LIFE 'ROUND HERE: hiking through the storm
or just beyond it
on 11/11
i wished for the ability to go on lots o’ nice hikes for a long time. is it greedy to ask for something for a long time? i’m sure it is but i couldn’t help myself.
on Election Eve
i thought i was going to have to write about the ghosts of Election Eves past, which always tend to feel like “a little less scarier” version of the present moment. my brooklyn apartment caught fire last Election Eve. subsequently everything was destroyed. i didn’t even consider it an omen of any sort! it’s easy to make signs out of almost everything and narrative is important for humans but narrative isn’t the whole thing. sometimes stuff just happens. yes, it’s comforting to exert some sort of control over things and usually at the expense of feeling extremely egocentric which, honestly, is fine and fun from time to time. for the Lore! but i do find myself a bit bored with the mainstream astrology energy of “what does it all mean for me me me.” i also find it disconcerting that it is almost impossible to tell what is real and what is fake anymore, but i think that just speaks to the Absurdity that is Life and always has been.
what i’m trying to say is that for the last few months i’ve been finding myself more focused on the tangible, the immediate. just like when my apartment burned down and red cross told us we were shit out of luck. i simply had to work out what to do next (shout out to Hayley & Kat for being the greatest friends through this and always). everything was step by step because it had to be. Big Picture felt so vague and broken and out of reach, not so dissimilar to now. the looming anxieties about Big Picture are still very there, the capacity to compute, however, is not.
the Election Eve before that my country elected the same guy they elected once more earlier this month. i had just moved to Madrid (where i’m living again) for the first time. i, like many others both then and now, predicted the outcome. it would appear that i have made a habit of escaping the main battlegrounds of a Trump presidency, but i do tend to lean toward escapism…
it’s always a little eerie when things aren’t fully logical or fully intuitive. i know my country hates women but i can also feel it in my bones. i know that’s a saying but i mean it literally (?) or is it somatically? who knows! but it’s almost like i can feel generations of women before me that also felt this. i’d describe it as (again, literally) chilling. something like cold water running like a flowing tap through a hollow bone. that’s why it always surprises me when people are surprised by these election results, but my surprise is immediately followed by a subtle envy that one could hold such hope or conviction or belief in anything.
look, i’m doing it… exactly what i thought i decided i didn’t have to do… it’s just that i’m tired of talking about “The System” as if it’s some untouchable top secret agency. this blanket language makes it too easy to fall into despair. too difficult to point at specific issues in order to work on explicit solutions. sorry, can’t come to the phone, we’re not doing vague and out of reach right now. we’re outside doing the tangible stuff. try back later.
i’m grateful
for the opportunity to bike to the climbing gym. rainy, cloudy, sunny: all nice in their own way. i’m grateful for other things too and this is how i know that i low key must not have been doing all that great: if i went out of my way to write an actual list of things i’m grateful for…
get to bike to climbing gym
incredible view at sunset every evening
incredible view of sunrise reflection in mornings
partner who doesn’t mind cooking all meals
i was obviously thinking of the flat we’ve been in for almost two months, after a pretty annoying two month hunt. everyone asks because they’re polite so we repeatedly have to explain that it’s fine, there are certain things that could be better, but we needed a place to live. i was probably trying to outweigh the invasive sewage smell (that palo santo stands meekly up against it) with the aforementioned list at the time. the neighbourhood is nice, the doorman is competent, there are lots of trees and no building directly in front of ours; luxuries in a city like this! the smell might even be getting better!
that’s the apartment update for those asking.
On a Sunday
we went for a hike in aoslos, north of madrid, which was not the intended destination. our plan was to go a bit more north to see as much of the foliage as possible (we don’t get much and there’s a short window) but we had to turn around due to gnarly weather. we drove a lil south of the rain and managed to stay just beyond it the whole time, even when we seemingly walked directly toward it as you’ll see below. the photos were taken on my point n shoot and are completely unedited as is usual. i don’t mean this in a snarky way but i cannot be bothered to edit my photos. first of all, do you like them? just kidding. first of all, i don’t want to use adobe so what would i even use?! second of all, the earth is so pretty, like, look at these colors, i don’t have the heart to change em!! furthermore, i cannot bear to constantly sign my photos away to Meta and i’d like to keep them somewhere for the next time i lose all of my files, as is also usual. my phone hasn’t allowed me take a proper photo for months. i will have to get a new one soon and ONCE AGAIN will be contactless and photoless AS IS ALSO UNFORTUNATELY QUITE USUAL. if you’re reading this, if you’ve made it this far (!!!), send me a text in a few weeks sayin’ hey & maybe attaching a cute photo you may have of us. it will be warmly received.
i have this intrinsic want need to touch dirt and climb mountains and hug trees and rocks. even if a storm’s a comin (or an apartment fire, or a weird election), my needs remain. thus, i stay on my path, even when it looks frightening, knowing that i’ll make it through just like i always do.
or maybe, just maybe, with a lil rerouting the storm won’t hit me at all.
thanks for sticking around through the ebbs and flows
<3 * <3 * <3 * <3