2016: A Farewell

I'm writing this late afternoon on New Year's Eve in Inverness, the city at the heart of the Scottish Highlands, where I'll be spending Hogmanay this year. It's not the most outlandish or extravagant celebration in the country (Stonehaven's kind of a dream, though obviously Glasgow and Edinburgh have slightly less fire-twirling festivities, and I was weirdly unable to find any north-coast traditions to tap into) but there's a festival and fireworks and it's allowed me time to write, with a few hours of rain-free daylight each day to get out of my lodgings and explore a bit. More on that (and the chaotic trip over here) in the coming days, but first I wanted to post a register of this year here, because with the time and reflective space of travel to sift things through, I've been struck anew at what a remarkable, inconceivable shape the year has taken. Random think-blobs after the jump...

The famous Penguins of Inverness... CONTEMPLATING THE PASSAGE OF TIME???

I wrote a draft of this that was a bit more explanatory, but if you know me, you know the story of this year, and how mind boggling it is to have gone from basically incapacitated in January/February to, primarily, grateful and even a bit hopeful (personally, at least) in these last months. So in lieu of rehammering all of that, I thought I'd drop a list of memories in this space that make me grateful, happy, and sort of dazed at how this year could have been so full and rich. It might be incoherent to somebody who wasn't there! And absolutely is leaving out far more moments that could have been included if I wasn't trying to make it out to the world for a celebratory bash! Sorry to bother you with it on my extremely expensive blog. If you want actually high-quality list content, I would refer you to the masterful work of David Rees. In no particular order:

1. Surprising my dad by showing up to his concert in Prague a day before I was scheduled to arrive, and later finding out that he had a hard time playing the second half of the show after he'd seen me. Holy cripes I love my dad so much it'll make you sick.
2. Wandering Stockholm with my friend Hilary, having unspooling conversations about relationships, life plans, and totally dumb nonsense, laughing ourselves stupid while spending something like 96 hours straight together.
3. My friends from Miami University showing up en masse to a sitzpub in Chicago, a wave of support and love amidst a large and equally delightful crowd. There's something about having what feels like a whole chapter of your life showing up to give you a hug that's... profoundly emotional.
4. Listening to Transcendental Youth on the long walk to the conversation where it became clear that divorce was the only road my ex-wife was willing to consider. (John Darnielle did me some very good good this year.)
5. Having the most delicious vegan/gluten-free chocolate raspberry cake on my friends John and Krista's balcony while we caught up on life and they laughed at how bonkers I was in late August.
6. A twilight walk to the Tiber River the night of my divorce.
7. My friend Kate meeting me in Krakow so that I'd see a friend the week that things became official, playing board games in a Polish bar and yelling "CLOTH HALL" to each other
8. Kate and Stuart taking me to Yayoi Kusama's exhibit in London. Getting to see my friends totally absorbed in art is one of my favorite things.
9. Long talks with my friend Sarah in a Glaswegian graveyard; getting to chat with her (now my) friend Emily in the midst of Edinburgh madness as we all tromped over to see a Chicago troupe work their magic.
10. Sharing my divorce news with classmates late in the spring semester, surprised (for no good reason) at how immediately kind, empathetic, and supportive they were. New and deepened friendships is a theme of 2016
11. A pair of "my most recent breakup" conversations this fall that helped solidify the page-turn, no-one-is-alone progress of the year.
12. WEDDINGS SO MANY WEDDINGS
1. My friend Dan's best man, late in our bachelor party weekend in Kentucky confidently ordering a health warning about oysters, being gently told that he was ordering a warning and not a dish, and firmly saying "I'll have that."
2. Getting to watch Dan's wife Abbey's joyful, radiant, electrified face throughout their ceremony
3. The absolute perfect-for-2016 Lutheran-Muslim-Bengali fusion wedding my friends Chris and Pinju held (also in Kentucky); cutting a rug with my friends J.D. and Katie, who own the dance floor
4. My friend Monica turning out to be the calmest bride I have ever met, making introductions and laughing her way through her wedding just a few days after the election. This was a joy restorer.
13. Spending the weekend before the election listening to David Rees's stupid/great Election Profit Makers Mixtape, almost entirely this final track (starting around 1:20; brief profanity ahoy!). I don't wanna forget what that hope felt like.
14. Spending a day in Providence with my friend Anne, reflecting on the changed shape of our lives after recent breakups
15. Showing up at Over Easy in Chicago after two years away and having a waitress delighted to see me back
16. An image: my friend Nicole, in Kopi Cafe, listening as she does (intently, furrowed, wholly engaged), fierce in her support and thoughtful in her words. Being able to set my stuff aside and talk about her own impending life decisions, glad to fill the role I like to serve in my friends' lives again.
17. My friends Steve and Devon nonchalantly mentioning her pregnancy on a walk up the street to get burgers and my total inability to be chill about it
18. An unplanned dinner with my high school friend Noah in Prague, getting to see how his life has taken form in the fifteen or so years since last we met.
19. A lakeside walk with my friend Jake, realizing that my friends have in common an unerring ability to listen actively and empathetically
20. A perfect-for-my-heart mixtape from my friend Casey, whose selections provided the soundtrack for about half of my European adventures
21. Drinks with my friend Erin, swapping divorce stories and how we were handling it all
22. Recrafting a friendship with Danielle, once the only ex I'd been on nonspeaking terms with, glad to find a path back to good things (maybe involving far too much fancy food)
23. Seeing Hamilton with my friend Sara, ugly-crying through the entire second act while clutching each others' arms, and hours of conversation on either end of it all.
24. The eightysomething journalist who showed me around Vienna on my second day in the city, an elegant cravat-wearing fellow by the name of Ernst. We all love Ernst now, he's our hero.
25. Spending a full afternoon learning about Hungarian politics and culture on a tour that turned out to be one-on-one, and then gradually became a conversation about our lives. A few other similar moments of connection in my time abroad.
26. Getting to see my friend Jenna have the best cappuccino of her life in Florence
27. Apokalypse at the Volksbühne and Shakespeares Sonnette at the Berliner Ensemble, two shows that embody all the stereotypes of "German art theatre" while also being purely delightful
28. Suddenly realizing my friend John and his partner were in Bergen, Norway, and rushing to a delightful round of drinks with them. (As with many of these things, this was something I didn't initially want to do - purely because it seemed like so much to undertake. As always, Doing Things was the right choice.)
29. New friendships in Chicago and on the East Coast, reawakening to that sense of constant discovery and the possibility of newness in all people, whether new to me or not.

Ugh I'm cutting it off there, because I just had a six-car pileup of moments careen into my head and I'm beginning to realize that this year was packed with goodness and that MAYBE I'm not gonna fit it all onto one list.

But I guess that's the takeaway. On a personal level, this year was pretty awful. But it's also impossible to write a list of good memories that doesn't feel like it could go on forever. And that is the awareness I want to have heading into 2017.

Happy New Year, friends. May all your Januaries be luminescent!

The Apple. Oh, Does It Seem Big To You Because To Me This Is Just A Regular Sized Apple

FELLAS!

This is a quick one (RELATIVELY SPEAKING), largely because I didn't bring my camera to NYC on my two whirlwind trips this fall, but I wanted to register two things and two things only. After the jump, in order of significance...


1) Friends are the best. Friends you've had for something like a decade or longer are the double-best. Friends that throw beautiful weddings and are thoughtful and gracious hosts and generally make life delightful (and find partners who add to the pile o' delight) are the triple-best. And what can you say to such people except for "sorry for dancing like a weirdo at your wedding."

Seriously: it's been really wonderful to find out how much I still love weddings - even more than before this year, to be honest. Between a sense of how I'm promising to be there for the couple and a deeper appreciation for what their commitment to each other entails, it's become a more profound occasion, and one whose core values I still love and believe in: committing to a process of ongoing work, of ongoing listening, and of mutual sacrifice and perpetual forgiveness. And also there is dancing. It's pretty groovy, you guys.

2) Manifesto is incredible. I did very little New Yorking aside from blitzing around to see friends I hadn't seen in forever, given the centrality of this wedding to my time there. And those friends were/are great! Hooray for friends! (Coming up next week: I will discuss how friends made this year... good??)

But I did get a second, even-more-whirlwind trip in a couple of weeks later, mostly to see a few friends I hadn't been able to catch my first go around, and had the ridiculous pleasure of getting into Manifesto at the Park Avenue Armory a few days before its official opening. That's the main impetus for this post, is to suggest that: if you are in New York while this is running, you must see it. A video installation featuring Cate Blanchett and using the text of dozens upon dozens of manifestos about art and by artists, it manages to simultaneously be a top-shelf set of short films, a collective meditation on artistic conviction, and a choral, musical, transcendent experience. (That last detail recurs about every ten minutes or so, and is the main reason I had no problem losing the better part of an afternoon in the installation.) It's good, gang, and so is art! Go ye forth and check it out.

So.

I'm saving my "holy crow what was this year" reflections for next week, but this wraps up most of my travel for this year. Next up: more travel! As I may have mentioned in this space (maybe not), it was actually cheaper to book a round-trip flight than a one-way when I returned from Europe, so I had a window of opportunity to return if I decided to take it and could find a budget that worked for a post-Christmas loop. One dirt-cheap mid-January Barcelona-to-Boston airfare later (almost as cheap as flying back from Chicago would have been!), I locked it in. And so there'll be a little mini-revival of this blog's ostensible purpose (photographing and videotaping random buildings in other geographies) as I return to Scotland to explore and write in the Highlands, revisit pals in Glasgow/Bristol, and see an old friend in Barcelona. Can't stop, as the younger generation is prone to say, but also most likely won't stop.

All that, and the realization that I am ending this year feeling grateful, loved, and lucky, coming up next week! Til then, have a Merry Christmas, whoever is reading this ol' dishrag, and tell the folk you love that you love 'em! They like it, I bet!

Twin High-Maintenance Machines

Well, that was a gap. Hello.

This fall has been bonkers. Between weddings, conferences, festivals and a couple of trips to see friends, I haven't spent two consecutive weekends in Boston since... well, since April. Madness! Strangely, it's still felt more like home than it has in years past - a testament to the excellence of my new neighborhood, the support of friends, and I think a real and tangible change in perspective that came about this summer. Suffice to say that after the holidays, I look forward to burrowing for a month or two before I leave town again.

But in the meantime: Minneapolis! I've been too crazed writing my first dissertation chapter (in and under revisions!) and on the road to get to this, but here 'tis. Video is, as usual for these stateside ones, a bit gappy, as I am incapable of remembering to pull out my camera when I'm with pals, but still gives a little hint of how great this spot is - still a city that I could gladly call home, and where I'm glad to have grown up. (Well, nearby anyway.)

All that and a coupla rambles after the jump...

(The song in that video became an anthem at some point this year - right before the election, David Rees used it in an election-based mixtape and it rocketed straight to my heart for just about every reason humanly possible.)

AUTUMN HAD SPRUNG

Minneapolis falls into a similar feel as some of the other smaller American cities I've bounced around this fall: with a later heyday than New York, Boston or Chicago, they're built a bit more for cars and less for pedestrians and mass transit commuters. They're cheaper, smaller, and in some ways friendlier, but still have avid art and performance scenes and superb food culture. And maybe it's hometown boosterism talking, but I think the Twin Cities are a cut above in all these ways.

Minneapolis is ALSO the first city in which I saw The Phantom of the Opera, which was an extremely important event as a child. I am pleased to see that the theatre where I saw it has kept up with my tastes (and was staging The Curious Incident... when I visited)

 For the long weekend I was there, I was unable to get out to do much of what I usually like to do when I'm in town - seeing shows at the Guthrie or Children's Theatre, getting to the science museum I remember loving as a kid, zipping out to the zoo in the suburbs or Como Park, getting to a concert, even visiting the Walker Art Museum. But I did duck out for a series of fantastic meals with dear friends, which confirmed that this is still an incredibly delicious and special place when it comes to confident cookery with local/seasonal/organic ingredients, and spent one afternoon walking along the river in one of the gorgeous park spaces that litter the city.

FOR INSTANCE, this vegetable tart from Heyday, which was basically the earthy secrets of autumn in tart form. I felt plunged into memory and fatness. It was: GOOD.

I was also taken again by how friendly the place is. Minnesota Nice can get a bad (and sometimes deserved) rap for being a vein of passive aggression couched in polite stoicism. But as often as not I find that people who live here - on the clock, off the clock, however they're living - are genuinely thoughtful, empathetic human beings who enjoy other such folk. And it was tremendously nice to reconnect to that (as I would again in Chicago over Thanksgiving weekend). It was also wonderful to see the thriving Somali refugee community in the city - it's been a success story from what I understand, and they're a visible and energetic part of the fabric of the region. That was a good thing to connect to given the dark turn of the following weeks. We're capable of better, and I hope we manage to make our way back to the model this area sets.

The Guthrie, whose "new" (to me) theater I'd never actually been to until this trip. It is a lovely and excellent public space!

It whetted my appetite, and I'll almost certainly be back sooner than later, hopefully in the summer for a Twins game and some more time outdoors or even up north into the lakes that provided innumerable family vacations growing up. I don't have especially profound thoughts here, I just... am happy to have gone? And cannot wait to return.

Nor can the rusted gates to the Mill City Museum wait for my return! THIS PLACE: ALSO COOL.

OKAY! I may have a li'l post up here about my two New York trips this fall when we get closer to Christmas break, and then... a little revival of Europa! More on all of that soon. Hugs and kisses, cats 'n' kittens. We're all making it!

View from one of the Guthrie's lobbies. C'mon, guys. C'MON.