write me well

Tag: nostalgia

  • Moody Moods

    Almost exactly a year ago, I rediscovered The Moody Blues. I randomly remembered their rather delightful song Lovely To See You, decided to use it for a tiny reel I made for the journey downtown to get my last tattoo, then promptly forgot about them again.

    Something in the late summer of this year brought them back from my periphery, and unsatisfied with the various Best of The Moody Blues collections I could find online, I created a nearly two-hour-long playlist titled The Moody Blues Per My Childhood. It has been my constant soundtrack these past several months and, the way often only music (and particularly, music with uniquely nostalgic ties) can, it has brought me a disproportionate amount of joy.

    As with many things in my life, this stems from an obsession of my mom’s (shout out to Karen King). The Moody Blues were a deeply seeded staple of my early childhood, linked inexorably with memories of the condo featured in our home movies and my mom’s Laura Ashley dresses and Princess Diana haircut. When I asked her how she got into the band in the early 90’s, which was hardly their heyday, she said it was through my Aunt Joan (shout out to Aunt Joan).

    So on my next call to my aunt, I asked her what caused the sudden love for Justin Hayward, John Lodge, Graeme Edge, and Ray Thomas. She shared that at the time of the onset, she was living in Vancouver and studying for a masters. She was also, as it happens, incurably homesick. Home for my aunt wasn’t California – having left for Denver before I was born, she was missing the Rocky Mountain State. So when, in 1992, The Moody Blues issued a recording of their live performance at Red Rocks, it was for her like a postcard from home. A fantastic live album in its own right, it cemented The Moody Blues as one of her, and eventually my mom’s, favorites.

    (Prior to this, she hilariously shared with me, her only knowledge of them had been Nights in White Satin, which she hated, because for a group of friends she spent time with in her early 20’s, it was the song the boys in the group would play on repeat whenever they had a girl in their room. A musical sock on the door, if you will, played ad nauseum. I die.)

    If nothing else, I am a total sucker for nostalgia, the weepy whims of missing something, the feeling of needing a person or, better yet, a place or a time. Finding out that my own family’s ties to this underrated progressive rock band were rooted in exactly that – UGH, the full circle swell of joy it brought me! They are my favorite brand of feelings: the emotional equivalent of the French word souvenir – meaning memory – being adopted into the English language. Give it to me ALL. DAY.

    This all felt very appropriate for September, which was a month of family things. After an unintentional two-year hiatus from Sacramento, I spent the last week of September staying with my family and having the best time. Sushi, vintage shopping, and laughter with my sister and her girlfriend, ice cream sundaes with one niece, an afternoon of coloring and make-believe with the other, visiting the renaissance faire for the first time in a decade with my other sister, and many mornings of tea and chats with my mom. A perfect moment for The Moody Blues Per My Childhood, if I do say so myself.

    Prior to September, the entire summer had been spent fully entrenched in car things: Aaron started teaching me how to drive a stick shift, I went to more car shows than I can count, I planned scenic drives for my work. Cars on cars on cars. Then there was my trip home, and now, it’s fall! Lovely, leafy, tea-filled fall. Yesterday was a crisp autumn day and we had shepherd’s pie for dinner. This morning was cozy and spent on the sofa before heading off for coffee and errands. I have every plan to bake homemade ginger nut biscuits this afternoon, and tomorrow – currently looking to be all blue skies and chilly sunshine – we’re going to head out to Snoqualmie Falls. In a world that is feeling increasingly insane, it’s the little things. And sometimes, those things are listening to a silly little playlist while the leaves turn.  

  • Elixirs

    I can’t sleep.

    I can’t sleep because MY BEST FRIEND WILL BE HERE IN LESS THAN TWELVE HOURS.

    As I type this, she’s probably somewhere over Wyoming, or possibly far-north-Canada because flight paths boggle the mind and almost always curve way more than I expect them to. So, instead of watching Season 1 of Sons of Anarchy for the fiftieth time (this week’s background show, I love you Opie Winston), I’ve thrown on Something Corporate like I’m fifteen and am getting PUMPED for the next six days and spending every minute with one of the most fantastic, comfortable, FLAWLESS humans on this planet.

    (I could not be more thrilled that Linds’ trip (LONDON BABY) landed when it did. We’re gonna grab some well-earned relaxation, hit up the TOWER OF LONDON FOOD FESTIVAL, celebrate my recent promotion, and have first-time-Dublin experiences together. It’s going to be a killer six days. Real talk: even if we sat on the couch the entire time, it’d still be killer. See Kathy’s 2015 Seattle trip for reference.)

    My latest writing project has been collecting stories from the seven years after graduating from college and turning it into something like a collection of essays. Right now it’s pretty structure-less and my commitment to it will likely wane in perfect opposition to the upcoming peak retail season, but for most of the summer I was fairly on-fire creating decent, funny content for the first time in years. I’ll pick it back up any minute here (I have lots of funny content…somewhere, stored away between my childlike boundless enthusiasm and certainty that life IS A MOVIE and every decision should be made as if you’re driving the plot, obviously), but in the mean time I’ve been admiring some of the keener observations these mid-what-the-fuck-years have inspired. And one of those resoundingly true blurbs is an in-the-works story about friendship.

    I won’t poach on the territory my future collection of stories will cover, but the gist of what I realized while writing about friendship is that there’s a very real reason that adult friendships are hard. You can argue it has everything to do with not having time, with not wanting to put yourself out there, with meeting decent funny relatable humans of any gender being equally impossible whether you’re trying to befriend them or (be-?)date them. But I posit that what makes it the most impossible is that the older I get, the less interested I am in spending copious amounts of time downloading all of the necessary life details that are required to understand (and appropriately criticize/commentate/rapidly agree with vim and verve) my reaction to a thirty second conversation I’ve had with my sister. Or other friend. Or coffee lady that I get coffee from every day. Just, who has the time for that? Who has the energy? This is why there is a deeply satisfying level of comfort with old friends. You’ve been through a ton of shit, sure, but sometimes it is just real nice sitting with a person that’s lived through fifteen years of your vibes. Having that common bond isn’t irreplaceable, but dear god the thought of even attempting to replicate it is EXHAUSTING.

    So. This brings me to the level of skin-thrumming excitement inspired by the thought that LINDSAY will be here this time tomorrow. We’ll only have six days together, and we will both be the first to admit that by the end of that six days it’s probably for the best that we part ways because I love that woman but long-term co-living, our souls were not meant for. But those six days will be a laugh-filled elixir of magic best-friendiness, and I need me some of that. Life’s no fun if you don’t get to share it with someone, and as a semi-permanent single person I’m in the camp (roasting s’mores and) insisting that we all spend way too much time acting like that someone has to be the love of our life. I’ve got my bestie. My pallo. And I’m a pretty happy clam.

    Other contributing factors to Happy Clam Status: that promotion I snuck in a few paragraphs ago. When I got the good news last week, I did what used to be the cool thing and I made a Facebook post to commemorate the occasion. I can’t even call it a #humblebrag because it made no bones about my belief that the STARS ALIGNED to make this happen. And even if it was a #humblebrag, sorry for the post I am not, because do you know what it did? It reminded me of how many stunning humans I’ve gotten the chance to work with over the course of the last seven years. Even people that I haven’t spoken with since 2013 and managed in my first leadership position were happy to congratulate me and internet-celebrate how far I’ve come. It was just such a visceral (the internet is not visceral I know but metaphor okay?) way to be reminded of how much I love humans and peoples and teams. Being a manager has afforded me so many opportunities to be silly with people, to work kick-ass hard during a murderous peak day, to share potlock food with, to pick fantastic playlists and badly belt out tunes with. Nothing about the last seven years has been simple, or direct, or easy. And I know the coming months will have their own challenges. But so many amazing humans made the experience worth while.

    And dude – do you know how many amazing people I yet again find myself working with? This world is full of them, guys. If you’re not at a job where you like the people you see every day, you’re not living your best life. (Yes. I know. Best Lives don’t generally include work. But tbh? Mine does. I’d be bored as a Bored Thing without it.)

    In summary: I still can’t sleep. Linds is probably somewhere over Lake Ontario now. Life’s pretty amazing right now.

    AND MY BEST FRIEND WILL BE HERE IN LESS THAN TWELVE HOURS.