I didn't blog in 2018. For the first time since starting this website I managed not a single entry. Worse, I didn't even notice that I didn't blog. Didn't seem to care. But sitting here in 2019, I realize that I do care, and that putting written material out in to the world feels important. I'm not sure why that is ... but it most definitely is, so I've decided to stitch together a single blog entry for all of 2018, crafted from chunks of journal entries. Obviously this is cheating, but I want something out there, and just the act of editing these little pieces feels like a way to keep the fire alive.  (The whole thing's pretty haphazard, narrative-wise, so you'll see that I've added some context in italics.)

Jan 14 - 15S (Arizona)

After a week in Vegas for CES, I took myself on a little two-day road trip out in to the desert. Not much happened, but it felt good to spend some time on the road. Just past Desert Springs, heading south towards Vegas, Interstate 15 slices through a canyon of bright red rock.  The highway hugs the walls, and there are stretches where you have to lean forward in your seat just to see the sky.  Driving is tricky, and I try to focus on the the road without getting swept up in how these bars of angled light are carving mythically huge faces in the stone. As I swing in to the next turn, I see a truck that has somehow stopped in a little gravel patch by the side of the road - a big white 18 wheeler with an orange logo on its side. The sun strikes it harshly, and a stark black shadow stretches to the wall. It takes me a moment to process, but beside the truck, rising up from its shadow, is the silhouette of a man, flat against red stone. He stands upright, both arms lifted in front of his chest. His palms face in.  As I zoom past, I imagine the mat before him, facing Mecca. I imagine a calm home by the highway, a kind of grace amidst the gravel.

Jan 24 - Portland

I'm meditating these days, did I mention that? I read a book, bought a stool, set aside time. I can't seem to call it meditating, though. I tell L that I'm "sitting quietly" or "going downstairs for half an hour." The shame is palpable. The effects less so, but they're there. That it fits itself in to every day without any real competition must be evidence of something. For now the quiet - any quiet - is incentive enough to keep going. Except it's not quiet, is it? Most of the time it's a pitched battle; a constant flipping-through the thousand channels that I'm told aren't me. Silence invites noise and the darkness floods with a torrent of images that I have only occasional, cursory influence over. What has gathered back there? What was built when I wasn't looking?

Jan 27 - Push/Pull Coffee

Baldwin and Solnit sit tented on the table before me and I feel like a child. At 34, there hardly feels like time to learn this new language, let alone listen long enough to build on what has come before me. And here I thought I wanted to erect some pillar of self out in the desert.

Mar 7 - Teotitlan de Valle

I joined Margaret for a quick trip to Mexico, where she was recovering from having just taken the CA bar exam. Tufts of moss dangle from the telephone wires above an empty square. Big wooden looms sit quietly in the shade, slowly undulating beside a woman who is drafting wool around four dowels.  Plotted, the spikes in joy (each peak padded with long stretches of contentedness) over the first two days in Oaxaca would be in busses, taxis and amidst the relative chaos or quiet of those terminals.  Basically, the beginnings and ends of these trips within a trip. Movement is the thing. We settle so quickly in to familiar rhythms.

Mar 9 - Oaxaca

Today is Dia de la Samaritana, the fourth Friday of Lent, the day when Oaxacans celebrate a woman who fed Jesus water. Except - surprise twist! - the celebration involves feeding everyone juice. We've already stopped twice this morning to receive juice at roadside tables (which represent wells, apparently) and each time it's a different flavor. Spiced, sweet, milky with fruits and nuts mixed in. Cups of thin green plastic. [...] Last night, while waiting in line for our Nutella waffles, I saw, or thought I saw, in the flour dust and dappled rust of the waffle cooker (blurred a bit for the speed with which the waffle vendor was working (and my god he was sweating up a storm as a white iPod headphone dangled from his left ear) the head, or perhaps just the face, but either way the undeniable visage of Bob Dylan. The recognition arrived like a bolt of electricity. Felt like I should cross myself.

Mar 11 - Oaxaca (2am)

We were staying at a little AirBnb outside of the city center. I couldn't fall asleep. Awake almost to the degree that I feel drugged. I'm at the kitchen table now, but a few minutes ago I was lying in the other room, spread eagled on the bed and staring at a dark ceiling, riding my bicycle breath to a unit circle, projected on to a graph in plain sight, almost understanding sine before iridescent waves lap against the plaster - a pattern of sinew and seaweed breath, their translucence and the collapsing lines are a poker deck between huge hands, collapsing in to a hierarchy of branches and then, fluidly, just cracks in the ice, jagged across the darkness. This is new.

Apr 20 - Canaan

This trip home has been a quiet one. We visited mom on the first day and watching her eyes track for a few seconds felt hopeful. She was already in bed by four, and her toenails were closing in on 1/4" overhang, but I left cheered for some reason. Followed dad's lead and kissed her forehead when we arrived. The bed is narrow and near a window and across the little room Joan and Nan have placed photos of friends, family and pets. Odd how dependent my happiness is on how totally she appears to be checked out – any less and it would be devastating. It's so easy to project the absence of pain on to a smile.

Apr 22 - Canaan

Barefoot in the late afternoon, a seed pod rattling in the breeze amongst a tangle of dry, dark vines. Deer warily depart the field below and the wind chimes release the occasional, clear note against a distant, hollow hush of breeze. Perfect blue. A postcard version of home.

Apr 24 - Flying Over Colorado

Old land. Snow-filled scars across the purple-blue of early spring. The sheer bandwidth of the visible (articulable!) response a logjam yet again. Back away from that ledge of hope. These are your unspendable riches. Your voiceless chorus. Press your palm against its chest and feel your own heart beating. We are all of us alone.

Jul 4 - Portland

Excerpt from an email.

And then, because something in the Great Brain sees a strong enough connection between Bieber and Debussy to add it to my YouTube sidebar, down we tumble, in to a two hour loop of Clair de la Lune. ... and then scroll down to the comment thread, down this richly entwined column so many have flung themselves upon, their hopes, their dreams, their tortured stories of loss and grieving, and good christ this song brings up a lot for a lot of very afflicted folks, past the remembrances of the brilliant meme artist who took his life, past the Russian troll (User BARAKOBAMA says "why do I hate white people so much?"), past the startlingly long thread about the anime character no one would ever have guessed would die so thoughtlessly in the third season, past the WWII vets there to remind us that this kind of music is what they fought to preserve and down, down, down, past more past it all and down to the words of YouTube user Betcha Sorrie, from a little over 1 year ago: "My son is going to hear this in his cradle."

Jul 22 - Portland

Every entry should start with a disclaimer about the destructive effects of momentum and the galaxies lost when a direction is picked. (A sentence being the perfect example.) It would disclaim the fear, the reason none of this should be trusted, but also begin to sketch out the nature of the problem, where it is decisions, not this luxury of choice, that gives the days their flavor.

Jul 27 - Airport

Even small trips are a reminder that your surroundings are invisible. Leave so you can see what you have left.

Jul 29 - Portland

I'm not sure why this sounds so urgent. I suspect a microdose might have been involved, but I honestly can't remember. ... Because each day feels like another step in this dawning comprehension of language's fragility, another step towards understanding the premises we stitch together to give waking life meaning, another step towards truly believing that attention is a thing I can wield, not just suffer. Because the most exciting part of life right now is this gathering confidence to question my surroundings, to begin to see them clearly. Perhaps I'm just late to the game, but the stakes feel enormous and engagement - which has become shorthand for this ache to both question and describe - is as close to a calling as I've stumbled upon yet. It's that rare intersection of enjoyment and purpose, where all the latent desires I'd previously been too embarrassed to name have found safe haven and a fresh sense of urgency. I want to invent languages from the wind's whisper across distant fields, discover sculptures beneath the surface of stone, find shapes of pigment that complete the yawning loop between the twin thrills of recognition and creation. I want to dance along the boundary between reckless and careful, connected from free, individual from shared. I want to pursue meaning wherever it leads without apology or fear. I want to live life looking and not shrink from what I find. These strike me as normal enough thoughts for a 34 yr old to have, and yet I still don't know where to look for company.

Aug 2 - Golden Bluffs Beach, CA

Camping on the beach after a long day of hiking through redwoods. L's already in the tent and the cliffs have gone a golden green, the shrubs that cling to them a burnished olive. Then the sun slips down and the color fades: green-gold pales to a gangrenous gray. The fire persists, though I should douse it soon, as does the allure of focussing on the high, interrogate it for news, but that seems to have doused itself without my noticing. The day was full of thoughts of thoughts, the latter coming out as musings to L and occasional nods to the real noise going on inside, which sounded like trumpets and harps and weeping with joy as we passed under each towering miracle.  How the hell am I just now learning about redwoods?

Aug 6 - Portland

Last night we draped towels over the security lights and projected Hook on to the wall of our parking lot. Devin sat to my left, Jeff & Bea to my right & L down in front, gripping a tightly-wound Zuzu, who spent most of the show growling at passersby. Then, about 1/2 way through, neighbors Adam and Christina arrived. No one named it in the moment, but I think it was a feeling of place that began to wend through the group.  A shared understanding of home.

Sep 9 - Siena

After getting laid off from my job, I took short trip to visit old friends in Italy and the UK.   There was a moment last night where I felt almost lucky that I'd been away for six years. Or maybe lucky's the wrong word, but there an understanding that without the distance, without the trials that have made this simple trip feel like a profound personal victory, there wouldn't be this surreal, almost dreamlike sense of unearned intimacy; the palpable feeling, as I took my seat at the Nicchio contrada dinner (less than 24 hours after arriving), that whatever was forged in the last few years has stripped at least some of that previous familiarity, the unthinking inevitability of it all. And perhaps lucky is the right word. Lucky to have, in many ways, grown up here, made the transition from student to whatever comes next. It left me (gave me) the faintest flicker of a clue as to the mechanics of perspective and the sheer power of observing the world from an unfamiliar vantage point. And now, writing, I think I feel just as lucky to have left, to have moved on without forgetting or looking away, to bring these lessons out to a larger stage.

Sep 12 - Siena

Piergiorgio's shop is empty. The man himself ... departed? Upstairs? Dead? I'm not even sure how I'd find out. But here I am, sipping my morning cappuccino in the same cafe where we'd sometimes get our mid-afternoon recharge, remembering the day he took me up via Citta to peer in the window of this new spot he was thinking about buying. Do you remember him talking about that garden? Do you remember him describing it excitedly in a way you couldn't quite follow, but would come to understand, fully, as his peaceful little dream became a reality? (Have you learned anything more important since then? Hard to say.)

Oct 11 - Portland

Bryan Denton. Look him up. Bryan Denton is a photo journalist for the New York Times. Look him up right now. Flip through those photos. Take your time. Let it sink in. Check out Fordlandia, Libya, the story on China's cave dwellers. Check out the Mongolia coal burning story. Ok, check your pulse.  Feel that? Now consider: you are spending your days learning to make video games.

Oct 20 - Portland

While meditating yesterday, my mind fixed on a single, very clear image. A memory? I'm not sure. Mom is in her barn boots and coat, waiting in the kitchen for the donkey bucket to fill. She's looking straight ahead, staring at her reflection in the window. After a moment I realize that she's crying. Still tall, still herself, still resolute, but tears are streaming down both cheeks. (She's wearing that floppy red winter hat, too. I'm not sure why that detail sticks.)

Oct 21 - Portland

Spent an hour reading little chunks of DFW with the emotional intensity a child might direct towards a cherished toy or blanket. It helps. He helps. I don't know why, but he does. Even his collections of words that divide the essays in Both Flesh & Not are strangely comforting. In fact, the words got me thinking about engagement, or methods of engagement, and the degree to which I can (now) appreciate how naming shapes seeing. Collecting words can feel a little like psychic fortification: a brain equipping itself for a long trek in to the dark.

Nov 22 (Thanksgiving) - Portland

A feature of so much time spent listening to the inside of my own head recently is that I've come to think of emotional states a little like meals. They only last for so long, they'll never be exactly the same again, and how you feel afterwards is the product of that strange balance between ingredients and company and the self you brought to the table in the first place. And TV (or any kind of addictive watching, but especially the kind that blinks and flashes and groans and explodes and only exists to keep you watching) is the box of donuts you regret instantly, but keep eating anyways because chemical reactions just beyond your control are set in motion. Donuts (I know this) instantly pave over the taste of your last meal.

Dec 31 - Canaan

In bed, sick, fireworks popping in the distance. There's more to say, but my brain feels like wet cement. Welcome 2019, I can't wait to meet you.