It was the best, the worst, and superlative in its own mundane way
Especially lately, certain times feels so much like a history that I've managed to lose. Whether people with whom I share fewer of my stupidest (and therefore best) moments of just not caring, whether in ambitions and beliefs that somehow I've managed to compromise, or in sharing a moment of art or highway with people to whom I owe no explanations and to whom I can be completely transparent if unhinged--I've had so much less of that. And therefore, when I happen upon weekends like this past one, I start to feel like myself, the way I seem to have defined myself, most deeply. Then returning to the slog of my systemic days is ever so much more a painful reminder that I've got to change something soon. All of the above which is highly unspecific.
So a few things: biking drunk down a couple of familiar streets in Palo Alto, waking up to a sunny morning, tea, a novel, and a lot of successive good reading, a few good tunes, a long, mostly empty road with warm air and the windows down (but really is there anything more American than that, anything that more defines and links our generations to our that of our parents) and why so struck by this sense that it's a history I've sublimated?
I spent most of Saturday voraciously reading in the sun. It was good to be still, slowly getting fried and letting the grass imprint on my legs. Finished Moby Dick (a wild ride, that one, toward the end), started and finished up a short N. Scott Momaday, "The Way to Rainy Mountain", and started his novel "The Ancient Child" which was wonderfully well informed by the prior book, just having been finished. I didn't talk to anyone all day. I watched the sunset from my back window (to more tea). It was windy and warm.
Craig showed up a few hours later, as one does, we got drunk in the park, talked about our ridiculous friendship and interlinked families, and about lyricism--and about how different and the same things are now from 2000.
Pt. Reyes the following day, (dear lord, so much ridiculous, hysterical, bad and yet good country music... look out for that ol' Toyota Tacoma sliding down that slick California highway to the coast) a six pack, strawberries, the sea, and again, a newer history (since this is the place where I came out to the mother...). But it was beyond beautiful--and what is it about walking to the sea that is instantaneously transporting and diverting, and always like being at home, in the best of possible ways?
But the summation of all, after appropriate irreverence and the lambasting of passers by in Berkeley/Cal, Peter Mulvey and Patty Larkin--that is what feels like history. Songs old and new (including an amazing coming out song--again, couldn't be more prescient, could you, Patty?), but the people I've shared them with (Becca, Nathan, Craig, Lynda, Paula, etc.--really, my deepest family) and the experiences to which those are a shared narrative, damn, it was stellar, it was superlative.
And yeah, there are so many other types and manners of this sort of general happiness--I'm glad for them each, for the songs, conversations, and shared histories that bind me to my closest friends, and to the places that always feel like home as a result of having been shared. And while all of that tenuous freedom makes the return of the drudge of everyday more painful to bear, at least there is some small margin of feeling alive in between.
So a few things: biking drunk down a couple of familiar streets in Palo Alto, waking up to a sunny morning, tea, a novel, and a lot of successive good reading, a few good tunes, a long, mostly empty road with warm air and the windows down (but really is there anything more American than that, anything that more defines and links our generations to our that of our parents) and why so struck by this sense that it's a history I've sublimated?
I spent most of Saturday voraciously reading in the sun. It was good to be still, slowly getting fried and letting the grass imprint on my legs. Finished Moby Dick (a wild ride, that one, toward the end), started and finished up a short N. Scott Momaday, "The Way to Rainy Mountain", and started his novel "The Ancient Child" which was wonderfully well informed by the prior book, just having been finished. I didn't talk to anyone all day. I watched the sunset from my back window (to more tea). It was windy and warm.
Craig showed up a few hours later, as one does, we got drunk in the park, talked about our ridiculous friendship and interlinked families, and about lyricism--and about how different and the same things are now from 2000.
Pt. Reyes the following day, (dear lord, so much ridiculous, hysterical, bad and yet good country music... look out for that ol' Toyota Tacoma sliding down that slick California highway to the coast) a six pack, strawberries, the sea, and again, a newer history (since this is the place where I came out to the mother...). But it was beyond beautiful--and what is it about walking to the sea that is instantaneously transporting and diverting, and always like being at home, in the best of possible ways?
But the summation of all, after appropriate irreverence and the lambasting of passers by in Berkeley/Cal, Peter Mulvey and Patty Larkin--that is what feels like history. Songs old and new (including an amazing coming out song--again, couldn't be more prescient, could you, Patty?), but the people I've shared them with (Becca, Nathan, Craig, Lynda, Paula, etc.--really, my deepest family) and the experiences to which those are a shared narrative, damn, it was stellar, it was superlative.
And yeah, there are so many other types and manners of this sort of general happiness--I'm glad for them each, for the songs, conversations, and shared histories that bind me to my closest friends, and to the places that always feel like home as a result of having been shared. And while all of that tenuous freedom makes the return of the drudge of everyday more painful to bear, at least there is some small margin of feeling alive in between.