(SL) DISTIN 15

I had just returned from a month of backpacking by myself around Mexico and was with friends in The Bahamas. My time in Mexico got a little lonely and a little scary and I vowed I would never travel alone again. I was working three jobs, getting an art education program off the ground (proud to report: it’s still up and running), photographing, and bartending. I was also applying for graduate school so I would never have to work three jobs and have such a crazy life again. But I was doing things I loved, surrounded by people I loved, and managing to pay off my student loans.

I was certain I was going to spend just two years in New York, get my MFA, and then head west again for some version of a life that more closely resembled my more grown-up and settled down friends.

But, instead of two, I’ve been in New York for almost seven years. In February, I spent two weeks traveling alone, choosing to hardly speak to anyone. And, I’m freelancing again; so again, I have more than one job. I’ll be heading west but for the summer; my plans extend only as far as September 1st. I’m still surrounded by people I love; I’m still doing things I love; and I’m still paying off my student loans.

The only thing I am now is more certainly uncertain.

There is something you should know about those stars painted over Grand Central.

They will not tell you exactly where you are; they are not an accurate map. Those stars are instead reversed from north to south, with the exception of Orion.

If you looked to them to guide your way, you’d be lost forever.

(It’s still nice to read some Billy Collins when you’re riding around below ground, thanks to the MTA.)

A Period of Juvenile Prosperity, Mike Brodie’s photos of the five-year span he spent riding trains for over 50,000 miles through 46 states, documenting the people and places he encountered along the way, are on view at Yossi Milo in NYC and M + B in LA. At Yossi Milo, there are two edits of the images, the show and the book, published by Twin Palms Press.

The show is never-ending—an unselfconscious, ceaseless cycle of days stretching out under a low slung sun. Evenings are spent sleeping soundly in fresh air. There is snacking on hatfulls of blackberries. Oil-caked hands are offset by wind-scrubbed limbs, faces, and swept hair. Dependent only on each other, the wildflower rail riders are forever young. Poking at maps, they know exactly where they’re going.

In the book, grey-bearded elders appear. There is a distinct beginning, middle, and end. There are run-ins with cops. Illness or injury lands one fellow in the hospital. And eventually, the fresh fruit runs out; they’re forced to forage in the trash for food. The ride doesn’t last forever.

The former, is of course, an easier sell. As it should be, the prints, offered in small editions were in low supply, if still available at all. But, I’m not sure which one is better.

Really excited to see a couple things at the MCA Denver: William Lamson video and new work by recent CU Boulder MFA grad, Tyler Beard (above).

I like to paint images of women who I find inspiring, and I don’t like to choose people that everybody knows. I like to choose people that just do small things and yet somehow hit me in my heart.

I drove out of New York in the middle of December.

In the last few months of 2012, I left a job that I had loved for almost five years with no idea of what I wanted to do next. Suddenly untethered, I headed west, looking to the territories I knew and loved before arriving here, and more specifically, to skiing and fresh air, for a little help in figuring things out. After six weeks of that, I returned to New York for a four day layover before heading east, first to Bali, then Burma, via Bangkok, by way of plane, bus, and boat. The farther I went in any direction, the farther I was from the entire life I felt so connected to here in New York (a home I’ve always thought of as temporary, but which has carried me for what’s now nearing seven years). I took notes along the way, thinking it would all make sense upon my return.

My leaving was gradual, starting slowly in a car, from Brooklyn to Fredericksburg, through Asheville to Nashville, from Memphis to Little Rock, city-hopping until the sky opened up over Oklahoma and I gunned straight through still dry and dusty reservations to Taos in sixteen slippery hours. Arriving in single digit temps and finding my way by memory instead of map (I was pretty giddy when Google said: “We were not able to locate the address: 8 XX Lane, El Prado, New Mexico”), I was welcomed and warmed by the familiarity of friends who have known me for a decade.

From there it was a five-week whirlwind of family, more long-time friends, and their children, more driving, skiing, sleeping in toasty cabins, tucking into the backcountry in search of more snow, more skiing, touring, skinning and snowmobiling, more sleeping (I never sleep so soundly as when totally physically exhausted), the breathing of thin, brutally cold air, sledding, sun-soaking, hot spring-ing, star-gazing (the sky seemingly so close, I could always see the mysterious helix of the Milky Way on cloudless nights) and miles of isolated highways through Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and Utah.

On an unnamed day (I lost track a few weeks in), I eventually found myself driving to Bozeman, MT, from Jackson, WY, through a silent Idaho. It had snowed overnight so I skied in the morning before hitting the road, leaving me driving into the dark. It was still snowing as I went north by northwest, rendering the infrequently traveled two-lane indistinguishable from its edges. It was simply white all around—a flat, ambivalent light. By night I was totally lost, the GPS on my phone mostly useless, my traveling reduced to a series of turning arounds. Slowly, I crept along alone, cursing the skiing I had been so excited about hours before and worrying about the tire I had patched in Taos for ten dollars.

It was easy to imagine (entirely naively, but in my exhaustion and delirium, how I wanted to believe!) at this point that the stars, bright and brilliant as they were, were guiding my way, serving as reliably as the highway safety poles and guard rails that intermittently reflected my headlights in silvery sparks when I approached the otherwise disguised shoulder of the road. At least, I hoped that they were. Lumens fluxing above and plastic rectangles flashing ahead, everything glittering was taunting. I had no real idea of how to read either. I was fucking lost. (It was only then that I realized it would have been wise to take an atlas or a map that didn’t require some kind of connectivity.)

I thought of all the recent conversations I had with my mom about traveling and how she claimed her biggest fear was getting lost. I had chided her saying she could always return the way she came, perhaps enjoying a nice lunch wherever she happened to be. Getting lost, of course I told her, was the best part of traveling! I had forgotten you could be so far gone that there was no turning back. Until I was. So far from where I came from, so far from where I was going, my only food a few frozen energy bars stuffed in the console of the car.

But I was also on one of just two roads: I had passed another running perpendicular to the right not too many miles ago. Since every small ounce of courage and smarts I had left in my otherwise empty tank told me that the road I was on was really, probably, not the right one, I circled around, one more time, holding my breath as I eased onto the other, watching mileage and the gas gauge obsessively until I saw signs for Ennis, MT (population 838). I don’t know why or how, but I had picked the right path.

As I came into cellular range my phone began chirping sweet messages from my sister: “Where are you?!” “How far away?” Good questions, I thought. “I got off work early so dinner will be ready when you get here.” Thank goodness.

I was found and fed and all was well. That’s true, but this is not the end: It turns out it takes more than retreating and returning to know how to put these things together.

I hear it’s snowing in New York.

I’ve been away, far away. Actually, after a few weeks out west (more on that later) I am now about as far away from New York as you can be before you start to get closer again (more on this later, too). It took me twenty hours to get here and yet, I’m only thirteen hours ahead of you.

It’s hot here. I don’t know how hot, but hot enough that everyone who is not from here shares the same special sheen of sunscreen and sweat well into the evening.

I’ve been mostly away from the internet, too, save for Instagram. So when I checked in today, I was happy to see that everyone is talking about a storm, the accumulating mass of snow strangely named Nemo.

It seems, in fact, to be the only thing happening, which is a huge relief as on the last few occasions my feeds were full of the same news the news was not at all light or fluffy. So, from the far side of Saturday—by the way, since I’m now seeing the end of the day, I can tell you, you’re in for something wonderful, something sparkling—all I have to say is selamat pagi.

Sweet dreams. Good night, New York.

I was one of few who wanted the NYC marathon to run this last weekend.

I was also one of few who had power, heat, and water throughout the storm. The worst I suffered was intermittent internet outages. But, I believed that as a decent human being, the mayor wouldn’t have made the decision to keep the event had he known that life-saving resources were being diverted. The revenue the race generates, of course, would have been good for the city but more so, I needed to see people celebrating and supporting other people covering 26.2 miles, putting one foot in front of the other.

After a week of obsessively ingesting an insane amount of Sandy-related news (often regurgitated versions of the same information with increasingly distorted headlines) from a warm, dry perch, I felt anxious and stuck. Every site I looked to for volunteer information offered me a cheery thank-for-your-interest-but-we’re-not-currently-accepting-volunteers/food/supplies. So, to get out of the house, away from the internet, I went out for brunch, for a run, for a drink, as I would have any other day, knowing this was not any other time in New York. A friend wrote about this weirdly normal place we found ourselves in—safe, feeling singularly helpless, and guilty, doing nothing really, at all.

Finally, on Friday evening, another friend who had been checking in on a friend who stayed in the Rockaways, received info via text that the Rockaway Beach Surf Club was organizing a help center to organize and distribute food, supplies, and able-bodied volunteers. We went out and bought shovels, gloves and rubber boots, and drove down to 87th Street on Saturday morning.

We unloaded my car with the water, toiletries, clothing, and blanket donations we brought and were immediately put to work, organizing donations and preparing to assist the line of people forming outside. Because I was able to find pen and paper, I became a list-taker, writing down the name of the next person in line and what they needed, and for how many adults and how many children. I then circled through the club’s lot and shelter, filling a bag with supplies and returning it to my person in the line. For my small efforts, I was embarrassed to receive hugs and thank yous.

I’m not sure that coordinating relief efforts was something the RBSC ever intended or imagined they would be doing but they were quick and efficient and by the end of the day a few dozen of us had organized and distributed truckloads of donations and teams were dispatched to clean up the homes of a few elderly women who came seeking help. The remaining goods were repackaged and dropped off at a distribution center around the corner that the National Guard appeared to be just setting up and the surf club was readied to receive the next day’s donations and volunteers. Most of us, myself included, wanted/needed to get out of the Rockaways before dark and we departed to the warmth of our homes in other parts of the city.

From our safe places, it seems unfair and possibly unkind to resume “normal” life—emailing, doing laundry, and well, working—knowing others are fighting for the basics. At the same time, the news has shifted and election coverage is as inescapable as Sandy and her aftermath had been. And so, most of NYC is looking ahead, over the next few days, the next few months, to the next four years, and getting back to work. It’s better than where we were a week ago, waiting on a hurricane, watching the aftermath, some near, and some of us far. Now, we are moving forward, putting one foot in front of the other. And hopefully, because we know, by virture of geography (but not geography alone), we are starting leaps and bounds ahead of people around us, we’ll be working towards new, re-defined, refined goals. We can do more, do better than we think we can and now is the time to realize it.

When training for a marathon, if you are lucky, early on, you learn this trick: when you are tired and you think you will never run that far, if you can keep moving your arms, your legs, too, will keep moving, and your feet will cover the distance. Eventually, your efforts will add up to something that you once thought was impossible.

In getting back to work, to life, keeping an eye on opportunities to help, (having voted by mail), I am repeating this to myself: Keep moving your arms.

Rockaway Beach Surf Club is still, and will be for some time, working for recovery in the Rockaways.

Occupy Sandy is providing real-time updates on volunteer opportunities and donation needs on their site and over Twitter and Facebook. They are also accepting donations.

From the last page in Wild by Cheryl Strayed:

To believe that I didn’t need to reach with my bare hands anymore. To know that seeing the fish beneath the surface of the water was enough. That it was everything.

Water is elemental, it’s what we’re made of, what we can’t live within or without. Trying to define what swimming means to me is like looking at a shell sitting in a few feet of clear, still water. There it is, in sharp focus, but once I reach for it, breaking the surface, the ripples refract the shell. It becomes five shells, twenty-five shells, some smaller, some larger, and I blindly feel for what I saw perfectly before trying to grasp it.

A couple weeks ago, NYT tech reporter Jenna Wortham did something really brave.

Writing about recently losing her father, she also lamented not having an appropriate space to turn to on the internet to share this particular news: “As someone who lives out most of her life online and revels in the Web, I can tell you it feels very weird not to have an outlet for one of the biggest events of my life to date… And not only does it feel weird: it gives the impression, at times mistaken, that all is well behind your screen.”

When I lost my dad it was 1996. I didn’t have to contend with the internet, didn’t try to pretend that all was well, but also couldn’t hide what had happened. The news traveled. My close friends and some high school peers offered their support and condolences, most awkwardly avoided eye contact.

The internet, I think, is a bit like my then adolescent friends—earnest, but (fairly, reasonably) ill-prepared to talk about death. While the loss of someone close is an experience we will all eventually share, many don’t experience it until a little later in life. Even then though, for most, it’s a pretty private matter. Why this is, I’m not sure—we fear pity, we think that feeling alone with this kind of loss makes us, and the person we lost, more special.

When I did talk about my dad and his passing somewhat publicly, it was over email, about two years ago. I was training for a marathon and raising money in his memory for a non-profit I thought he, too, would have wanted to support. The responses I got from people sharing their own experiences and losses were enormously kind, generous and open. These two-way conversations brought me closer to both people who were already friends and those who had been acquaintances.

The intimacy of email, it seems, made it a comfortable place to talk about cancer, about loss and death. While you can easily share news with a lot of people over a bcced list, any resulting dialog will only be between two people, or at most, a smaller, self-selected group. For the same reason, old-fashioned email lists, like The Listserve, feel like a small, well-lit room when there is glaring light everywhere else.

These spaces function differently than other (and newer) means we have to broadcast news—Twitter, Facebook, Instagram—enabling something not the same as but closer to the conversation you might have sitting next to someone in a car*. But the internet and its tools and platforms mostly follow our lead as we use them, and for now at least, culturally, we don’t deal well with death.

But this doesn’t mean that there won’t eventually exist the right places online for grieving or sharing unbearably bad news. The best condolence offered to me 16 years ago came from the mom of a good friend who had also lost her dad when she was young. She told me to write down everything that I wanted to remember, because, even though I couldn’t imagine ever forgetting any important detail about my dad, I would. And she was right. I mostly failed to take her advice, save a few short things jotted down in different notebooks over the years between now and then.

But thankfully, the internet is only going to get better for that, for writing—for remembering.

*A friend who is a mother told me that IM is like this for her and her daughter, too.