the {un}welcome guest

i went to a family reunion this past week and met an unwelcome guest: mortality.

like a nuisance, he was everywhere, dressed in everyone's clothes, smiling behind everyone's eyes, lingering in small comments {gosh, we're seventy now, i wonder how many more of these there will be for us}, and ambushing me in jokes {you know when you turn 30 this year you'll be closer to 60 than to birth}.

he was telling me the same story with different words: the mortality of bodies and the mortality of things.

my great-aunt's family included us mikesell's {her brother's family} as they said goodbye to their lake house and more importantly to the bigger life she used to lead before she had a stroke this spring. but the sadness, the bitter in the parting mixing with the sweetness of all the memories, it wasn't a pall over the time, merely a depth to it, a call to reality. their own. hers. mine.

my great aunt's possessions were distributed: her travel memorabilia, jewelry, photos, knick knacks, china, silver, and the mundane – old playing cards, speakers, sewing basket. it was heartbreaking to watch as the connection between her and her things was pulled until thin and then softly broken to give them a new life, new meaning and a new home with one of the forty-five family members there. and even though reason {because she's sharp and together despite her age, 91, and her post-stroke body} has told her these things need to go, that she can't take them with her, it was hard to watch, hard to ask for this thing or that thing even though it would otherwise go to goodwill after tomorrow. hard knowing what it cost her, even amidst her never ending good cheer.


but these things we all carried away in the back of cars, onto planes, across countries, they carry with them the lingering residue of that sweet spirit of hers ensuring their destiny to be loved. though one day too soon, even if we are lucky enough to follow the mikesell way and live into our nineties*, the best these things can hope for is to be passed through weathered hands, onto the next generation. a little older, more love-worn and tired, but optimistic for their next life.


after all the work the family did over multiple visits and from both sides of the family, there was still a house full of things, possessions, sundries, and food. it was overwhelming. it was exhaustive. and i come home, to my home, so lovingly inhabited, lovingly designed, find it's also filled with things, even more than when i left for virginia, and yet there is a lot i want to clear out, let go of, pare down. limit myself so that the patina of my love and care is not spread too thin over too many objects, that it can steep into those pieces of true resonance, those possessions that somehow seem to make manifest a part of my spirit you wouldn't see otherwise. like the set of scales i inherited from grandpa, the antique ivory bracelet i have instantly fallen in love with from my great-aunt, my installation of birds i have yet to hang here at my new place, my jade tree that will one day be massive.

so i call do is begin the purge. that bottle of conditioner i'll never use, the shirt that has a small hole in it that i didn't like wearing much lately anyway, the wine glasses left from a mis-matched set, the vases i always thought weren't quite pretty enough. and as i struggle with the typical decade-turning questions of what am i doing with my life? and how can i get where i want to go fast enough? i can at least feel like my physical life, of my house and body, will be in tidy and in shape coming into this new year.

so here we go, starting now.

*even our descendants in the 18th and early 19th centuries lived into their nineties.

--------------------------

a little self-reflective self-portrait shoot from the end of the dock at the lake house just after my final swim in smith mountain lake.

11 weeks

in eleven weeks, to the day, i turn 30.

this decade shift has been a long time in coming, slowly sidling up to me these past few months, whispering promises in my ear. but even so, it will still be scary and it will still be significant, more than just a number. so here, tonight, i want to mark the beginning of the final stretch as i rush forward to meet something i have been eyeing for a while now, tasting the flavor that lingers each time i say this new number:

30.
thirty.

i still have so much time.
i still have so far to go.

but right now, i have a few ambitious goals for the next few months {almost three}:

1. this week, as i promised myself, i have started training for my second half marathon, this time giving myself the full 12 weeks of ramp up and training instead of just one. i have a fairly ambitious goal in mind which i set before i considered the practicality of choosing a race at a high altitude. oops. i hear bend, oregon is pretty so at least i'll have a great view as i'm wheezing down the course. i'll be running two days after my birthday and it feels like the timing so perfectly marks the last stretch of my 20's with the focus and drive of the training as well as sets a good precedence for my 30's with a race two days in.

2. earlier in october, i'm going to fly down to texas, drive with my dp {director of photography} to alabama, then proceed to document my homecoming to bayou la batre, my hometown i have not seen in 19 years. ever since i graduated from undergrad in 2005 i knew there was a project waiting for me down there and finally i go down to find it. i am excited. i am terrified. more on this later.

3. i want to shift my sleep schedule so i am getting a healthy amount at a healthy time. {i also want to meditate more, but one change at a time.}

4. my apartment is a bit disheveled under the luxury of so much space. i want to clean up my act. poke around in the corners. hang up my birds. finish settling into the springboard of this space that keeps telling me all that i can look forward to in our relationship together that is really just beginning. and i want to invite you all in a few weeks to come and celebrate the summer, celebrate the journey and celebrate my new space {all meanings of the word}. more on this later too.

wish me luck.

sigur ros - seattle - 2012

what is there to say after you spend two hours slipping and swaying between the melodies and beats of one of the most viscerally experiential bands? left in my hands, rattling restless in my head, keeping me awake long past my bedtime are the colors, the sounds, the harmonies that arrested my spirit.

individual moments stand out in perfect focus and flawless clarity: that golden silence they wedged into the middle of a song, shocking us all into breathless surprise, holding it long past you'd expect it, longer still until a clap broke out hesitantly {as we shook our heads to silence the offender}. a sold out audience's worth of collective anticipation lengthening the seconds even further, then further still to the very edge of our capacity to be patient, to not breathe. and still they made us wait. it was almost too much. my breathing returned loud and excited, squirming and full in those final moments of waiting. then payoff, the surge of sound immediately following jonsi's microphoned inhale was one of countless moments of glory.

countless.

others include:

the soft valtari greens of the opening song's visuals.
the hazy ship floating hauntingly across the projection screen.
the filament lights on stage.
jonsi's gentle curl of hand, encouraging us to sing along.
singing along.
the lines and shapes inside my closed eyes as the light danced through my eyelids, refusing to be shut out.
the excitement of hearing the opening sounds of a well-loved song {svefn-g-englar}, almost too good to be true, and the affirmation from one of my concert mates*, the one who is so good at answering my unvoiced questions.
the smiles passed around between my neighbors.
the colors. the colors. the colors. even if they were just sounds parading around as a color.
the final song at the end, untitled #8, that always starts off deceivingly slow until it builds, and builds, and builds beyond one's capacity to take in the sheer volume of sound and lights and noise and harmony pressed into us, until the spirit cries out to participate. the cheers erupting from the crowd around us were not a distraction but purely a primal reflex, an extension of what was happening on stage. a response to the unspoken realization that the vessels of our bodies cannot hold all that they give at the end of this one song. we must explode, release, even if it's just a rhythmic tapping of my hand across my heart. even if it's just a burst of noise from my neighbor's gut. the spirit cries out to participate. the spirit cries out: participate.

the band always comes out at the end to clap their hands warmly back at us, link arms, and then bow. the sweetest part of a bittersweet goodbye. sigur ros, please don't take four years to come back to us. please.


*music friend #1, joining me here almost exactly 4 years, two trips and six shows later {only six??? i guess we have shared quite a few others even if we weren't both at the same show at the same time including atoms for peace, sigur ros, bon iver, modselektor, radiohead...}.

 

setlist:


ekki múkk
varúð
ný batterí
i gær
vaka
sæglópur
svefn-g-englar
viðrar vel til loftárása
hoppípolla
olsen olsen
festival
hafsól

encore:

dauðalogn
popplagið {untitled 8}