3 Things
Birthday karaoke for George: Basic wonderful stuff like tiki bars and daiquiris and singing The Cure's "Just Like Heaven" in front of all the buds (while they laughed) (at me).
Marc Maron's WTF podcast interview with Paul Thomas Anderson: You know, the director of Boogie Nights, Magnolia, The Master, Inherent Vice, etc. His movies are, like, pretty challenging. What the fuck are any of them really about?! Listen to this, and find out. The guy's touched—he knows things we don't know.
Lefty's medical woes: First, his claw tore off. Blood everywhere. Whimpering. Eyes like deep pools of sadness. I mean it's the equivalent of someone extracting your fingernail with a pair of pliers! Anyway, after a week of limping, he eventually convalesced. Once better, though, the guy immediately pulled a hammy playing wild-style with his brother. Benched for another two days. Life just sux sometimes, huh?
Northwest Passage
Arose somewhat late on Tuesday after working all weekend and did things I liked. Such as scaling a goddamn mountain.
Hiking's kind of weird, isn't it? Just walking. But it's nice.
Anyway, Hamilton Mountain. The trail was very steep, winding through dark, quiet woods that may have been haunted, cutting across barren meadows that fell steeply into thin air. I overheated and then froze in the crazy wind. But the view. The frickin view!
To the East: Idaho and a veil of rain. To the West: silver river waters rolling straight into the sea. You get a sense of perspective up there, comprehending how glaciers carved out all of the valleys and that the looming cliffs really do wear the stains of the ages. As I've said elsewhere, catching a view like this can be, if you let it, kinda cosmic—the sort of thing us non-“devout” folks do to appreciate the mysteries of the universe. And so on.
Winter War
When I did my Year In Pictures, the thought that life really is better in the summer crossed my mind. It just gives you a nice feeling, scrolling through the months and seeing things get warmer and warmer. Bare branches and billows of fog replaced by vermillion blooms. Dark bars and beanies switched out for beer glasses sparkling like jewels in the sun.
Winter's dark. Especially so far north, so deep into the rain forest. But I like to think of us as warriors this time of year. Everyday, refusing to just stay in bed like we want to. Everyday, working, skating, laughing—continuing life, really, even through the dark, dampness, and gloom.
Also! We need winter I reckon—even the kind of winter we have here in the Northwest. It's restorative, for one, and, like Rilke says, it gives you all that time to propagate your "inner life":
"Tending my inner garden went splendidly this winter. Suddenly to be healed again and aware that the very ground of my being — my mind and spirit — was given time and space in which to go on growing; and there came from my heart a radiance I had not felt so strongly for a long time…"
So anyway, here's to winter, and to seeing y'all on the other side.
Yes, Please
Check it out. Everyone wants to start January all fresh and clean-slate style. But I can't be bothered with that. I like this old self of mine. I like where it's come from. Et cetera.
What I do want for this year (and this life) is to be totally light of step. Positive. Like a charged ion drifting by on the breeze of life.
"I wish to be at any time hereafter only a yea-sayer!" says Nietzsche (and that dude was a gloomy motherfucker).
Like Frederick, then, I'm about to be "Yes!" to all of it. Want to grill me a pizza? I'll eat it. Want to dance to a country tune with me? I'll gladly do it. Want me to climb a hellaceous peak with you? Want to road trip across the country? Want me to write the bio for your Web site? Want help moving? Want to take me on a date? Now's the time to ask, people. I'll (probs) say yeah!
Grilled pizzas and honky tonkin' on NYE. Salut!
2014: A Year In Pictures
Life! The days are short, but when you go to count 'em up, you find that entire years have amassed.
January: Indoor concrete. The spark of a brand-new year. Cold nights, the moon frozen in the western sky.
February: Heart-shaped cookies. Sunny days and then days of blizzard. Ducking inside to drink tequila and then walking home through a snow globe.
March: A bouquet of waterfalls. The pine-laced air of central Oregon. Rain, sun, and how all the cherry blossoms pop over night.
April: Long walks 'neath the flowered drooping trees. The institution of backyard mini ramping. Lefty in the morning light.
May: Golden-hour grinds. Campfire nachos and sleeping under the stars. That sweet, pine-sap smell that tells of an Oregon summer.
June: Falling down a kind of rabbit hole of summer.
July: Zoo-bombing on warm nights. Skate camp. And that night we took the rainfly off our tent and peered straight up into the dome of stars.
August: Heat. Haze. Big roving rain clouds. Summer ends softly like a feather floating to the ground.
September: One last river day. Trish and Cairo, tying the knot. And all of my buds in my backyard for my birthday.
October: Warm fall nights, soaring down empty streets with the leaves flying away. Halloween hijinks that are done by 10 p.m.
November: When your life turns on a dime.
December: Backyard skate secrets. Forgetting things that need forgetting. Copious celebrations and an apocalyptic wind storm.