Dreaming in My Dreaming
Where there were deserts I saw fountains
I grieved through the poems. Put the feelings I wanted out of me onto paper, onto screens, anywhere but in my head. And I’m glad because now I’ve moved through them to a stage where I’m determined to meet whatever is coming with absolute, complete, fucking obnoxious levels of joy.
Wanna piss off someone who’s just kinda shitty? Laugh. Not necessarily at them. They’ll assume it’s about them. And sometimes it can be. But nothing bugs the fuck out of assholes more than blocking them from stealing joy. So I’m going to do that. And mouthing off to bigots, but I’ve always done that.
By October I had four deaths in five weeks in my circle. No one super close, but all were close enough to feel the loss. And it was a lot. Quantity matters in grief. I didn’t know this. Now I do.
I’m lucky, though. I was able to go to Los Angeles at the end of September after the fourth death. I drove to the Central Valley for the release of my friend Tim’s new book, “They Call You Back.” And I managed to miss both of his events—one due to traffic, the other because it’s hard to navigate Los Gatos Canyon. That’s all fine. The event in the canyon was something sacred for the people who attended, and they didn’t need my white presence.
I learned a lot while driving around lost through the area where our food is grown and oil is drilled. Cattle feed lots, oil fields, and pistachio groves dotted with pro-Trump signs in Spanish declaring Biden the cause of inflation—California is a garden of Eden that’s been relinquished to feed our vices. I was supposed to be there, seeing what we’re doing, not imposong on grieving Latinos.
L.A. was perfect. Completely without any of the angst of past trips. Oh lord, I read some of the writings from a year ago and I want someone to slap me next time I get so teen angsty.
Actually, that’s not true. All that angst culminated in the days around my birthday in L.A. last October, leaving me feeling like I was ready to shut down and just live my life without leaving my house with my cat and comfy pajamas. I work from home, have groceries and most goods delivered, and got really comfortable not leaving my house for long stretches of time. It felt right. It didn‘t feel like I was giving up anything—it felt good. I needed that.
In my year of navel-gazing, I accepted the hardest thing I’ve ever had to accept: there are a lot of mean motherfuckers out there. Also a lot of underdeveloped motherfuckers. That’s most of us. Including me.
I needed to do two big things: stop giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, and believe people when they show me who they are.
(That includes believing them when they show me love and acceptance that leaves me this happy in a coffeehouse bathroom on Melrose.)
So I spent a few days in L.A. in a guest house filled with vintage chandeliers under The Chandalier Tree in Silver Lake, a neighborhood that feels more like home than any place I’ve lived. I slept a lot, surrounded by sparkles and refracted sunlight.
I drank a lot of coffee with one of my favorite people. Ate a lot of delicious sandwiches. Drove a ridiculous electric BMW and sat waiting at chargers. Saw Andrew Bird and Madison Cunningham perform their new album, a cover of the 1972 debut of a duo called Buckingham/Nicks in the room where the originals first played.
Somehow I managed to be the first person in the door, which bought me a few minutes of standing in the middle of The Troubadour, spinning slowly, feeling a room where so much music has been made. And then I got the top spot in the balcony with the best sound. Being there the night after Kris Kristofferson died made it a true pilgrimage.
After a few days, I made my first trip into the desert, driving through the packed traffic of the Inland Empire with a quick stop in Palm Springs for a drink with a co-worker. In less than two hours I feel like I got the idyllic Palm Springs experience: driving through a mid-century dreamscape followed by drinking watermelon spritzs while we watched an open mic night of gay men and their octogenarian lady friends, all decked to the nines. I could grow old living like that.
From there I went straight to Pappy and Harriet’s, a longtime line item on my list of venues to see shows. Located squarely in the middle of desert nowhere, it was the last place I expected to see Patti Smith, but there I was.
We all know I’d get into a white windowless panel van if someone inside offered a ride to a Patti Smith show, right?
Seeing anyone under the desert stars would be pretty incredible. Seeing Patti there a month before the election? That’s the salve my soul needed, the reminder that tragic, awful shit happens, and if we go about it the right way, we make more people like Patti.
Some people get an earlier start than others.
Thanks to working on the nerve compression issues in my back all summer, and being patient with the treatments for vestibular migraine that take forever to work, I was able to be in the crowd and feel that energy for several spells during the show. I was also able to walk around the maze of buildings, disconcertingly away from the crowd, on my way back to my car.
That’s when I saw a small cluster of people walking in the opposite direction. In looking to see if I needed to turn around, I saw her. In the middle of the cluster, laughing at something someone said … Patti.
I didn’t stop her. I didn’t interrupt. I didn’t grab my phone and take a blurry photo. I just raised my voice slightly so she could hear me say, “Thank you, Patti.”
Stilling laughing and walking, she threw her arm in the air and at the same volume told me I was welcome.
Being able to thank your hero? It’s pretty great.
And then the next day I got mesmerized inside Joshua Tree National Park.
So much so that I didn’t get back to Burbank in time for my plane. I didn’t get stressed about it, when I was sitting in that traffic again, knowing it was unlikely I’d get where I was supposed to be. I’m lucky and was able to move my flight to the next day, spending a quiet night in an airport hotel, just about as content as I’ve ever been.
It was the best.
(Okay, I was under the impression I could squeeze all of my wildly delicious October into one post. But that’s not fair and no one wants to read that much at once. Take your eyes off the screen and go do something else. The stories from Milwaukee and New Orleans will stick around.)