Posts for October 2022

space/time

Things practiced: going on, making a life the only way anyone can, step by step

I shoudn’t be but I’m dazed by how much fits into ten years and how little, how much has changed and how everything is just the same.

The Black Divide from Dusy Basin 11388′

How I get used to it kills me. The way it’s night and then suddenly it’s not and I’m in the full sun of a new day, and I just… stop noticing it. Against all reason, I plan for a future I assume will come, I believe the person I love is always coming back.

North Palisade and Mount Winchell from Dusy Basin 11388′

Like, look how miraculous it is to be here. That each next thing is still the best possible thing, that where I’m going is where I want to go, all over again. That I’m stupidly rebuilding my stupid little dreams.

Isosceles Peak from Dusy Basin 11388′

It’s easy to take someone’s life in your hands but not so easy to study, to keep on trying when we mess up, to choose something over and over and believe, truly, that repetition brings transcendence.

Saddlerock Lake 11128′ / Dusy Basin Lake 11388 11388′

But the opposite of taking things for granted is also stupid. Like being outside on a very beautiful day in the late summer and stubbornly trying to find meaning it doesn’t need.

Chocolate Peak, Inconsolable Range, and blue beyond from Timberline Tarns 11076′

We don’t have to be good. We can get up anyway, we’re allowed to make the old things new. Throw up a sturdy structure against the swelling dark, throw on a light fleece, and huddle against the cold.

Timberline Tarns 11076′ twelve hours later
Bishop Pass Trail/cross-country in Dusy Basin
Lembert Dome 9455′

And in the morning I wake up thinking this is it, this time, this time, this time. This time I know better, this time I will do it right.