Blogging in the dark

I realized earlier this evening while reading a compilation of Paul Bowles letters given to me for Christmas by my sister that the kind of blogging renaissance I wish to bring about on this site is unlikely to succeed, if for no other reason than the intimacy I’m looking for is inherently inimical to the format. It’s too scattershot, a blunderbuss aimed into the intervoids rather than a clean feather-penned dart thrown with discretion and from a safe distance.

A blog post will never be as private as a journal, but is probably still too personal to be of interest to a wider public. If I think of the people who might read this I’d rather address them directly. “You looked wonderful in the photograph you posted tonight.” “I am glad to hear you are OK.” “Your baby is beautiful. I can’t wait to meet her.” “I miss you and I hope that I see you again at some point in this life.”

A blog post will always be inferior to a letter. All the same, people I know and love and temporarily lose touch with do occasionally click on this site, and I’d like to give them something to read.

As I type this there is a rapidly accumulating layer of ice all across the city. They’ve even rescheduled the football game, so you know it is serious. News reports are running about how everyone is stocking up on generators, white bread and ice-melting salts. It’s Y2K all over again, with even less of a threat to our survival as a safe and overfed species. Schools were canceled across the metro yesterday even though we didn’t get a drop of snow or ice. It all makes me want to get involved in extreme mountain climbing or something in which there’s an actual threat of peril rather than this contrived and artificial panic.

Right now I’m drinking a glass of Leopold Bros. absinthe, which is certainly the best small batch absinthe made in Colorado. Having forsworn the neighboring state’s other green intoxicants, this creamy herbal spirit suffices quite nicely to simultaneously dull and awaken the senses. I’m complementing it with “The Microcosm: Visionary Music of Continental Europe, 1970-1986,” a 2-hour compilation of instrumental trance-inducing proto new age music just released by Light in the Attic records. It’s mesmerizing. I highly recommend, especially if you own a bottle of absinthe and a candle and a basement with a comfortable couch and/or floor rug.

One of the minimalist composers whose work I’ve been enjoying is Eliane Radigue, a French composer. All I knew when I first heard her was her name, texted to me the other night by my friend Todd. I was about to go on a long walk to the Plaza and along Brush Creek before the holiday lights went off for the last time. I put on the top track of hers on Spotify and listened to the music that began as a drone and shifted only gradually. I walked for several miles before looking at my phone and seeing that the running time of the piece was over an hour. It was a fitting soundtrack for empty winter sidewalks, contemplative and pleasant, especially along with the Christmas lights and the creek’s year-round-gushing fountains.

Until I passed under one of the bridges and saw the stirring of people camped out in the cold. The music turned darker almost at that very moment. I walked along further down the waterfront, hoping not to be seen, thinking of what I might have to offer but realizing I had nothing. I began thinking about death, not as an idle musing but because I couldn’t help but think about anything else. I wanted to skip forward to the next track, but since this was an extended piece I felt like I needed to see it through. When I looked at the title of the piece I saw the word “mort” in the title and realized that’s what this was about the entire time. Let the thoughts come, then.

People are afraid to talk about death, a friend of mine said recently after I called to extend sympathies. It makes them uncomfortable, he said. They don’t know what to say. He thanked me several times for reaching out, not realizing how much of both those things I was feeling at that moment. It’s better to try, though. Even though I’ve so far been spared serious loss and only know what it looks like indirectly, I still think we should talk about it. How has losing someone close to you affected the way you view and live your life? These are things I’d like to hear about. Things we can all learn from.

However, lest anyone complain that I am leaving them on a morbid note, I will close by recounting some inspiring signs of life I saw today as well. At the Museum at Prairie Fire, an impressive new complex south of Kansas City, the unusual creatures exhibit featured an entire exhibit on my favorite microscopic animal, the tardigrade. Also known as waterbears, tardigrades are bizarre eight-legged critters that look like something from a science fiction film turned into a plush toy.

By retreating into a dormant state known as “cryptobiosis,” waterbears can withstand insane levels of radiation and even survive a couple weeks in outer space. I saw one of them beneath a microscope all blurry and wriggling, indifferent to my spying, unafraid of nuclear war, election results or ice storms. To paraphrase Keats: the next time I have fears that I may cease to be, I will think of the hardy tardigrade, and go on blogging blissfully.

The ice is really coming down thick now. I wish it wouldn’t do that. Snow is aesthetically so lovely, while freezing rain is gross. Freezing fog I could live with. Freezing fog would probably inspire me to go for a long walk even though it’s almost 1 in the morning. My friends in northern California, where it is only 11, don’t appreciate my romanticizing of fog. But when it comes to unusual atmospheres, here in the Great Plains we take what we can get.