Promise Of The West

In the first week of July, the days were dull and gray. I rarely left the house. Reading. Typing. Peering out the window. Watching a fine rain fall straight down, in July. Through the window of my soul — I mean phone — I glimpsed blue skies in the Colorado Rockies. My mom and sister, Nancy and Melissa, out for a walk and the dog pouncing through sage brush behind them. Scrolling further, I spied old friends cooling off in cold-water granite cauldrons lost in the hills outside Los Angeles. Summer life was happening, but not here. 

Luckily, I'd planned a trip. Call it summer vacation. Call it an escape from the specific gauzy inertia of extended quarantine — where days drag painfully slow but also blend together until suddenly you look at the date and you’ve lost entire weeks to a routine of no routine at all.

I needed newness more this July then I have any of the other Julys (or Junes, or Januarys — really any of the months you might suggest). Experiencing newness is the best way I know to slow down time’s passage and keep my mental range of motion. When you explore new paths, your brain creates new pathways. This has always been true. Not just a 2020 truth.

So in search of rich, striking memories, Mark and I stuffed the Nissan Titan full of camping gear and drove into cowboy country. Montana. Idaho. Landscapes that hold the promise of the West. That make you feel small, what Kerouac called an “eager insignificance.”

Regarding traveling during a pandemic, it was fine. We were masked up in the presence of humans, but in general looking to get away from people, to get out and contemplate geology, investigate botony, conjecture about astronomy. I can’t and won’t forget the shooting star that harpooned the sky while I crouched and quietly tree-peed in the middle of the night on the edge of that soft-water, glacier-scraping mountain lake.

De-Inventing My Life

Guys, what are we doing with our lives again? 

I can’t be the only one Wondering with a capital W.

It’s all so humbling.

And there are hours and days to fill up. 

So.

If you want to stare at the ceiling and go AHHHH as it all falls into place — 400 years of brutal American capitalism built on the backs of the cotton industry, which was built on the backs of kidnapped and enslaved African people, then listen to this:

If you want to be buoyed up by the brilliant spirit of Robbie Roberston from The Band, and be transported back to a time and place full of creativity and the coolest cats, and hear wonderful music and cry because friendship is such a gorgeous damn thing but no one could save Levon Helm after all (as every addict must save themselves), then watch this:

If you want to walk the streets of your city shoulder to shoulder with beautiful strangers singing protest songs and being present, with your body, despite a pandemic, because racial justice is that fucking crucial — crucial enough that we must put our lives on the line — and if you want to feel invigorated with raw hope because the voice of the streets has momentum and power in a way that sitting locked away in our homes, on our phones, sharing memes on a platform we know makes money off hate speech just doesn’t, then do this: 

If you want to juice up on that electric nature stuff, including rampant wildflowering, ankle-aching ice-cold river crossings, and staring into the looking glass of a mountain lake at sunset, which was pretty peaceful until the wind kicked up and scraped your brain clean as sparks from the campfire flew like shooting stars, then do this:

Took It For Granted, Want It Back

Where are we on collective effervescence? Here on the brink of emerging from confinement when anxiety about being back close to other humans is a helium balloon about to pop, I’m remembering the magic-est together moments that might not come again any time soon.  

I remember this past December being squashed into a coach bus seat next to Brian Nally passing around a tear-drop-shaped bottle of whiskey on the way down from the mountain. We all shouted at each other down the aisles and the music was too loud. It was our work Christmas party. A few days later everyone got the same sinus cold and didn’t care. 

I miss sweaty and 90 degrees on the 4th of July, pawing through a cooler of cold beer and La Croix, skating the mini ramp and hugging your friends when you leave early before the fireworks start, as you always do, along with all the other dog owners.  

I miss the dark and heat of a punk house basement watching our buddies' band Donkey Lips play. Guitar shredding. Ravaging of drums. Rampant shirtlessness. Glee.

I miss posing for pictures by putting your arms around people, cheek to cheek, and always hugging people fully and warmly and hard, enthusiastically—a weak and awkward hug being the equivalent of a warm-milk limp handshake.

I miss scampering up the street to Conquistador after work for rambling happy hours to celebrate festive news like people getting engaged instead of sad news like people quitting or getting laid off. 

I miss the coziest holiday potlucks where none of your friends bother to respond to your party text so you think no one is coming, but then everyone shows up and you pack in the kitchen sharing huge plates of food, mainly mashed potatoes and cookies and finger food, and then continue drinking and grazing with unwashed hands and unfaded smiles, while a toddler climbs onto the coffee table and dances for your entertainment into the wee hours of 10 p.m. 

Pre-Pandemic In Paradise

Right at the beginning of the mega-virus scare, back before any of “this” had really happened when people were talkin’ pandemic but still traveling, grabbing burgers, and swapping spit like innocents, Mark and I burned halfway across the Pacific Ocean on a plane bound for Hawaii.

The trip feels like a million years ago. We landed at Lihue on Kauai and spent the next 4 days dodging rain clouds, stomping through red mud, ocean swimming and sun roasting. In Kauai it’s always kinda sorta raining but actually really hot and sunny too. 

The days got better and better. We ate scenic sandwiches on all manner of beaches and scoped the blossom-scented switchbacks of Waimea Canyon. Snorkeling in front of the fancy hotels at Poipu, I brushed paws with a sea turtle as he lumbered out past the breakers. The afternoon felt charmed. A benediction on our spring vacation. After high-octane daily doings, we’d always end up lounging by the pool in the late afternoon, drinking homemade margaritas and Mai Tais that got you tipsy in three sips.

This was my first time in Kauai and I liked it too much. The locals were nice—too nice. If I were them I’d tell the tourists to fuck off (which is more like the vibe on the other touristy Hawaiian islands). The older I get the more conflicted I feel about tourist travel. There’s something very problematic about clueless people arriving in hordes and claiming their piece of the paradise pie. I’m no different, a foreigner from a rainy land to the east coming to get mine. 

The rules I abide on the road: Be humble and be cool. Shut my mouth. I’m a firm believer in how much respect you can show a local culture by not being a loud-talkin’ kook.

Ain't No Sunshine

When I don’t talk to my dad for a long time, he starts popping into my dreams. Not in a portentious tarot vision kind of way — it’s just my brain serving something back up to me that’s important, that I’ve gone too long without. “Hello, remember me?” After one of those dreams I’ll call him the next day for a dad chat, and he’ll tell me about the weather in Colorado. 

Speaking of “going without” … hello from the new world. We’re all processing this shit in a very public way, online, via plentiful platforms. We’re humans. A social beast. I’ve been over-hugging my dog, coming at her all sideways when she’s deep sleeping on her side like a little dead horse, and I’ll pounce and force snuggle her, which she allows amidst figurative eye rolls. 

I can’t do the news. I do not want to know more. Unearthing the latest dire update or critical analysis is not a pastime for me. The static is already swarming my brain. Calming things: Wearing old beanies. My husband walking in the backdoor. Texts from mom and Melissa. Filling up the yard-waste bin. Walking and walking and walking under flowering trees in the fresh spring.

I have watched episodes of I Am Not Ok With This on the Flix and like the scenery (or should I say greenery) and dig the music. I sat through He’s Just Not That Into You, a Jennifer Aniston joint from 2009 (but seems much older than that? Like maybe 30 or 300 years older? Full of caveman-era gender-normative diarrhea). I made a cocktail out of Espolon Blanco and lime juice and apricot La Croix, because those were all the liquids I had. And I recommend it.

How are you?