I just took a break to stack wood like Jenga into the fire.
After the visit to grandma number one, we’ll visit grandma number two. They are conveniently located so that both can be seen in a single bound.
Today really did just melt away. I’m finding that Monday–Wednesday will typically get eaten as part of podcast recording, editing and social media posting. It’s a part of the process I dislike: the social media aspect of it. But this week I found myself not very enthused about even recording an episode. I think I’m deep in a wintering spiral where I’m more eager to channel creative energy into other avenues—like writing, or making music. I’ve been having a good time learning about making beats, drowning synthesized pads in reverb, making weird sounds. Just experimenting with music and tones and rhythms and scales has been immersive and fun. I find that simple piano chords, played over a Cm scale with some reverb, sounds haunting and perfectly thematic for winter. I can listen to something simple like that on loop for an unhealthy amount of time.
As quiet as it’s been here, it still feels busy. I miss the days of being able to hole up alone in an apartment for an entire 48–72 hours without any other task to attend to other than my own whims. Even here I can’t quite capture that sense of isolation and withdrawal that I was sometimes able to achieve in Berlin or San Francisco during a three-day weekend. Somehow the scarcity of time enabled me to wrap my lips around its udders and milk it. Now, all there is is time, and it moves at its pace, not mine. Asia’s been letting the creative juices flow, too. The cabin we’re staying in has become a studio. Scattered about everywhere there are water-color paintings, brushes, art supplies, paint. There’s enough of them to host an entire exhibition in here.
The family dog died yesterday. Kobe. My mom called me crying, relaying her trauma. May father called me to do the same at 4AM his time. He’s taking it pretty hard. He lived with the dog and cared for the dog all these years. Even when everyone still lived together in the same house he’d had a special connection with the dog. I always had the sense it was his dog. They got the dog just after I’d left New York. I never had a real connection to the dog. That was 14 years ago. So hearing their sadness and being moved by their tears and emotions was an unusual way to mourn a pet. Vicarious sadness. Sympathetic sorrow. It’s a sad thing to have to put a dog down. It can’t usually be accompanied by the feeling of having made the right decision. Either you’re taking the life of the dog without its consent, or you’re letting it suffer and die a slow, miserable death. It would be so easy if we could ask the dog what it wants. Some people can talk to animals. I watched a documentary last year about Anna Breytenbach, called The Animal Communicator. I was suspicious, of course, thinking the movie was some bullshit scam designed to deceive people, but after watching the film, I’m not so sure. Why wouldn’t some people be able to communicate on a deeper level than others? Language is like that, isn’t it? Some speakers are more gifted and have greater command and fluency than others. Shamans, in many traditions around the world, are believed to be able to communicate with—and even become—animals. Sadly, no one in my family has this skill and the decision had to be made without consulting old Kobe. Who can say what’s right in situations like those? There isn’t a right move. You assess the situation and make the best move you can with the information you have at that time. I believe my dad did that. It doesn’t stop the heart from aching though.
Nothing truly can, save for death. And even then, as we can see, it still aches on.
When I was younger I thought alcohol, good food and wild women were all great options for stoping the ache. They don’t really stop it though, do they. They just mask it; temporarily distract you from it. The ache’s always there. The two best salves for it I’ve found so far are beauty and kindness.
The fires’s glowing a bright orange now. I guess technically the fire is golden and dancing, it’s the wood that’s glowing. Blushing. Blazing. I can see small fibers in the wood as the flames turn them into ash and smoke and heat and water vapor. If you look closely you can see the brightness pulse and move, almost like water. In some places the fire spreads itself out very thin, blanketing only the surface of the wood—licking it, lapping it up— instead of leaping in tall flutes. In the little cracks and fissures of the red wood, soft blues and purples flicker. It’s hypnotic. Over time the wood slowly loses its color and turns grey, and then quickly white before collapsing like dusty log cabins. When the wood is very depleted it looks almost bony, skeletal.
As quiet as it’s been here, it still feels busy. I miss the days of being able to hole up alone in an apartment for an entire 48–72 hours without any other task to attend to other than my own whims. Even here I can’t quite capture that sense of isolation and withdrawal that I was sometimes able to achieve in Berlin or San Francisco during a three-day weekend. Somehow the scarcity of time enabled me to wrap my lips around its udders and milk it. Now, all there is is time, and it moves at its pace, not mine. Asia’s been letting the creative juices flow, too. The cabin we’re staying in has become a studio. Scattered about everywhere there are water-color paintings, brushes, art supplies, paint. There’s enough of them to host an entire exhibition in here.
The family dog died yesterday. Kobe. My mom called me crying, relaying her trauma. May father called me to do the same at 4AM his time. He’s taking it pretty hard. He lived with the dog and cared for the dog all these years. Even when everyone still lived together in the same house he’d had a special connection with the dog. I always had the sense it was his dog. They got the dog just after I’d left New York. I never had a real connection to the dog. That was 14 years ago. So hearing their sadness and being moved by their tears and emotions was an unusual way to mourn a pet. Vicarious sadness. Sympathetic sorrow. It’s a sad thing to have to put a dog down. It can’t usually be accompanied by the feeling of having made the right decision. Either you’re taking the life of the dog without its consent, or you’re letting it suffer and die a slow, miserable death. It would be so easy if we could ask the dog what it wants. Some people can talk to animals. I watched a documentary last year about Anna Breytenbach, called The Animal Communicator. I was suspicious, of course, thinking the movie was some bullshit scam designed to deceive people, but after watching the film, I’m not so sure. Why wouldn’t some people be able to communicate on a deeper level than others? Language is like that, isn’t it? Some speakers are more gifted and have greater command and fluency than others. Shamans, in many traditions around the world, are believed to be able to communicate with—and even become—animals. Sadly, no one in my family has this skill and the decision had to be made without consulting old Kobe. Who can say what’s right in situations like those? There isn’t a right move. You assess the situation and make the best move you can with the information you have at that time. I believe my dad did that. It doesn’t stop the heart from aching though.
Nothing truly can, save for death. And even then, as we can see, it still aches on.
When I was younger I thought alcohol, good food and wild women were all great options for stoping the ache. They don’t really stop it though, do they. They just mask it; temporarily distract you from it. The ache’s always there. The two best salves for it I’ve found so far are beauty and kindness.
The fires’s glowing a bright orange now. I guess technically the fire is golden and dancing, it’s the wood that’s glowing. Blushing. Blazing. I can see small fibers in the wood as the flames turn them into ash and smoke and heat and water vapor. If you look closely you can see the brightness pulse and move, almost like water. In some places the fire spreads itself out very thin, blanketing only the surface of the wood—licking it, lapping it up— instead of leaping in tall flutes. In the little cracks and fissures of the red wood, soft blues and purples flicker. It’s hypnotic. Over time the wood slowly loses its color and turns grey, and then quickly white before collapsing like dusty log cabins. When the wood is very depleted it looks almost bony, skeletal.
In the morning I’ll rake the ash through the vents with a metal poker to empty out the tray and make space for the new fire. The white ash will be delicate and feathery, impossibly soft. It doesn’t even feel like ash when you touch it. Trees are magical things.
They do so much for us. Where would we be without them?
As far as we can tell, there is no other planet in the known universe that has wood.
They do so much for us. Where would we be without them?
As far as we can tell, there is no other planet in the known universe that has wood.
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