see you at sunset

There's something about the sunset over the Pacific ocean that gets me bad. Every time I go to California I take pictures of it and I always come home thinking about it and talking about it. A burnt orange ball of flaming brightness. Clouds the color of salmon fillets. Everything else just dark silhouettes, negative space, nothing that even matters compared to that blossom of brilliance out there. 

Anyway, above you'll see three generations of Sherowskis breathing in aforementioned sunset. Pretty rad, right? Sister, nephew, and good ol' Moms. We spent a little weekend together. It was nice. Went to Sea World, which made for ample photo opportunities—all those slithery salty creatures, such a cool weird world down there under the sea. And we went to the Zoo, which, with it being 90-ish degrees out, was more of an exercise in heat exhaustion and sweat management than anything else. Lions panted under their thick manes and bearcats lay there bewildered in what little shade they could find. Most of the animals were MIA, cowering in caves at the very back of their habitats. I don't blame them, I wanted to be cowering somewhere cool, too.

On the way out I flew over LA's vastness and mumbled a prayer for all the poor souls stuck in such a vacuous urban sprawl as this.

Cannon Beach Thursday

It’s hard to articulate how differently a heavily planned outing feels from a directionless Thursday drizzlefest that develops, after breakfast and a trip to the DMV, into snaking through downtown traffic and merging onto the 26 W towards “Beach Cities.” It’s hard, so I wont really try. All I’ll say is that indeed, last Thursday Lance and I found ourselves in Cannon Beach.

 

On the way we passed rolling fields of delicious green, a forest that had been cut down, unexpected sunbreaks and then rain falling at odd angles, and finally, a sudden downpour when we pulled into town. Had a quiet beer and burger at a brewhouse on Main Street—actually, I had the fish and chips. Kids’ size. And the porter. Then scrambled over sea rocks in the sunshine and drew pictures in the sand.

 

Nothing big, you know. But nice to be out of town on a quiet Thursday, with nothing planned exactly, just whittling time away and checking stuff out. That’s what life is, right? 

ask and you shall receive

So there I was minding my own business, when a nice lady from Vans emailed me and said she had a pair of white Half Cabs to send me. OK, I said. Although in all honesty my reply to her contained an obscene amount of exclamation points and thank yous. I was excited, you see. Apparently the staff at Vans had noticed "all white Half Cabs, size 6" as the sole item on a Christmas list of mine published in a major magazine I work for way back in December. And in their infinite kindness, they bestowed a pair upon me. Holy shit, right? Such is the power of words. Although...I have to point out, these are not really "all white." Black laces and tongue, and red piping, et cetera, et cetera. But hey I ain't complaining!

Thank you, Ms. Matthews and Mr. Overholser!

colorado in april

If you find yourself in Colorado around the beginning of April, you might catch a glimpse of a big blizzard on its way cross country from the Pacific Coast. Don’t be alarmed—the almanac claims April as one of CO’s biggest snow months. Big wet flakes will probably fall down on you as you rush up some steps into the restaurant, you might even accumulate up to a half inch in that little dash, but when the sun comes out tomorrow there’ll be dry pavement within the hour. So just ride it out and enjoy what all the cold fluffiness looks like on the bare Aspen trees and how the air’s all muffled with it.

shit from an old notebook

I wrote this for The Journal when I was miserable and living in Southern California, and I just came across it again this morning. I was down there, and now here I am ... up here ... ain't life strange?

Down Here

   Things are heavy sometimes, and I carry the weight of them in a sharp knot under my right shoulder blade. When I was little, the size of the universe was what weighted me down ... it's huge! I had nightmares about the unending blackness inside my eyelids. The idea of infinity still bothers me, but now that I'm down here, it's things like all the damn candy wrappers our population produces, enough for a million glittering landfills.

   Other burdonsome things include the thick, sticky air of Southern California. The pavement and concrete spread out in a black oily mass from here to the polar ice cap. The sunburned palm trees that are more like plastic than any fake plants I've ever seen. And the clear blue sky breaking day after day until it's all you can do not to fork out your own eyes with a bottle of suntan lotion.

   When it all gets to be too much, too great a weight for these little shoulders, I think about pure snow and early winter mornings when a few scant lights switch on across the landscape and someone mixes Folgers into water heated on an old wood stove. I think of how cold air hurts to breathe in at first, then freezes your nose hairs on the way out. And the sound of the snow crunching under boots in the muffled auditorium of a winter day. Of red leaves crumpled in a wet mass on the ground. They're supposed to signal the dead season, but really it's just a new kind of life. Quiet, and curled up behind warm walls.

   Someday I'll make it back there for good, and I'll know how it feels again to live in a place where the seasons change all of four times a year as part of nature's great big scheme to fight boredom. Making coffee for myself one morning I'll pause to clean the frost off the window with my fingernails and peek out on the dark-blue whiteness of 5:30 a.m. I'll be reminded of getting up early as a child to run out on the brittle fields of frozen snow and how it felt like walking on water; which was almost as good as flying.