Mapping Out Time

The first time I ever partook of the green grass glory that my illustrious father is so fond of, I ended up asleep on a friends floor, a half eaten cheese sandwich in my hand.  Needless to say, my foray into Cheech and Chong recreation was pretty short lived, since my usual response was pretty similar to the one with the sandwich. Either that, or I'd just get increasingly worried that the car we were parked in would roll down a hill, or some nonsense like that.  Whiskey suits me much better as a drug of choice.  I'd rather have whiskey then weed in my pie, any day.  This is legal for me to write about because I'm from Washington, right?

I was home in Seattle for a week in January, it was predictably rainy and absolutely wonderful to see old friends, drink coffee in my parents kitchen, eat mussels with crusty bread and watch aerial shows at a cozy studio on Phinney Ridge.  I saw a few of the friends who were there for the night of the cheese sandwich, and it struck me just how beautifully and differently we are all growing up.

I was blessed as a teenager to cast a wide net over a tightly knit friend group- we functioned as a big humorous circus of highly capable students and potheads, drama and band nerds, independent kids who went on big camping trips and forays to the Gorge Amphitheater to see our favorite groups play every summer before school started again.

There always seemed to be someone whose parents were gone every weekend, too.  It was never my parents, mind you.  Looking back, the parties we threw were always pretty benign.  There were illicit substances, gravity bongs and some guy trying to learn Led Zepplin for 3 hours at a stretch, and we ALWAYS let the family dog out by accident, but that was pretty much it.

The camping trips were even better. Who can forget the campfires in Leavenworth, or throwing ourselves down sand dunes on the Oregon coast, or the week long trip I took with some guy friends to the East Coast one mid-winter break, in which we wandered around Manhattan and Pennsylvania and finally found ourselves on a snow covered hillside in Woodstock drinking White Russians and laughing.

It was glorious.  And at times it was hard, and now it feels a little bit like Bob Dylan's Dream.  (Great song, look up the lyrics.)

Over the last decade or more, much has changed.  Many of us are lawyers.  Just as many of us are bartenders, and baristas, and beekeepers. All of us are still walking our own path, and I like to think we are all doing well for ourselves, whether we are parents or single or homeowners or renters, struggling to find work we love or struggling to find love that work for us, whether we feel we have arrived or we are still seeking, we are all doing well.  Different combinations of us have stayed in touch- some of us went to the same colleges, some got houses together in San Francisco, and sometimes we get together at a dive bar in Kenmore on Christmas night and find our old common ground.

And sometimes we think back to the cheese sandwich night, to remembering our tall lanky blond friend, high on mushrooms, staring into space with a deep look of furrowed concentration.  When we asked what he was doing, he put up his hand and whispered, "shhhhh! I'm trying to map out time."

Wow. I wonder if he succeeded. I wonder what memories will stay with us so many decades later, like the lines of that one Gary Snyder poem. How will we remember who we used to be? More importantly, how will we honor the people we have become?  I may need to make a plate of cheese sandwiches and think about this for awhile longer.

Glad to be back with you, and I'll write again soon.

yours very truly,
Red