Finally getting to these (checks notes) about six months after I meant to. This was a killer party, lots of good food and music. I kind of wasn’t on my game that night? I’d gotten a bad haircut and had a weird day wandering around Minneapolis. It didn’t matter that much, there was also a real wedding photographer there, so I was able to mostly relax and enjoy. I think this was the trip I really started to notice my like, normal energy levels starting to flag also? Like normally I would have been going to the after party and staying out all night with everyone but I just couldn’t, this time.
I have a shit ton of stuff in the backlog like this, just waiting to be posted (more than a year’s worth at this point). I also have two book projects in full swing, both the San Pablo book and the Big Empty work. Need to get a bunch of it out the door soon, as I feel like a lot of things are just going to keep happening and it’s going to be all I can do to keep up.
Love this kid’s energy. Just like, no rules, this is the best seat in the house right in the middle of the dance floor, and I’m gonna sit here and eat my dinner.
I also haven’t posted the really strange architecture from this trip, wandering around the city near my hotel the night before (maybe I’ll do those next? who knows). The big football stadium that resembled nothing so much as a crashed spaceship or an intrusion from a neighboring dimension. Anyway, I digress.
The aunties and the uncles were also a riot. What a great crowd.
Posted by matt on 2025-02-06T07:51:10Z GMT
I remember this drive across the bridge; it was cloudy in the east bay, and then after Yerba Buena island, the fog closed in around me and all I could see were the cars around me and the structure of the bridge. I thought about ‘casual domain shear’, which was an idea from the last half-good Neal Stephenson book, Anathem. Basically, if you’re sufficiently isolated from some part of physical reality, time runs differently; in the book there are monks that use this phenomenon (and other monks that talk about it ad nauseam, I said it was half-good).
Of course, we all know when you’re stuck in traffic, time is very plastic. It seems to take forever to get nowhere at all, and once you’ve arrived something about the experience makes all that time sort of vanish from your memory, as if the whole thing was an illusion. I certainly don’t remember anything else about this traffic jam; looking at my calendar for that day, I was going to the mission to get a haircut.
Anyway. It’s winter again, and even if the weather is bad it’s still beautiful. Many times the light is flat and the pictures are bad. I promise not to share those.
Posted by matt on 2024-11-21T08:18:11Z GMT
Saudade means a profound longing or lonelyness, the emotion you feel for someone you love is a long ways a way, in time, space, or emotion. You say, when you’re leaving your beloved, ‘Vou ter saudade de voce’ when you’re leaving, probably not on a trip, but when you know you won’t see them again for a while. It can be sad, but it’s also an expression of love.
Like I said, we were kind of staying in the tourist quarter, near the river, but the last day or two we wandered into town a little more; I went to a cigar shop and bought real Habanos, Cuban cigars, and the weather oscillated between clouds and sun. I think I was starting to get worn down from being on the road at that point.
And then, we went home.
Posted by matt on 2024-11-19T08:45:11Z GMT
