Category: Uncategorized (So Far)

If my trip goes more or less as I’ve mapped it out in my head, today I will be driving from somewhere in Idaho, not far from Grand Targhee (which, granted, is actually in Wyoming), back home to Boulder.

I will be taking a specific and not exactly obvious route. At some point I realized that an interesting way to end this trip would be to follow the route I took with Nolus’s then-girlfriend Luna when she and I drove to Colorado at the end of a trip to Jackson/Targhee back in January of 2012. Nolus and I had driven from Colorado to Victor, ID, (just on the Idaho side of Teton Pass) and met Luna and Nolus’s friend Jesse there for a snowboarding trip. (They’d come from Portland, OR.) At the end of the trip, Nolus was going with Jesse to Portland for a party he didn’t want to miss, flying back to Colorado later, and Luna was going to continue on to Colorado–at Nolus’s behest, she was moving there. I would be driving Nolus’s 4Runner, and Luna was in her own car with all her stuff.

Are you catching the part where Nolus was going to Portland for a party rather than to Colorado with his woman? Let’s suffice to say that as an awake and conscious individual during that trip, Nolus was a far, far cry from his best.

The route is/was this: from Victor, rather than Teton Pass (closed that January because of avalanche), I’ll take ID-31 southeast across Pine Creek Pass (where I spun out in Nolus’s bald-tired 4Runner and put it into a snowbank), then US-26 past Palisades Reservoir to Alpine, WY, then continuing east/northeastward to Hoback Junction. There I’ll pick up US-191 (probably not an ice sheet as it was back in ’12) to Rock Springs and I-80. Perhaps I will go to the Walmart where I pushed Luna around in a shopping cart at 2am, exhausted but slightly giddy at having survived (not entirely an exaggeration) day one of what ended up being a two-day drive. Along I-80 I will reflect on the place where a combination of wind and ice caused Luna to spin out her car, narrowly missing a snowplow, a tractor-trailer and a guardrail and somehow ending up no worse than terribly shaken. I don’t suspect I’ll face the whiteout conditions I did on I-80 that day as I make my way to Laramie, where I’ll switch onto US-287 toward Ft. Collins, I-25 between Cheyenne and Ft. Collins having been closed that January day for adverse conditions.

So though it is a slightly less efficient route from the Targhee area than the obvious route over Teton Pass, its greater significance makes the added difficulty worthwhile. I don’t know what, if anything, I’m expecting to find by driving this route, but once the idea arose, it felt appropriate. It felt right.

That 2012 trip was horrible. I expect things will go rather better this time around.

By today I am well on my way back to Colorado. I am returning with a somewhat firmer sense of the route I will take and where my stops will be and what I will do with my days (besides travel) than I did on my drive out. If all goes even close to plan, it’ll be a lot of fun.

Before the trip, several people offered me the blessing, “May you find what you’re looking for out there,” and I did, and so much more. As it should be, I am coming back changed for the experience.

During (and because of) the trip, I’ve gained a clearer sense of my direction–what I’m doing from here, and why. Not that I have vanquished all uncertainty on my path going forward–life doesn’t work that way–but I have come to a different relationship with that uncertainty. I can in part thank my choice to not pull back from my writing while I was away. I haven’t missed a day of publishing, and I’ve finished my 5,000 words every week. I did that despite often not knowing ahead of time what my days would bring. There’s a lot to be said for declaring, “This is my path,” and then walking it, no matter what comes.

That’s a good thing to experience.

The trip has been fun and amazing and wonderful in ways both expected and un-, but it will be good to get home, good to get to work.

I got back from the wedding and went down to the solstice party that the brewery I was staying at was throwing. (Yes, I stayed above the brewery, and it was awesome.) Solstice eve in Alaska: it would never get darker than dusk. If that isn’t a solstice worth celebrating, I don’t know what is.

I went without changing–dress shirt, slacks, tie–though I felt I could only properly express the spirit of the occasion by throwing on my moose hat as well.

Many of the kids there didn’t know quite what to make of me. (Healy, AK, is just outside Denali National Park, and is full of kids in their early 20s there for seasonal work.) “He’s different from us! He’s older, and he’s in a necktie!” was the vibe I was getting.

But eventually the smiles got wider and the conversations sillier. “Love the hat,” they said.

Fun is contagious.

• The award for “Most Enthusiastic Promoter of the Site” goes to: Jerry Siravo.

Many times this spring, Jerry said to me, “I turned [insert name] on to your not-a-blog.” Jerry almost certainly has been more active in promoting this thing than I have.

Through his efforts, I now have over six readers per day!

But for serious, I have no idea how many people read this thing. I’ve only occasionally done promotion, and I’ve never checked my pageviews, not once. For all I know, word of mouth has taken off and over 10,000 people read this thing every day. Rumor even has it (it’s a valid rumor even if I’m the one who starts it, right?) that President Obama is a daily reader! Welcome, Mr. President. I hope you continue to enjoy what you’re reading here.

But back to serious: I’m actually pretty proud of what I’m doing here. Thus a goal for the summer season: actually put regular effort into increasing my readership. Time to spread the gospel. (And to Jerry, and anyone else who’s passed the URL on to someone else: thank you.)

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• The “It’s Like a Tasty Beverage, but in Words” Cleverness Award goes to: Dawn Skinner

This is not a blog, and therefore these can’t be blogposts. Only Dawn has thus far figured out (or at least reflected back to me) what they are: they’re Free Refills.

Good job, Dawn.

Now that I’ve acknowledged it, I’ll have to finally explain what Free Refills really means. It all started many years ago with a really great idea…anyway, watch this space.

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In all seriousness, thanks to everyone who’s reading what I’m publishing here.

I’m trying to build something here. Without your eyes, it would be so easy to stop stumbling forward, though stumble forward I must. Every time I receive even the barest hint that these writings mean something to someone, it fills my world with light.

I wasn’t surprised, not really. With public opinion having already shifted and a raft of lower court rulings asserting the right, I figured at least a 5-4 win for the good guys. Kennedy would, as usual, cast the swing vote. I could even imagine Roberts, who seems to have a keen eye for his legacy and a surprising ability to put aside conservative orthodoxy (as he did the day before in the Affordable Care Act case), coming over.

So I wasn’t surprised, and yet when I saw the headline on the NYTimes, I wept.

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Though all four justices in the minority wrote dissenting opinions, it’s toward Scalia that I wish to turn my gaze, for it is Scalia who stands as the Court’s conservative-wing intellectual leader. For many years it’s been his voice that speaks loudest.

Scalia’s argument can be summarized by this sentence from his dissent: “Until the courts put a stop to it, public debate over same-sex marriage displayed American democracy at its best.” There was no need and no basis for the court to step in, he argues. Across the country, whatever movement on the issue that was occurring via the democratic process was exactly what should happen. Let the states work it out for themselves; the Constitution is silent on the issue.

I live in Colorado, and through our recent legalization of cannabis, I am privileged to see the state vs. federal debate played out in the most fascinating and useful way. We’re moving the world forward by getting to challenge our country’s insane drug laws via intrastate action.

Thus I am not one to reject the “states are the laboratories of democracy” argument out of hand. But within that space, one must question the consistency of Scalia’s beliefs. Imagine that in the face of the question of same-sex marriage, a state had chosen to argue that marriage, as a religious institution and social convention, fell entirely outside the purview of the government, and that therefore that state would no longer recognize any marriage, gay or straight. Would Scalia have the courage to maintain his intellectual fidelity to the originalist view of the Constitution here, for certainly the Constitution is silent on all matters of marriage? I admit this is speculation on my part, but I strongly doubt it. I suspect Scalia would cringe at the notion that an institution by which we’ve ordered our world for literally millenia cannot be seen as a basic right in our culture, because the Constitution doesn’t speak on the matter. Perhaps I am wrong, and perhaps Scalia is capable of that kind of intellectual consistency. But I doubt it.

But let’s presume for a moment that he is thus capable, that he’d maintain his principles in the face of a legislative or democratic challenge to a social construct that predates our nation by literally thousands of years. Good for him. But for that to be true then he would have to be saying, similarly, that he would have sided against the majority in Loving v. Virginia, the 1969 case that struck down laws against so-called miscegenation. He’d be saying, too, that he would have sided in the minority of Brown v. Board of Education, on the same principles.

And thus we are able to see Scalia for what he truly is. Either he is the worst kind of intellectual coward–the sort of person who begins with his conclusion and essentially argues backward until he reaches his so-called principles, knowing that he can avoid ever facing a real test of those principles–or else he is simply hideous, as anyone who would still argue for any possible legitimacy to miscegenation laws or the doctrine of “Separate but Equal” clearly is.

Whichever it is, it is good to see that his time as leader, both intellectual and legal, is coming to an end. He will not be missed.

“In the folds of the pannus^1,2, a french fry was found.”

¹In researching the correct spelling of pannus, I discovered that the correct word is actually panniculus–pannus means something else entirely. But as I had recently learned pannus from my friends John and Katie, medical professionals as well, both of whom live in a completely different part of the country from Aaron, I have to conclude that pannus in this context is less malapropism than med-pro vernacular. And I’ve long been a slut for vernacular.

²No, I’m not gonna leave you hanging. Here’s Urban Dictionary’s slightly awkward definition: A large roll of abdominal fat which can extend anywhere from the genitals to, in some cases, all the way past the knees.

“Holy crap. I’m in Alaska.”

It is far harder to write a short piece (that actually says something) than it is to write something longer.

Happy summer, everyone. Let me introduce my writing/publishing rules for summer.

1. Draft 5,000 words per week. This has been an effective minimum and I see no reason to change it now.

2. Publish every Monday through Friday. I’ve tried on other possibilities and so far nothing else feels right.

3. I may, for sufficiently good reason, take time off. I’m not sure exactly how to define “sufficiently good reason,” but as you read this I am in Alaska and I may decide not to write and publish any other days this week, and you know what? I think that’s fine.

4. I can redefine the rules at any time. I fixed the rules for spring and played by them for the entire season. But I’m looking to speed up the evolution of what I’m doing here, and so I want to be able to give space to dive into any experiment with writing and publishing that seems worthwhile.

Okay, ready? Let’s begin.

Two years ago today was Nolus’s memorial.

I first met Nolus with his then-wife Siva at a party at one of the Steele St. warehouses in Denver. I can’t recall the exact party, but it was probably sometime during the fall of 2007. I remember our meeting. We were standing outside. Siva and I chatted while Nolus sat on the railing and said very little. I can’t say I got an especially friendly vibe from him. As I got to know him better I was able to reflect back that he was almost certainly candy-flipping that night and so could have been feeling many things.

In the summer of 2008, I was sitting in the Albuquerque living room of my friends Brendan and Joy. Brendan and I were friends from high school, and we had reconnected in the fall of 2007 at our 15-year reunion, where we discovered that we were both Burners. Anyway, we were talking about Burning Man experiences, and Brendan and Joy were telling me about some people they’d shared a Burn and become good friends with, a couple out of Denver, named Nolus and Siva. “Wait a minute,” I said. “I know them.”

Our friendship began on November 13th, 2008. Brendan’s favorite DJ at the time, Krafty Kuts, was playing at the Church in Denver, and he made us promise to go and to look for each other. I remember standing by the bar and seeing Nolus and Siva on the dancefloor and experiencing the certainty of recognition pass between us, and we hugged and laughed at the small-worldness of it all and spent the night dancing together.

I think the five of us got together only one time. Brendan and Joy came up to Denver for Super Bowl weekend in 2009. On Saturday night, January 31st, Nolus and Siva and Brendan and Joy and I went to hear Lee Coombs spin at Vinyl. The next day we sat in the room where I wrote this piece, and together we watched my beloved Steelers win the Super Bowl. I remember where Nolus was sitting.