brown leaves.

October 9, 2017

fitzgerald wrote that summer is just the failed promise of spring. and in the twilight of that former season there are times when it’s hard to disagree. all the sudden it’s dark at 8pm and although a huge part of me thinks this is absolutely living weather (60’s and sunny, nice and cold for night sleep), a part of me shutters at the fact that it feels like just yesterday spring had my head filled with any number of false notions about what summer was going to bring. i crawl out of winter in march and i embrace the thawing of the ground and the return of green with open arms and by may i set impossible expectations about the number of amazing things that can happen to me in merely the following 90 days.

we midwesterners have characteristic high hopes on the high waves we ride into seasons. it’s essential when living in an everchanging climate.

–

i’ve come to understand in a sense all of my dad’s mistakes in doing the laundry when i was younger. i used to bitch and moan when he would shrink a shirt of mine, thinking, “how could he not realize that was going to happen?” i now know it’s nothing of a shortness of awareness. just that he has this thing that he gave to me that is found in really not giving a fuck about the small stuff. it’s not that he didn’t care if he shrunk my shirt. it’s that he didn’t think, when taking that pile of shit out of the washer and putting it in the dryer, that any one article of clothing was worth enough consideration to distract him from whatever else he was thinking of at the time. and now i agree. i put distressed lines into a new pair of black jeans because i put them all crumpled up straight from the washer into the dyer and when i realized this i immediately laughed because i thought of him.

i’m more him each day, in some ways. and less in others.

even now — 27 — i don’t know much about his politics or his religion because we haven’t really spoken much of such things but i speculate that when he stares out the window at 6 every morning with his coffee (black) and only ambient noise that he’s contemplating a few of the same things that i am when i am a restless mess at my own hours, even if he’s wording the questions differently. i think about him more for some reason on crisp fall mornings than on hot, sticky july ones. we’re fall people.

my dad handed me direct a number of my characteristics. not least among them the gap in my top front teeth and my restlessness. but perhaps nothing is more him manifest in me than my stubborn insistence.

–

i keep hearing and seeing that two things are directly linked, perhaps more than anything else, to mental health: consistent sleep schedule and a sense of belonging to a community. “tribe” has become a buzzword. yuval noah harari told me in sapiens that we’re actually meant to live in groups of about 70 and that we’re supposed to get close to the others in those groups and learn through life with them. i see in articles and hear on podcasts that it becomes increasingly difficult for a human to feel at ease if they are a recluse. loneliness seems to be a social epidemic linked to a number of debilitating mental health issues.

sleep too. lack of sleep is the not so silent killer. even one all nighter can through off a rhythm for days (fuck!). having a shit sleep schedule is a cause of every health problem. it’s stated everywhere. my iphone even has a function called “bedtime” that tells me “going to bed and waking up at the same times every day are keys to healthy sleep.” i don’t think i have went to bed or woken up at the same time once in the last week, come to think of it.

community and sleep. they’re important. which is unfortnate, because when you’re a ninth pather — doer — pusher, you tend to spend a fair amount of time looking in all the corners and late nights for IT and that search inevitably shifts you from consistency in either of those categories.

i work in restaurants. sometimes i get home from work at 9. sometimes at 2. i like a nice night out with friends once or twice a week and when i start in with the drinks it’s almost impossible for me to comatose before 4, not to mention that kind of sleep doesn’t include REM whatsoever. i sometimes wake up at 6 ambitious to tackle the day and other times i lay in bed until 10 loathing the idea of the sun. i sometimes stay awake late for the sole purpose that i don’t feel like being asleep (or because i want to watch some stand-up and LAUGH).

i’ve moved not a lot but enough to keep shifting scenes. and it seems like i never even kept up the same scenes consistently when i did live in the same place. i hung out with different crowds every year of college. since then it’s been a revolving door of whoever i find myself around at the time. i buy into the scenes in the way of putting my heart into them in the moment and squeezing as much out of them as i can, but not in the way of a continued thread with most of the people in them. never buying in to a scene is like dipping your toe in water and expecting to know what it feels like to swim. so my tendency to always bounce around groups hasn’t taught me much about community, other than about what it’s like to lack it.

i have great friends. i have no community.

if the next year of my life goes at all how i think it will (HAHA PLANS) i probably won’t be able to look back on it and say “wow, i really found a way to belong” or, “i’ve been sleeping so much more consistently than all of my first 27 years!” it just doesn’t seem likely. i’ve got other priorties. they might be shit but they’re mine.

the fact that i know these things and am amaking no plans at making changes in their direction comes as no surprise to me. i’m not shocked i won’t take the clear advice. i’ve made a way of being astute without applied. cerebral in awareness but passionate in action. and so FUCKING STUBBORN. i’ve got my way. and i’m going to go it. damn the science. i guess.

–

fall brings things on. closets have to open up and cough out layers. it’s really the only time of year that i often feel moved by leaves. they’re just so fucking pretty when they go red or orange or gold or purple. the paddle board will have to be retired soon — once exposure time to the water temperature starts risking the sanctity of my toes. the vikings are back and of course brought with them new hope of competing for a title. hope that seems to already have vanished. in the north the back of our mind is already telling us that winter will be here soon. as someone who has skipped a couple of the last few winters i can say flying south becomes really appealing as opposed to being able to see my breath for a few months. i’ll probably not start sleeping any more or regularly and with my lease ending in another month drifter-me has his wheels turning on an escape.

“when you say escape, do you mean to or from?”