Rolling Thunder, Reviewed

Have you watched The Rolling Thunder Revue on Netflix? I recommend it. My favorite Bob Dylan is the Bob Dylan of the year I was born. 1977, the album Desire — songs like “One More Cup Of Coffee.” It’s an album of lore and legend. Double crossing heroes and love-stricken bandits. Dylan was newly divorced. He was back on tour. He was peak wizard gypsy poet. 

So this Martin Scorsese documentary captures the chaos and beauty of that time very well. I especially like when cantankerous present-day Dylan insists like an old buzzard that he doesn’t remember anything that happened on that tour back in ’77 because that was 40 years ago — that was before he was even born. 

I’m drawn to the idea that you’re born multiple times throughout your life. I often think back and intuitively know that I was born when I moved to Portland. I was born when I got married. I was born when I got my first dog. I was born when my first dog died. And so on. Each era is a sort of birth, and maybe a kind of death too. 

“Life isn’t about finding yourself — or finding anything,” He also says. “It’s about creating yourself, and creating things.” I like that too. I’ve always and forever been looking for something and I never really did find it. “Looking” is a passive act. “Creating” is where all the magic power is at. 

New Things

Gizmo: This is Nike Skateboarding’s new women’s team video. While it usually gives me heartburn to hype up mega-corps, I’m gonna do it here. I liked this film. I dug the progression-through-the-generations angle. I dug the straightforward, unfeminized, unapologetic, unpretentious, unpreachy, un-wannabe-inspiring delivery. Gizmo isn’t trying to be anything that it isn’t. It’s a banger action edit, featuring people who are women. And that in itself is a statement. Next task for Nike: push it beyond “separate but equal” and integrate your lady rippers into your dudes’ edits.

Pic by Andy Wright

The passing of J2 Rasmus: J2 was battling cancer. Now he’s on the other side. I hadn’t seen him in many years — since I don’t know when. I remember him most from when I was clueless-but-thought-I-was-cool teenager on the Vail snowboard scene, where J2 and Megan presided over us as actually cool and tough older kids. I remember that he helped me jump my old POS Audi 4000 when it died in the Sunridge parking lot. I remember drinking 40s and riding aspen rainbows. I remember getting a lot of shit from him. You had to be on your toes around Twos. It’s how respect has been taught through many generations — by smart people giving snot-nosed kids a hard time (does that happen anymore?) Anyway, his wit was razor sharp and I remember him never giving any fucks about authority or what you thought — which was as inspirational of stance to me then and as it is now. Today, I’m thinking of his family and close friends, and of the mystery that brings us from dust into stardust.

Functional minimalism: Now more than ever, I’ve been into the act of non-acquiring. I work in advertising where we think up creative ways for our clients to sell you things. But in my private life, I don’t want to buy anything more. I’m just sick of it. Like I’ve been dabbling in mountain biking this year but I always just wear street clothes and my skate helmet. They work. And crotch blowouts notwithstanding all my jeans are just fine and will last me until eternity. Denim purveyors be damned. I don’t know — it’s started to seem like a crazy snake-biting-its-head-off kinda circle to me. If you keep getting new things, where does it ever end? Less. Maybe it’s more.

Extra-Order Happiness

At barely-any-cabs-left o’clock last Wednesday I flew home from a work trip to Calgary, and then Thursday was Mark’s birthday, and on Friday we left our home and sailed the sun washed pavement up north into Washington.

Saturday afternoon, the kind of dry heat that makes you red cheeks and sun stroked, but the second you stop in the shade you’re perfectly cool. Having hiked a very steep trail for a few hours in the morning, having passed through fields of lupine and Indian paintbrush and drunk from ice-fed streams, we walked into the town of Leavenworth while a lonesome accordion played. Stopping at an open air beer garden, we ordered ale and Field Roast.

Is there any better way to feel than a three sip buzz on an empty stomach on a sunny day with food on the way? Additionally, a breeze we could not feel from our perch on the deck blew clouds of cottonwood fluff across the sky. It was snow-globe gorgeous and we were perfectly dry-sweat tired and that’s when a kind of happiness of a higher order — not at all your average everyday joy — fell upon us as we sat there.

Happy birthday Mark!

What I Can’t Wait For

Stranger Things 3: While other people got buzzed for Black Mirror or West World, I secretly pined for the next season of ST. This is a wantable series for me because it artfully blends nostalgia and humor and the otherworld, plus that vibe that the kids are the real heroes. Which is awesome since we all feel like kids inside, and we all quietly know that we are the real heroes. Also, I like how each series is set against the backdrop of a holiday (first season, it was Christmas, season 2, Halloween and now, the 4th of July). This only serves to heighten our nostalgia to a feverish pitch. 

Going Back To Bend: I will tell you a secret. Late at night, when I can’t sleep because my brain is washing on high-spin-cycle, I used to count carefully backward from 100 imagining each number in a different dazzling color. Lately though I’ve been calming my neurons with a meticulous fantasy about finishing the fence on our land near Bend. Let the sun wash over me. Use the post hole digger to pull out the sandy clods. Smell the sap and dirt. Pull a post from the pile and place it in the hole. Level it while Mark pours in the concrete. Feel satisfied. Dozens of those on down the line. Then it’s back to the beginning for the brackets and cross beams, and then the cedar panels, one by one by one by … 

Rulebreaker

Breaking your arm is physically risky, but I would recommend it. This is a question of embracing the darkness to know the light. If all it takes to worship the wonders of our two hands, which are miraculously crafted to do everything from caress your lover to caress your keyboard. Button your jeans. Untwist the olive jar. Rip open the paper enclosing a tea bag. Much less sports — skateboarding with friends and riding bikes all over town. Much less homesteading — digging holes in the forest and putting fenceposts in. If what it takes to appreciate the wild joy of all that is a fracture of the right radius — I’ll do it.

In other news, I can still walk, and the trees are in bloom.