You’re Innocent When You Dream

I was lying in bed during the small hours, thinking about how a co-worker had told me that memories are stored in the same part of your brain as where dreams are created. So, if you ever can’t sleep, you should meander back into your memories and before you know it, you’ll be in downtown sleeps-ville.

I wanted to go back to sleep. So I pictured the house I grew up in. After my sister and I moved out, my parents sold that log home they’d built with their bare hands, and the new owners flattened it. A life metaphor. You can’t go home again. 

In my mind I saw the front sidewalk, cracked and home to many ants. I walked up the steps, built of railroad ties. Mom’s flower garden was to the left, peony heads hung heavy as melons and the bees hummed in the sun. Grasshoppers in the mint patch. A sandstone wall near the patio. Up onto the porch, where the wood swing was strung. I never sat on that porch swing, I only ever slouched with bare dirty feet on the top porch step in a patch of sun — which is where our fat tomcat Nutmeg also liked to sit. The cats and I always hung around the same places, a bunch of wild animals who nevertheless wanted a little warmth.

I passed the porch and moved into the house. There was the kitchen table and the old iron woodstove. On winter afternoons after school I’d to crawl into the space behind the stove where it was warm and where, again, the cats reposed. There I’d sit eating dry Cheerios from a mug. 

Floating through memories, I moved down the long hallway into the back room I’d shared with my sister. The floorboards were cracked pine and in those cracks lived a million black earwhigs. Once the light was turned off, they’d emerge and reign fearlessly over the nighttime realms of the bedroom floor. We used to tiptoe to the bathroom terrified of brushing a pinchered bug with our pinky toe. But that was back when I had a robust bladder that didn't call me to the porcelain every single night at 3 a.m. 

Which is how I found myself lying awake in bed the other night, trying to find sleep again after having got up to pee — remembering a person and place and a time that no longer exists. And you can’t trust your memories I’m told. 

Live Deliciously

Sitting at my desk again and thankful that I have work to shape my hours.

On the scrolling platforms, everyone’s sharing their highlights from the last decade. A lot of these posts begin with “The last decade was full of transition, of highs and lows…” (hint: THEY ALL ARE). That’s time. It’s just transition — a pile of pearls falling through your fingers. 

Calendar-wise, the 1990s was my teens, the 2000s was my 20s, the 2010s was my 30s. It’s tidy the way it turned out — and helpful for recollecting, too. 

When I look back I don’t blame myself for anything I did in the 90s. Lil’ me did my best with what I had on offer — access to rugged wilderness, MTV and a high-octane hormone-flooded brain. 

My 20s and 30s were cool; I wasted too much time, though. I spent whole hours and days building barriers and spiraling away from my authentic self.  

Now, as I enter my fourth decade I’m fiercer and softer than ever. I don’t “give a shit” but I also cry when grizzly bears fight on the nature shows cuz I want them both to live and “be alright.” 

Today, I hold my self ruthlessly responsible for every second lady time drops in my supplicant palms. Not like I need to be busy all the time; I see it more from a value perspective. There are times when “doing” is the worst thing you can do. 

“WOULDST THOU WANT TO LIVE DELICIOUSLY?” Asks Black Phillip, tempting an innocent lass, in that movie The Witch.

Yes, yes, yes! That’s all I’m ever trying to do. 

Fall Pilgrim

In Oregon you can usually count on the summer to float softly to the ground. It’s sunscreen-wearing, ripe-tomato weather and then one day you find yourself sweeping pine needles and arranging gourds by the doorstep. But this year summer evaporated into thin air. The rain came early. Ryan’s Linda died and we couldn’t, wouldn’t believe it. We sat on benches in his back yard and laughed together and cried so much, the dogs cocking their heads at us convinced we’d all lost our minds. Ryan had purple circles under his eyes. We wished we could make it all better for him. As we left his house, we pinned tiny enamel owls to our lapels so we would always think of Linda. The pins flashed in the sun and we sent up silent blessings to the ones we love. Out there in the world. Fragile. Brave. Alive.

During the days before Halloween, the cold bore down and blustered and blew. In the morning, there was ice in the backyard dog bowl. Of a bitter Tuesday night we went to see Built to Spill play and Doug’s sweet, warm voice cheered us from within. The encore played, the heaping leaf piles took to the wind, the cold was furious on Russell Street and our car was parked much too far away.

Now all we do is sit and talk and think and watch. The dark season is here. I have started reading more. I read Annie Dillard’s the Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a Pulitzer winner published before I was born. Says she about about the quiet and calm of November: “The dark night into which the year was plunging was not a sleep but an awakening, a new and necessary austerity, the sparer climate for which I longed. The shed trees were brittle and still, the creek light and cold, and my spirit holding its breath.”

Turn On, Tune In

I watched and dug the recent PBS doc on Woodstock, which they released for the festival’s 50th anniversary. (It’s on Netflix, if inquiring minds would like to know.) I have my own dramatic history with Woodstock. My mom and uncles were there (see below for the vintage pic of Nancy Sherowski and her brother Dick cold chilling on the stoop of their dream machine. This pic incapsulates a sweet kid-like happiness that I love. I want to be friends with them. I wonder if they have a CBD doobie we could all burn in the parking lot? Anyway.

The narrative we’ve been fed from Woodstock is that it was a disaster of traffic and mud. A “rock crisis” attended by a half million burnouts. And yet this documentary reveals the story of kids taking care of each other, of event organizers abandoning their business agenda to let the event pop off, and of a conservative farming community reaching out and welcoming the counterculture in a time when the sociopolitical schism was, arguably, as tragically fucking massive as it is today.

I was inspired by this story, needless to say. Especially now. Especially at a time when most young people would rather drop out and nihilistically live through their phone screens. Now more than ever we need, and cannot have, a Woodstock.

Stuff To Do In The Summer

We’re already in the soft part of summer. Thoughts, cool and smooth like marbles, have been rolling around my mind. I have not written any of it down. I’ve worked hard to be flagrantly selfish with my time really. The other seasons are fine for meeting expectations but when the air is all sweet and warm you should do exactly what you want.

I listened to a radio interview recently with a man named Ross Gay, who spent a year writing an essay every day about all the small things in life that delight him. Loitering at a cafe. A kind exchange with your boss. The fore-knowledge of the donut you’re about to procure and eat. The book is pragmatically titled The Book Of Delights. How lovely! I haven’t read it yet but I’m inspired by the idea. In the interview, Gay talked about how when you start noticing everyday things that delight you, you gain an aptitude for it. It’s like building a muscle. Doing sit-ups is always hard until one day it isn’t.

A couple weeks ago Mark and I drove to Colorado. We spent most of our time in the mountains at elevations that left us seeing stars, forever gasping and head rushing. I grew up way up there and it made my primal self feel like itself once again to be walking through all those rustling-leafed aspen glades. Summer vacation — more specifically the ability to take a summer vacation — is no doubt a delight of the highest order. But the trip called forth plenty of tiny delights — the everyday kind that could and should make up my own Book Of Delights.

Like crawling in the tent with the dog and cozying our way through a wicked afternoon thunder storm. Unsettled air is a precious commodity. You can soak in the wild ions and feel electrified. As the booms got louder, Jedda’s ears rotated like satellite dishes and her eyes grew round. We all inched a little closer. An hour later, a sunbeam shot through the tent and we knew it was over.

Like drinking a beer in the afternoon with my mom. In the heat and sun, over food-truck Mexican, there is no urgency and the vibe is authentic celebratory relaxation and the conversation meanders in an inspired way.

Like watching the sun rise over an empty meadow. The wall of golden light moves like a whisper across the grass, setting the seedpods on fire as it goes. You keep very quiet as you watch. This process is a touch spiritual, a tad mystical. You feel like you’re seeing behind the curtain, glimpsing the ineffable. Some secret miracle. And just like that it’s daytime.