Last weekend & this we went a’visitin’. After so long not being in the actual presence of friends, it was an amazing thing to spend time, tell stories, eat food, have drinks, and do all the things I’d both taken for granted and sometimes become socially anxious about all packed into two consecutive weekends. A mix of nostalgia for the way-back times and discussion on where I’m planted now. And I was surprised by how energized I felt. As a friend in New York mentioned, to spend time just literally hanging out—not getting particularly deep about things, just reviewing what’s what—was refreshing in a way I didn’t expect. Our first stop was to my dear friend of near-on four decades, Mary, who I’d been lucky enough to see here in Redlands recently, but visiting her place and lunching was fab. Then to LA where we stayed & dined with friends I’ve known since music dayz and who are now pals with Dennis too. My mind refuses on a pretty basic level to understand that it’s been three decades-plus since I’ve known them all and our stories, while dim in details, still feel fairly recent in a time-warpy kind of way. Revisiting moments in the past was comforting in the sense that yes, we all made it through, but also in a tree-falls way i.e., confirmation that certain things did happen even if we remembered them differently or as if they’re echoes. Luckily Russell had an actual photo album of a certain Lake vacation we all went on that confirmed our existence (to an extent).

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I came back to Redlands after the weekend smiling and honestly surprised at not being more emotionally tired. Maybe I’m getting more able to just relax in situations and conversations. Regardless…the change in who I am now versus then is weirdly amorphous: More comfortable in my skin now? Yes. Even as that skin is altering in ways I don’t always love…

Then today (Saturday) we went even further back in the time machine. My dad, Dennis, and I drove into Pasadena to visit one of his oldest friends, then went and found the house he, my mom, and I lived in when I was a little.

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Twas a trip. We lived in the old Busch Garden neighborhood of Pasadena. The house is still there. A new paint job and the shrubs/trees grown taller hiding the courtyard in the front, but yet, the memories dropped into me quickly. Because we recently had old home movies converted and I spent some time watching myself ride my bike around the front courtyard and have a birthday party, Christmas, etc. there, I was primed for the lived experience of the place, the street, the old neighbors. The two brothers down the street that I’d played with. Climbing out onto the roof of the house (second story) one night because…who the hell knows why. When I mentioned that today, my dad said “you did WHAT? If I’d known that at the time…” then silence. I’d have caught hell for sure. I remembered when friends of my mom’s came to visit from Northern California in an old school bus they’d turned into a camper and how they parked in the culdesac outside our house, then the paperboy had slammed into the back of them in the early-morning darkness. I learned (tho I don’t remember) that my first solo bike ride was to the Trader Joe’s down the hill and a few minutes away and I apparently had a basket where I packed in my few purchases and rode home. (The fact I still do that both here and in NYC is strange and makes me wonder about my cycling/psychic connection with TJs.)

Before we left town, we stopped into Vroman’s bookstore, my all-time favorite and most likely first bookstore ever visited. I bought some things. Driving home, it did occur to me how much I don’t remember. How in living moments, I took for granted one thing merging into the next. Until really recently–and sometimes still–I would worry Why can’t I remember that situation in detail, etc.? but overall I’m letting that go. Here are the things in life. Here are the people. Here I am now. Oh…and here is a most awesome mutt, our hosts’ pooch named Victor who, as you can see in his eyes, is just not bothered by any of it…memories, past, future….pffft. Just now, and maybe, why in hell are you taking my picture?