Sometimes during the beautiful and loving moments with my daughter, I feel an anger and sadness come up in me, that I struggle to control. Anger because distance creates scarcity. I lost so much time. It feels unjust that she lives 5,000 miles away. To love someone so profoundly and then to be separated from them. It is the most desperate kind of heartache. For seven years I’ve wandered in that desert. I searched and sacraficed, until I finally arrived at ‘self’. And a new view of the circumstances. Maybe this has been preparation. A costly but valuable lesson. If this had never happened, would I have been able to …
By Driving
Today is a long drive to Omaha. There was a time after coming home from Prague (for a 2nd time) that I used to drive for long hours for work. Five hours a day through rural Illinois and Wisconsin. At the time I remember feeling nothing but impatience. Now I look back and see the creativity that came out of that boredom and the freedom of being alone. Sometimes I have this urge to get in my car and drive. Just drive for hours, days, weeks – not because I love driving, but because of the spontaneity and autonomy that it provides. Because that time in my life represents freedom. …
August, Again
On cue, in the tail end of July, seasonal allergies explode inside my head. Growing up they called it hay fever. It happens when things start to die. Which means I was fine in the Spring. But in the Fall, everything breaks loose. All those fields of plants drying and browning in the sun with no concrete and glass to slow it down. More than anything hay fever reminds me of youth and home. They make me reflect on how my home was probably never a place I was made to live. I don’t remember having allergies in Europe. But here they’re crippling. Millennia of my inherited inoculation means nothing …
Sunday
After a week of chaos, the quiet of this weekend is unsettling. I don’t know if it’s getting back to Minneapolis from Denver, or that the weekend slows down the tap of news and market data, but things seem suspiciously subdued. It’s quiet. Like a normal Sunday. But this is a forced imposed quiet. Maybe that’s what I need. It doesn’t feel natural. I don’t know if I like it. And what you like isn’t always what you need. I will say it’s nice to see everyone washing their hands when they leave the bathroom for a change. …
6 AM Flight
I don’t like morning much (too much weird energy). But I missed my flight last night. So now I’m staring out over the giant fish bowl called the North Denver security checkpoint very early in the morning. And I feel only gratitude. It’s oddly restorative watching the system whir into life: The dozen security people moving and talking as if it’s not 4:30 in the morning, the hundreds of passengers silently delegating responsibility for the infrastructure that will jettison them across the country. It’s so intricate. So precarious. I feel lucky that I got to live through a period of time where something this delicate was even possible. …
2019 – Year in Review
As I near the exit on 2019, I’m doing something that I don’t normally do: reflection (historically it’s rumination or bust for me). And what I find as look at 2019, is that it might be the best year of my life. Clarification- my adult life. Ten was fucking amazing. And so I’m forced to confront the correlation between feeling positive and the dearth of writing the past few months. Yes, I was working on the novel for the last half of the year. But that was editing, not inspiration. That was basketball practice. That was going to the gym. All work, minimal fun. I don’t know yet if it’s …