Lately, I’ve been reminiscing about southern
California. Specifically, driving in my car at night somewhere between blue hour and dark when the desert and the city lights both were on equal display. This is thanks to the art of @justin_parpan which has put into images something that was only a feeling.
And I think thank god for art. Art made by humans who also feel and experience a million different things worth trying to distill into some tangible expression of our time here.
My car. My first days of independence. The seemingly endless southern California warm nights. Only life and potential spilling out before me. As endless as all those highways I drove.
An image I loved for an article I photographed and wrote about agritourism in Montana for @ediblebozeman .
An unused image but I wanted to see it here.
Location: @hagerman_ranch
Winter returned last night as it comically does in spring, even in June, when we’ve safely past the last average date of frost, inches will fall. This is normal. A perk and challenge of life here. But this is the most snow I’ve seen on the ground since late November. A foot overnight. It feels like a miracle. An ironic one if we’re defining irony like Alanis did.
As i drove home this morning in a white world it felt so strange to be that just 16 days ago we were in Norway. Am I really that same person? Does anyone else feel like they are living multiple lives simultaneously?
I have to remind myself to breathe regularly here, something often less necessary when I’m away from home. Hurrying was less a thing in Norway and Denmark. Eat. sleep. Exercise. Work. Create. Repeat. When you have a suitcase and nothing is permanent there is less to control and worry about. I would buy five things at the store and make many meals, stretching things to last, trying to reduce waste.
At home, I hurry. I forget to breathe normal over silly stress like dinner running late. But I want to let go of this self imposed hurry that doesn’t serve. I want to be that version of me that existed thousands of miles away mere days ago that had the distance to see the everyday different.
Room for breathing normally. Inhale. exhale.
9/100
In wild writing, a practice I return to often, you write as fast as you can and never stop to think, edit or censure yourself. And if you do, your writing suffers.
Whatever you try to suppress or try to make sound good typically results in worse writing. It’s an excellent practice, and I have written both so terribly and so many things I don’t think would have surfaced were it not for the furious writing.
I am trying to do a 100 days project and my writing is shit. It feels empty and hollow and like I’m trying. Normally, I have some flow in my writing and I can access a form of the truth I’m trying to get at.
But the world is a shit show and I want to write about it and I don’t. It feels too big for someone like me to tackle, too complex, like the noise is enough without me adding to it. Also, don’t we deserve a break from it? Who isn’t thinking about the world and what’s happening and the unending unknowns for our future?
But this censure I think is contributing to my very shitty writing. I’m not accessing my truths and thus I find I have very little to say that feels worthwhile.
This probably isn’t the only reason for my shallow words but I imagine it’s a part of it. I am the kind of person, who when they avoid a thing they really want to do or care about, it just gets louder and more unavoidable until I’m forced to let go.
It feels like adulthood too does a very good job of trying to convince us that responsibility and our careers and retirement accounts require us to ignore these parts of ourselves that are asking that we continue to give them space. They are worthy at any age, perhaps more so as adults.
8/100
I learn from the comments section on NYTimes cooking that a woman likes to do all her cooking in the morning. That way all the flavors will have time to meld. She goes on to tell us her pension for throwing a salad together at night. I can picture her in her kitchen. In the dark winter mornings with her coffee. In the endless light of a summer sun that greets her early.
Connection via the comments section.
7/100
Occasionally, I forget that life is happening right now. Especially, when it is early in the morning and I am cozy in bed—I LOVE sleep.
And then I remember that this is my one life and I get out of bed and I go into the world and I am rewarded with mostly small simple things that make life the most worthwhile.
I think a lot of life might just be getting up and going outside.
5/100
I have always hated being cold. Pretty much the majority of my existence is spent fending off the cold. I am that friend who can be boiling in 100 degree sun and then step into the shade and immediately reach for a sweater. We barely had winter this year and my space heater was running all my workdays. No house has enough throw blankets. My husband and I fight over the fan being on because the breeze is too much for me.
Then I started swimming in cold water. We weren’t able to take showers @starlightandstorm but we had a big cold ocean to swim in and arctic lakes. Obviously, this was my nightmare and I swore I would skip this part of the retreat. But fomo! Everyone else was doing it. And I was dying to be one of those cold water women who enjoyed morning dips in icy waters. I just didn’t want to go through the actually being cold part.
But I did and it worse in my head than reality most of the time. I actually like it now. Saunas without the cold plunge are missing the best part in my experience.
This newfound relationship with cold has affected how I feel about the sting on my cheeks and the colder seasons as a whole. I crave cold. And no one is more surprised at this turn of events than me.
4/100
2/2
I wanted not just to make it through a season I had come to loathe, I wanted to learn how to make it an essential part of living. That fall when the weather began to change, I looked forward to it. I bought led candles to put in the windows and put them on a timer for every night at dusk. I lit candles in my office in the middle of the day for joy. While we didn’t get to be caretakers during the polar night, we went back to Norway that winter because we wanted to see it in winter. I was voluntarily going on a winter trip.
I am grateful for this shift in perspective because I absolutely love winter. I even like the cold. The way it feels when I step outside and my cheeks are instantly stung. How when it is really cold I can taste it. And the sun, it’s light stays soft because it never gets too high and the rare quality of winter light is something that summer light will never touch.
3/100
