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.

Barbarian Days: My Midlife Standing Sideways

That vacation went quickly. I abandoned my brain. I laid in bed til late. I cleaned. I walked. I read.

What I read was: Barbarian Days, A Surfing Life by William Finnegan.

It starts with a tale of surf hobo hooliganism. Malibu in the 60s. Hawaii in the 70s. Samoa. Fiji. Turkey. Apartheid-era Capetown. I learned the origin story of Tavarua—a name I heard whispered like a mythic ghost through the hallways of Transworld when I worked there.

But I was more interested in the latter half of the book. That's where Finnegan brings us up to present, and the term "Surfing Life" takes on its full meaning. It was the most accurate, eloquent description of what it feels like to grow older and get worse at what you love to do (not surfing for me, but skateboarding for sure), and how that can be a steady decline into heartbreak—if you let it.

For me, this section was about identity. Does your identity as surfer, or skater, or rider, or rambler, become invalid as your skills become invalid? As your muscles and joints stiffen up, as you get sorer and tired-er, as you work more, travel more, garden more ... and skate less?

For me, there is a real grief to not skating as often or as well as I used to. Fear lurks in every sidewalk crack. Rather than remember the radness of pulling something, I tend to remember the time I ate shit—and how bad it hurt.

As they say, you can't take a sincere path without expecting heartbreak.

But at 41, I'm still a skateboarder. My relationship to it has changed though. I think it isn't about the act of skating (the tricks, the scene, the sessions) but instead it's the wanting it—that hardboiled desire to roll and be free—that makes you a skater.

Says Finnegan: "Now I'm one of those New Yorkers incessantly on the point of going back where I came from. But with me it's not a matter of packing up or staying on, but rather of being always half posed to flee my desk and ditch engagements in order to throw myself into some nearby patch of ocean at the moment when the waves and wind and tide might conspire to produce something ridable. That cracking, fugitive patch is where I come from."

15 Joys

1. The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs: Recalcitrant moving-picture poetry from the Coen Bros.

2. Mini ramp + beers and bar food: A tried and true Friday night maneuver.

3. Not forcing myself to be present for this blog, as work-life blazes and the burnout is real.

4. The purchase and decoration of a tiny living tannenbaum, to be planted on New Year's Day.

5. Wine tasting in Oregon orchard country. Wine tastes good! But I liked the views better I think. On the way home, we saw Mt. Hood framed by a burnished fall sky.

6. Thanksgiving in the mountains, in the snow. Walking in the wilderness for most of the day day, every day.

7. The Impossible Burger at Keys on NE Killingsworth.

8. Barbarian Days, A Surfing Life by William Finnegan. Bare feet. Malaria. Acid trips. A world of waves. And all the stories behind it all.

9. The sisterhood of Sunday morning walks. Despite weather, we get out of bed early to wander the NE Alameda neighborhood drinking coffee and peering in the windows of the rich.

10. The Man Who Invented Christmas, a charming film about Charles Dickens and his creative  process as he wrote "A Christmas Carol"—a seminal ghost story from my childhood.

11. Cold weather, and the need for a fire in the wood stove, and the need for the puppy to lay beneath that fire to dry the drench from her fur.

12. The proximity of Christmas vacation, and hopping an early flight to the Colorado high country to go get buried in the storm.

13. The Christmas cactuses at my desk, per their name, blooming right on time, right when one needs them.

14. Nighttime dog excursions. After a day cooped in a cubicle, walking up and down empty streets strung with Christmas lights, with the moon and stars.

15. The white elephant gift exchange at the Nemo Christmas party, where I had a decent bottle of Tempernillo stolen from me, only to come up on some homemade Chex mix and an IPA. Even Steven.

Soft Indian Summer

En route to finding rest after the long summer, here's what I've been doing:

In the last heat of the lingering harvest, I rode up Powell Butte at sunset. There was only enough time to catch my breath and score a peek of the salmon pink sky before riding back down ahead of the falling darkness. But, in September, the night falls too fast. I ended up in the blackness on a forest trail.

I celebrated my birthday by doing absolutely nothing special, except acknowledging the passage of time, and how some things (like skateboarding) get harder but are somehow more important than ever to keep doing, while other affairs (like not taking things personally) get easier and make growing older truly sweet—which is why I've never once, not ever, wished I was younger.

I went to Idaho with pals and reconnected with my love for skate tourism. Jedda the pup came too and proved herself a naturally talented road tripper.

My big sister came to town. She wears all black all the time, and so it was only fitting that we took her out to explore hills cast in black by forest fire. It was unseasonably dry and hot. We cooled quenched with tall beers.

On a stormy Sunday night, I watched a movie called Hold the Dark, and although it wasn't at all cold in the house, I shivered with the deep bone chill of the Arctic, and the scenery and the story made my head spin, and I dreamt of it that night, and I'm still wondering about it now really.

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.