short walk

Today I walked from Central to Harvard, a short twenty minutes, but it made me feel so much better. It was my favorite kind of day, sunny and cold. I love the cold, because I’m sensitive to it. I like that it has tangible effects on me, how it makes my face flushed even though I’m so dark-skinned and my lips parched so that every bit of moisture can be felt in contrast, like when I run my tongue over them in the dry air. I’m glad snow has finally come, and that it always remains a presence long after having fallen. The paths have already gotten slushy and brown, but I don’t mind that; that’s the way it goes. The piles of snow in areas where people don’t venture are still bright white, and I’m grateful for being able to see it in its original form, while it makes its way from up there to down here. Nothing else is so visibly untouched, and the after-process of our boots and tires muddying it makes me appreciate it more, and is itself a phenomenon that's valuable, and something I enjoy being a part of.

It was a much-needed opportunity to wander. From Central to Harvard you just walk straight along Mass Ave, which is good for me because I don’t have to pay attention to where I’m going. Listening to songs also made me go from sense to sense, thought to thought. The acoustic version of Matchbox 20’s “Push” must be the most-played song on my iPod over the last two years; I can’t even begin to describe the nuances of why it’s the perfect song for the settings in which I use my iPod (walking, driving, passengering, flying). The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” always makes me happy, remembering how very early on it fashioned the standardly romanticized image of what love was like, and feeling that it’s okay to indulge in that. Lisa Loeb’s “Stay” made me remember the scene in Reality Bites where Ethan Hawke stands in his doorway and Winona Ryder stands on the street (or was it the other way around?) and they just look at each other. Having grown up a bit since seeing the movie, I know how long that short distance feels. Sarah McLachlan’s “Fallen” made me think of Aud, Victo and Kristen and our drive to Topanga Canyon in LA when we quietly listened to her Surfacing album, and made me miss my friends back home a lot. Aud once described the friends she made in high school as “quality” people. You meet quality people at all stages in your life, but in high school it’s not about the people who are going to change the world or who have accomplished a million and one things you’ll never be able to do; it’s just those people who quietly move you, with ordinary and natural qualities that you don’t realize are rare until much later. RHCP’s “Scar Tissue” started playing around the same time I suddenly thought of my dad, which seemed fitting because I’ve always thought of that song as lonely and tough. I thought about how much I really love my dad, and how my anxieties about whether things I do are worthwhile dissipate a little when I think about the ways he found to make his life important.

Thinking about my dad made me think about my family and Christmas and going home. Everyone gets cynical at some point about the materialism of the holidays, and I see the danger of that. But giving gifts has always been the one tradition my entire family adheres to, and maybe it seems hollow that it’s the one thing we do for one another even when some of us are going through periods where we’re not speaking to each other. I can’t exactly explain it, but it’s always been a deep thing for us, and I don’t think giving things has to be superficial and commercial. I really love to think about and to give gifts, and to surprise people with something you remember about them, or something you remember them saying or seeing or feeling. It’s about connection, and it just so developed that this connection arose from possessions because when all else is a mess you can at least turn to the concrete. I was thinking about that during the Kuumba Christmas concert too, where the beautiful beautiful sounds and people and energy remind you that the spirituality that underlies the holidays is just connection in any form. That memory made me think of how pretty the snow looked that night, after that amazing snow thunderstorm. I feel lucky to have the kind of winter that I do.