I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions, but I am one for reflection. Contrary to popular belief, 2020 did not begin at the Elk’s Lodge or Continuum Hotel, but rather on March 13th, when my friend Jim (who does not have a television) sat in my living room watching “President” Tr*mp announce the travel ban between Europe and the United States, only further alluding to the increasing worry regarding a new virus we had been subtly joking about just weeks prior. That Sunday, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort announced its closure after some 20 odd inches had fallen over night, due to “avalanche danger.” Locals flocked to Snow King. I hadn’t skinned up once yet, but I arrived with my uphill gear to “get some exercise.” The mountain was a glorified quagmire topped with snow soaked water, or perhaps water soaked snow. In a long line of anxious, powder panicked locals, I didn’t even make it halfway up before returning to my car with a pang of uneasiness. …
I drive a lot. I go to the ATM, the grocery store, the post office. And then I take the “long way home.” I drive east of town, down the refuge road until the landscape opens, the road maintenance ends and the inevitable scatter of dust starts to smell metallic. Then I turn around and drive the other way; down to where the houses start to spread out from the tiny metropolis that is town, sometimes even further. I loop the alleys that pepper my community, looking at hidden houses and wondering what the kitchens look like. I keep my music on max volume, occasionally just listening to the same song on repeat until I’ve exhausted the melody tenfold. I write in my head; anything from introductions to stories to phrases I like. Sometimes I list them in my phone, always without context or meaning. “Inconsequential conglomerations of cosmic dust.” “The propagations of life’s splinters.” …
Craving salt and desiring anything but a pile of dishes, I picked up the phone for takeout. “What do you want tonight?”
A seemingly simple question, and yet in the year 2020; it felt unnecessarily loaded. What do I want.
I’ll paint a picture:
I want to be in a metaphorical center that could be anywhere but feels like the middle of the damn universe. I want any collective of my dearest friends to walk down an unassuming winding staircase to a dark, busy bar with little exposure to the outside world. It will smell faintly of cigarettes but also laundry and cedar. I want to order top shelf craft liquor, neat, make it two. I want there to be live jazz playing in the corner, but not overly loud; just faintly enough to make me feel like I’m an adult, which I am most certainly not. I want my friends, colleagues, and mentors to filter in and out all night while we stay put at the bar, drifting from the music in the corner to conversation that involves a lot of eye contact; you know the type. I want the jazz musician to leave sometime around 2 AM, and the bartender will start to play Arcade Fire while weaving in and out of overly dramatic 90’s deep cuts, and we will get fucking weepy. I want to tip huge; in cash. I want to walk upstairs and outside to early morning blue light brimming ever so slightly upon some horizon; wherever we are in the world. When the sun finally rises, I want to get bagels in the place “everyone goes,” the one where, if walls could talk, would tell stories of asking for raises, of staying sober on prom night, of deciding to get that tattoo, and of contented 6 am silence.
I do not want anything extraordinary. I want to feel transcended in the mundane; a divorce from the outside world, if just for one night. …
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