did this summer is somehow JUST NOW catching up with you and maybe that’s why you are suddenly so FUCKING EXHAUSTED every night at 6 o’clock …

My birthday weekend passed in a blur of cake and candles—candles on the cake, and candles for the darkness of a 9-hour power outage in SE Portland on the very eve of my birthday fete at Commonwealth. Remember? We all sat there in the dark, talked, drank wine.

In the early days of October, I cooked a big soup out of tomatoes and potatoes and sage. I dipped toasty bread in. I thought about all the life things that needed doing before 2014 would come barreling through.

And one day, I climbed up Dog Mountain with Tricia and Lisa amidst spooky billows of fog. As we neared the top, the clouds split open and we found ourselves staring straight into the vacuum of space—dark purple faraway mountains cut by silver river waters, the promise of a golden sunset off to the west ... Remember?

I do ... but only cuz I wrote it down.

Belonging

Stayed up late on Friday night on account of our pal George Cutright had a photo show. A lovely occasion! It was a warm night, and everyone rode bikes. There was much wine and beer drunk, and thus plenty of drunk talk. Also? A basketball kept bouncing perilously inside through the open roll-up door, finding unsuspecting heads to hit and beer cups to tip over.

Now, George's show: a collection of half-frame pictures of "people and the skateboards they belong too." What he did was he took out his camera (read: not phone) and pressed down on the shutter button once while pointing at a person, and then again while pointing at their skateboard. He then went into the dark room (remember those?!) and created each print using an ages-old method called film developing.

Skateboarding might not be what regular 30 (and 40!!) somethings choose to do on a daily basis. But here in our circle, it is. It's how we maintain fun in our lives and give meaning to our days. It's how we keep the angst at bay. It's how we find our place and our people. It's how we keep our bodies healthy and remember that sometimes, strangely, falling down feels good.

Getting hurt can suck it of course.

Pic by Brooke Geery.

To: Me

Oh hi! I turned another year old again. It happened this week on a quiet Tuesday of no particular import. There was rain upon waking and afternoon sun, followed by pizza in the evening.

Also? There was a party on Sunday eve. All of my friends (well, most—I think I forgot to text some of you? Gah, I'm sorry) came over and sat in the golden light that was beaming my backyard. It was exceptionally fun and made me feel all happy and sad at once (emotional, I think it's called) because, I dunno, friends really are why life is good.

For instance: All of them showed up carrying bottles of wine or good beer tied to chocolate bars with pretty colored string, or they came carrying champagne, or they came carrying bouquets of gerber daisies or hydrangeas, or they came carrying handmade houseware crafted from an old skate deck, or they came carrying a bunch of balloons they stole from a child's birthday party.

Obviously, these are good people we're talking about here. Love you guys!

The coolest coasters for keeping Pinot stains off the coffee table—handmade my Marsha and Jasper.

Lefty ate a cupcake wrapper and got a modest proposal. He partied, in other words. 

Top 3 To Read (Slowly)

Did y'all know there's a new movement for "slow reading"? Which basically just means reading a book. Because peeps are forgetting how, can't sit still long enough, can't focus on something for more than 10 minutes without scrolling. Reading books is my thing! But I'm a victim, too. That shit takes me waaaay longer now. But I'm still doing it! You should, too.

Without further ado, I give you my top 3 favorite non-fiction books. All of them wild with adventure, of course.

North To The Night, by Alvah Simon: About a dude who winters alone in the arctic darkness on a tiny sailboat. See, he sails up there with his wife and cat (!!!), but she (the wife) has to leave, and he's left frozen there for months with his boat, with his demons, with polar bears, with the Northern Lights, with the storms, with the crushing cold.

The Man Who Walked Through Time, by Colin Fletcher: Mom sent me this book, so it's special. The author walked the entire length of the Grand Canyon in the 60s, all alone, and then wrote about it. Mom read it 30 years ago. Now me. An interesting cycle. Anyway, a quiet, relaxing text with much lovely language describing the hugeness of geologic time, the nature of beauty in the wild, and such: "Beyond shadow that still belonged to the night, a day’s incoming sunlight streamed across the rock reefs. Noon pressed down onto the Esplanade, hotter each day, more ponderously silent. Evening came, and a softer, richer silence.”

 Jacque Cousteau: The Sea King, by Brad Matsen: “He didn’t particularly care about money as long as he had enough, and his chief financial tactic was simply going out and getting more cash when he ran out.” You see, Cousteau was down for living only in the now—no rehashing things past or backward-looking. “The road to paradise is paradise,” he said, quoting an old Spanish proverb. Anyway, a bit of a womanizer, but a true adventurer, through and through, Cousteau pioneered the modern-day scuba tank by trial and error with sketchy homemade setups. He's fucking crazy! So much could go wrong!