On Ephemera (and the A24 Zine)

Claire Denis’ SEEDS zine, red picture of red food on a red table cloth. Red text from the zine’s second page. A24, claire denis, issue 09

Somehow I’ve resisted becoming a collector of ridiculous things, until fairly recently. I’ve bought limited edition box sets from bands, and plenty of books, but never something sequential. Never something that l, when a new edition is released, just buy without checking what it’s about or how it looks. It’s not a subscription. I don’t blindly receive a year's worth of ephemera slowly - I have to go to the webstore and look. Actively. 

A24’s zine, which comes out at an undetermined cadence, is one of the best pieces of movie memorabilia for me. It combines a number of very special elements into one $5 package. A24, if you are not familiar, is the fantastic production studio behind things like: The Lighthouse, Euphoria, and the highly anticipated The Green Knight. Their mech game is extremely strong. They have great pins, they have great shirts, they have great mugs and coffee and puzzles. They have a great zine. 

One particularly good example is issue 09, “SEEDS,” which was edited by Claire Denis and not only has writing from Nick Cave and a beautiful cover, but also came with a small paper card that was meant to be buried in the ground so it could grow flowers. Where else could you read comedian and filmmaker Bo Burnham interviewing young internet celebrities about how weird being famous on the internet is? Or a Toni Collette fanzine made by actor and comedian John Early, wherein he confesses not only his fascination (expelled from him through a fan website he ran for many years) but also the moment he realized he had outed himself online for everyone to see? Jonah Hill has a zine promoting his film Mid90s called “Inner Child;” The cast of Moonbase 8 interview real astronauts about how to poop in space (obviously); Greta Gerwig displays religious lady saints in stained glass; Rose Glass lays out how to be “saved” at various points in history; and Rami Yossef talks to friends and fellow actors about Ramadan. 

A24 zine edited by Bo Burnham. Colorful images on both sides from different internet creators. On the left, Lights Camera Jackson lists Best Movies about the internet. On the right, Jeondays shows her zine work

So many of the zines are wealths of insight and special moments because A24 put a team of graphic designers behind creators and allowed them to do whatever they wanted. Some are short, others are longer; some are wild with color, others are blocks of text. They’ve changed to a more traditional A4 print size in the last year, which I thought might be to the zine’s detriment. But, of course, it didn’t matter. I bought them just the same. I read them. They live on the same display shelf over all my other books - closer to the artwork than the computer or the TV - so I can always see them. I bought bags and boards; I had the shelf custom made by a friend. I became that guy, gladly.

Toni Collette fan website picture on the front of the zine, which is Toni from a very early movie and a heart drawn around it. Peach color cover. Red writing

Ephemera can be exhausting. Collecting things can be traps for consumerist propagation and a waste of resources and time and money and just waste in general in a world where things should really not be wasted. But it can also be rewarding and insightful. These zines are not just movie promotional materials. People worked on them in a way that feels authentic. The guest editors are not just promoting something - they’re free to do whatever they want! And they do. Because they’re nerds too. 

As much as I produce products to be read or bought or sold, I struggle with the act of putting waste out into the world. I think much harder now about what should be printed. Not just important things, but fun things and serious things and scary things. Things people will enjoy, that look nice. Things that someone has worked on; that I’ve worked on; that my friends have worked on with me; and things I couldn’t have done without their help and their kindness and their critique.

Not everything is ephemera, but the ephemera you have should be something. A24 nails it for me with these zines. I hope you check them out.

To All The Movies I Should’ve Seen (2020)

2020 Morning Pages Journal

This is, in some part, a reminder to get to these movies in the next year at some point. At the beginning of 2020, Wes and I were stoked to be given press passes to the Portland International Film Festival under the guise that we’d cover it for the Talking to Ghosts podcast. And we covered the shit out of that festival. Like young, budding journalism students, we took our little special edition Field Note notebooks into the theater and wrote quick, squibbly notes in the lobby between showings. We drove all over town, watching four or sometimes five movies in an evening. Staying out late like we were being paid to do it. We took it seriously and we were well rewarded. We saw a lot of good films from a really impressive array of international creators. For a week and a half, we shuttled our broken bodies into small indie theaters around town to take in all we could. And it was great.

Sole, for example, which we saw at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry IMAX screen late one night was a movie from Russia filled with the most beautiful photographic style. Natural, pale colors told the story of this nearly silent and, still somehow, extremely tense film. It was long and the shots took their time, moving across the 79-foot screen below us.

Or This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection, which was a Lesotho film that was equal parts dark and surreal. The authenticity and the deeply different nature of the storytelling (and setting) made it such a wonderful thing to take in. It was uncomfortable and sad and, at times, exactly the kind of story you can feel deep inside the guilt of your own culture.

But we didn’t see everything. COVID broke out while we were in the theaters late at night, taxing our bodies, eating poorly. People were coughing next to us and it made watching films a much lower priority. We had to stop going out. Then the festival was put on hold. Then it was cancelled and all of our events were gone - and the big interview we’d scheduled was put on hiatus (We eventually did interview Jon Raymond, the writer of the A24/ Kelly Reichardt film First Cow). 

There were so many films I didn’t get to see, even after they were reluctantly released digitally. So what follows is a reminder. Films I’ve flagged this year that I should have watched, but didn’t for a number of reasons. Some of them I know will be good, but sad. So I’ve kept them at a distance. 

Kajillionaire, which is the new Miranda July film, was released digitally at some point this year. I meant to see it. I so loved her last novel, The First Bad Man, and had heard great things from The Film Comment Podcast about how strange, but poignant its message was.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always is a film by Eliza Hitman that I know will be good. I know it will be the kind of ruminating film I love. But I also know it will be sad and I didn’t think I could handle something so directly sad this year. It’s always been high on my list of things I should definitely, without a doubt, watch because I know that when I do I will be recommending it to people. But it never made it over the edge of how sad I think it will be.

Vitalina Varela by Pedro Costa was a film we were supposed to see on IMAX at OMSI during the film festival at the start of 2020. It’s told to be an extremely beautiful velvet painting of a movie. Looking back at the trailer now… it’s stunning. So dark and so well composed.

The Wild Goose Lake was one of the many films we had to make the tough call not to see as part of our limited viewing time at the festival. It was a safe bet that this film would be something we’d liked, but it was also a pretty safe bet that we’d be able to see it in the future on VOD. That being said - still looks dope. 10 out of 10, should’ve watched it.

Martin Eden, which is a film that got a lot of attention from reviewers and on The Film Comment Podcast, looks great. A Jack London story directly by Pietro Marcello that looks classically good. Looks like it was shot on film and I love it. I don’t want to dig too deep because I think it’s a movie that probably won’t surprise me (storywise), but will benefit from going in with some wonder.

Bacurau is another film I don’t want to know a whole lot about. I know it goes places. I know it is a little bit of a horror film and I know I rapidly scrolled by a lot of trusted friend’s glowing reviews this eyar. That’s it. Should’ve seen it. It’s from Brazil and was directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles. 

Some honorable mentions on the list of movies I should’ve seen in 2020:

• Little Women

• Tenet

• The Invisible Man

• Underwater

• Bad Hair

• Nomadland

Motivation vs. Productivity: The 2020 Story (non-fiction, writing)

My motivation and productivity are at odds. Two metrics, two modes, one tiny link. Motivation is connected to my state of inspiration, ideas, and workaholism. But productivity is more difficult. I like to get things done in an order that prioritizes important and well-meaning things over perhaps more personal tasks. If you were to go through all the notebooks in my apartment, and at my office desk, you would find stacks of half-finished bullet journals and very uneven plot outlines (scribbled randomly on a quarter page I cut from a discarded 11 x 17 show poster, which I never hung). Life comes in waves of productivity.

Often, I make plans to do work on the weekend – or maybe at the end of the day, after dinner. “Okay,” I tell myself, “there will be plenty of time on Friday to take this fresh motivation I have and mold it haphazardly into productivity.”

The weekend comes. Friday: I get my coffee and some breakfast. I sit down and get to frickin’ work. I have a list. I have paper and pens and notebooks, and the laptop is charged. The house is quiet. All I have to do is work. But nothing comes. 

By the time motivation is supposed to meet productivity, there’s a kink in the chain and everything slows down. Twitter starts to look compelling. There are TV shows I want to check out. “For story structure,” I think, “it’s research.”

There will be a number of things in your way when you go to create. Some are external: the bills piling up, the construction work outside, the global pandemic, the month-long election process for the President of the United States. Some will be internal: self-doubt, worry, self-censorship, or insecurity. Painful resistance is obvious. But behavioral, systemic, and societal resistance hide behind other more obvious things.

Steven Pressfield, the author of The Legend of Bagger Vance, writes about resistance in his book The War of Art. I’ve ordered it and it should be here this year, so maybe I’ll do a Books on Writing 101 after I’ve read it. Pressfield is big in the Story Grid community because he co-founded Black Irish books with Shawn Coyne and helped develop some of the Story Grid tools. In the community, Resistance is a concept you’ll hear about a lot. 

The surface-level takeaway is this: You have to get out of the way and do the work. It’s impossible to write strong, inspired work if you’re preoccupied. I haven’t learned how to get out of my own way yet. I’ve focused on productivity tools and methods, I’ve tried to capture inspiration and turn it into future motivation, I’ve planned and outlined and abandoned projects to make space. But I haven’t gotten out of my own way enough, mentally, to do the work. 

Sometimes when we focus on learning and craft, we get too in the weeds. In Robert McKee’s Story and in Story Grid, there’s an emphasis that most of what they’re trying to teach you should happen after the work is done. Don’t worry about Obligatory Scenes or The Negation of the Negation in your character arc yet. In the beginning, that’s all resistance. It feeds into productivity and motivation and slows down creativity. 

If you have any tips on how to get out of my own way, I’d be happy to try them! But for now, I’m focusing on setting time, letting my mind relax, and not worrying about the structure or the changes. Just the work. 

Books on Writing 101: Jeff VanderMeer's "Wonderbook" (Non-fiction, Writing craft)

Books on writing 101 is a collection of book recommendations to get you started on writing. Inspirational, insightful, and entertaining books I’ve enjoyed that will help you find your own way. Everyone learns differently, but this is how I started:

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Jeff VanderMeer’s “Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction”

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If I had to recommend one book to a new writer, especially one who wants to work in the world of science fiction, fantasy, or weird fiction, it would be Wonderbook. Jeff VanderMeer is the author of fantastic works of poetic and devastating genre books like Annihilation (and the entire Southern Reach Trilogy), Borne, and Dead Astronauts - all of which are filled to the brim with not only vivid and horrifying imagery, but huge amounts of depth and message. Wonderbook dives deep into craft, life, and the writer’s imagination. From guest essays by Neil Gaiman, George R.R. Martin, and Ursula le Guin, to centerfold illustrations on the depths of story structure, the book provides many avenues to create real and imaginative fiction. What I like most about the book is that it has many perspectives. There isn’t one way to do something when you write - often, there isn’t one way to do something from book to book even - so to provide a framework of encouragement, craft knowledge, and opportunity is a gift to a new writer.

“You can’t be inspired every day, just like you can’t be madly, deeply, insanely in love every day. But how such moments manifest as you move through the world and the world moves through you defines the core of your creativity.” (pg. 2)

The opening chapter is “Inspiration and the Creative Life.” At the heart of any practice, there has to be inspiration. This can come in short bursts, or lifelong avenues of wildly vivid thought. But no matter the inspiration you currently have, you must work to maintain it for very long periods, especially as you begin to write seriously. Most people don’t have the luxury of time when they start - even students have to contend with other classes, a social life, and their impending life as a working person - so you have to make the space for inspiration to last and dwell within. 

I often write in the evening after work. During COVID-19, this has been a lot harder. Work is longer and more stressful than before, so when I come home I need to escape. To be outside of my mind, I often resort to endless hours of television. Not writing. But when I sit down to write, I need that inspiration to be there too. When you work this way, there isn’t a lot of space to wait for that creativity and inspiration to come. So you work on it all the time. I keep a notebook on me, always, and I think about my stories in idle moments. I develop them in my mind, and then on scraps of paper throughout the day. So when the time comes, there is something to work with.

“The most important thing is allowing the subconscious mind to engage in a kind of play that leads to making the connections necessary to create narrative.” (pg. 8)

There is the infamous shower moment. You’re working on something, you’re stuck, you can’t move forward. You sleep on it, you do something else. Then, in the shower, BAM! You’ve found the solution, and inspiration is back. The wheels are back on the bus. This happens to me a lot. I often write in the evening, some time between post-dinner and pre-sleep. I also shower in the evening, often last minute when I remember how gross of a person I am. So I give up writing for the evening, with the plan to shower and then watch some TV and go to bed. But then! Of course. Out of nowhere, my resting mind says: “Buddy, I’ve figured it out. The answer was simple all along,” and I have to go back to writing. Sometimes this answer is easy. Sometimes it would take many hours of retreading and revision to make a reality. In the latter case, I often take out a Foolscap page and jot down whatever comes to mind in a kind of crazed mind-dump prose. This way I not only remember the revelation, but also the situation it came to life in. I don’t always re-read these notes, but the simple act of giving them space helps me to remember (and sleep easy knowing I at least wrote them somewhere). [As an aside: please write down everything. Carry a notebook. Keep one by the bed. In your bag. In the bathroom. Ideas evaporate quickly.] 

“The reader only cares about what he or she experiences on the page. That’s why you must not mistake the progress of your inspiration for the actual progress of the story. The scene that sparked your desire to create fiction may not be the starting point of the story, and the story itself may not even be about what you thought it was about when you wrote the opening.” (p 75)

Those ideas from the night before are not the story. Or even the start of the story. Or even exact moments in the story. I jot them down manically so I can remember the tone and the context and the madness that will build the future story. This, for me, is a new practice. As someone who is a recovering Discovery Writer (someone who does not outline, instead choosing to let inspiration and character lead them into a blank future), I often found that, even in reverse outlining, I was missing the kind of depth and plot needed to make a longer story work. In short fiction, discovery writing worked very well for me. It allowed a strange and mysterious world to emerge (partly because it was strange and mysterious to me too!), but when you start to expand into longer stories - the story elements become more challenging. Things need to be internally consistent. In order to satisfy this discovery practice in my longer work, I’ve been free writing tons of character and scene moments that are pure inspiration. No worry for structure, or consistency, or even character names - just whatever comes out. I dump onto physical paper. This helps me to develop a world, and a handful of people in that world, to then build a properly structured story around and, like the shower moment, this provides a space for inspiration to come through. It’s a meditation.

“You should approach an understanding of story elements not as if you were approaching a puzzle that, once solved, will never need to be solved again, but so you can create something wonderful or deadly or harrowing or tragic or melancholy.” (p. 72)

No matter which genre you are writing in, I highly recommend Jeff VanderMeer’s Wonderbook. It is great for a new or experienced writer. The revised & expanded edition is out now from Abrams Image.

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Keep your eyes out for more Books on Writing 101! The 101 series are books that I think are a great place to start if you know nothing about writing and want to get started. Nothing too wild, but still packed with wonderful tips and insight.

Previous post in this series:

Stephen King’s “On Writing”

Haruki Murakami’s “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”

Ursula K. le Guin’s “Steering the Craft”

Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird”

Derrick Jensen’s “Walking on Water”

On Failing to Write (during a Global Climate Crisis)

9/17/20 SE Glisan - Smoke dense like fog in the street

Trust me when I say that missing this week’s blog post plagued my mind every single day I wasn’t writing it. I saw the week come through the door and just kind of… stepped to the side and let it pass. The real secret is: I missed the week before too. I’d written two articles at the end of August, which saved me from missing two weeks in a row. The buffer is essential; things go sideways from time to time. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t dwell on it.

An uncharacteristically violent windstorm. A thick layer of smoke from massive forest fires. A jaundiced sky. A pink sun (again). Eleven days of hazardous air quality. Not unhealthy, not bad, but hazardous, pushed Portland (and most of Oregon) even further indoors. A million people were evacuated from their homes.

From the beginning of the global pandemic, we’ve been indoors. We go for walks in the evening; I go for a walk in the morning. We’ve been exploring a little more, but for the most part we stay inside. Livestream concerts and art shows. Lots of Netflix and Hulu and Prime and whatever else we can find. Lots of reading and writing (but mostly reality TV if we’re being honest). 110 movies this year, so far. Up already from last year with an entire quarter to go.

But in isolation, things were starting to feel regular. Not normal, but regular. There were comfortable patterns emerging. Over the hump of coming home every night and not leaving again until work hours, there was at least something. We had a problem, we got through it, we had another problem.

All of this is to say: I have a lot of excuses not to write.

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t think about it. I started to re-read the next book in the series for Books on Writing 101, and have continued to read one of the books for Books on Writing 201. But I failed to write anything. I finished an article, which was trashed recently. I wrote a section of the fiction I’ve been working on. But nothing for the blog. Nothing for the deadline. Or the schedule. Or the personal. And that sucks.

Some people can produce during a crisis. Some people produce more, or maybe only slightly less. There’s reflection in everything, which is a reason to write. A triggering event brings reflection and deep work. Write it down, share it. Give it a name, try to sell it. It’s part of the process.

A while ago I started working on The Artist’s Way, which I don’t fully endorse if I’m being honest. It’s a good first step if you want to start thinking about deeper work and if you’re really stuck somewhere. But there’s better advice out there now. One thing I’ve really taken to, though, is Morning Pages. Every morning, right when I get up (mostly), I write three longhand pages in a notebook. No topic, just write. Everything in my mind. It’s a meditation, it’s a clarity exercise, and it helps.

Some mornings turned into Afternoon Pages, and once Evening Pages. But I try not to miss an entire day. Yesterday, I never even thought about Morning Pages. At the end of the day, when I looked back at everything I did at work, and at home, and in the morning, I didn’t have an excuse. I just didn’t feel like writing anything. I didn’t feel like reflecting. I failed to write. Again.

Another tool in The Artist’s Way is The Artist Date, which is when you take yourself out on a date to a form of art you really enjoy. I talked in one of the first blog entries about this, in slightly different terms: You have to keep watering the plant. Refill your creative inspiration by consuming art you love. This had been - pre-pandemic, pre-climate emergency, pre-protests - something I practiced often. For the podcast, we went to a lot of shows and events that were really inspiring. New artists, weird artists, young and hungry and fresh and cool and magnificent artists doing their best, and most inspiring, work. I miss that.

One piece of art we saw recently was Crystal Quartez’s “Springs", which you can still view as part of the Time-Based Art festival 2020 (passes are free). This helped. It was so far outside of something I could create, and done in a way that was almost magical, almost completely surreal, that it consumed me for thirty minutes. Nothing else was around. It reminded me that I missed seeing art. In person. Not on a computer in my apartment.

I have to refill my creative glass often. I have to remind myself to refill my creative glass often. But it’s hard when there are so many different crises to pay attention to.

So for me, here is a list of things to do:

1. Write Morning Pages daily.

2. Once a week, take some time to go on an Artist Date (this could mean: read a pleasurable book, watch a livestream, etc.).

3. Dissect a piece of story (TV show, movie, book, short story, whatever) - consume it a few times, write down the beats, analyze what makes it good or bad.

4. Consume a piece of media just for the pleasure of it. Turn the brain off. Don’t analyze. Just listen or watch or read blindly.

5. Be gentle with myself when I fail to write anything.

Shifting to Craft (Non-Fiction, Writing)

MOAB, Utah - 2019.

Before the outbreak of COVID-19, I was working on many different projects. We were covering the Portland International Film Festival right in the middle of the outbreak; I was working on three different writing projects in various stages of submission; and was trying to build some background ideas for sound art pieces, which was a newer interest. Productivity was high and the projects were exciting. It started to feel like things were getting done.

I tend to be a high producer - meaning I work on a lot of projects and get a lot of stuff done. This does not mean it is all quality. A lot of it isn’t. But with writing and new skills, it takes me a lot of practice and error to get something decent. But as long as things are moving, things are good.

But then everything stopped and, in Portland at least, we were faced with a weird limbo. Because Portland didn’t have a big initial spike, the roll out of governmental regulations and information was slow to hit everyone. At my day job, for example, masks were not required until July, which seems criminally late now. Most people shifted to working from home, but a lot of us were left to keep the job going at the facility.

Work got busy, but creativity took a big hit. I kept creative projects for evenings and weekends, so by Monday I would feel like I did something worthwhile. It felt good to have things on the calendar.

For the first few months, I didn’t know how to get back to being productive outside of my day job. I worked longer hours and on weekends, because there were things to do - accomplishments. Tasks to cross off a list.

But over and over again, it came back to: What do I do if I can’t create anymore?

In 2020, my main focus has been learning how to write fiction: submitting stories to magazines, looking for publication, building a portfolio so when the next submission period comes around, I will be ready. Some real progress was being made, but most of all I felt creative. I felt like I was able to sit down and bust out words. Night after night, sometimes.

But suddenly I could barely read fiction, let alone try to write it.

Fran Meneses, who is a Vlogger and illustrator I’ve been enjoying lately, said in one of her videos: “Creativity is like a plant, you have to water it.” In talking about the COVID-19 lockdown, she and her husband have been going through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron to try to simulate the watering of their creative plants. They used to go to galleries and talk with other artists, but now they can’t, so they’ve turned to craft.

25th Anniversary Edition of “The Artists Way” by Julia Cameron

In late June, I started listening to The Story Grid Podcast, trying to find more information on story structure and The Hero’s Journey. Story Grid is an intensely analytical look at story structure, but the way it’s presented in The Story Grid Podcast is fascinating and funny. Shawn Coyne, the creator of Story Grid, took a new writer, co-host Tim Grahl, from idea to outline to first draft to editing (and ultimately to published work), through a series of episodes that dives deep into story craft and theory. It broke me open and I dove in. I ordered the book The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know and treated it like the proper textbook it is. I worked through it. I chose my masterwork to study. I took a week off from my day job to read more and go deeper.

“The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know” by Shawn Coyne

And creativity came back. I started to water the plant, and it slowly grew. I gave myself this blog space to write more and be on a schedule - to give myself permission to share. I started writing fiction again and, after some reworking and rewriting, submitted a radio play to a publication.

The anxiety about all of our current issues didn’t go away. I still worry about a lot of things. But I knew, if I didn’t take the time, I’d be even more unhappy later. So my advice to you if you aren’t feeling creative is: Get into the craft of your chosen art form. Do some learning and give yourself the space to not produce. Dive deep. Learn something you’ve been putting off because you were busy. Work the creative muscle until it starts to work itself again.

It is very likely we will be in lockdown for a long time. If you’re not feeling creative right now, that’s alright. I believe in you.

Let me know in the comments if you’d like to hear from other creators about how they’ve been getting back to their art. I’d love to do an interview series.

A Eulogy for Travel Dreams

Climbing back from a hidden beach - my brother.

Last year we decided to go to Iceland in 2020. We take a few trips a year, but international trips are every couple of years. When we went to France, we bought our tickets almost an entire year in advance. It allowed us to save the rest of the money we needed before the trip came around. Luckily, though, this year we hadn’t yet bought tickets when COVID-19 hit.

There have been many horror stories about people losing all of their reservation money from airlines and hotels. Having to fight to get even credit back from these big companies.

But the space from this trip to Iceland still lingers. Recently, we watched Zach Efron’s Down to Earth series on Netflix, which debuted with an episode about Iceland. The black sand. The great ocean surrounding. The mineral pools and waterfalls and winding roads and Reykjavik. In Down to Earth they visit a cliffside; a giant river. Cascading, roaring falls from a crack in the great earth; grey skies. Gullfoss Falls. One of the most popular tourist spots in Iceland. Over a million people a year.

More than this, though, the space holds the part of me that wants to leave the country. I was talking with a coworker recently about the vacation time I was taking - one whole week off, a Staycation. She said she had a trip booked with her sister, who doesn’t live in town - To Nashville, to see music - but it was cancelled a few months ago. They held out for a while, believing the summer would turn around and that they wouldn’t be locked down. But that didn’t happen.

“Next year,” she said, still hopeful the pandemic would be gone by then.

I told her about Iceland, and about how another coworker used to live in Norway. She said she was scared to leave the country.

“I’d like to see the ruins in Peru,” she said. “But I’d have to go with a lot of people.”

My coworker said it wasn’t safe to travel alone, which made me feel bad for the way Americans see the rest of the world. To Nashville, to The Grand Canyon, to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but not to Argentina or Chile. Not to Peru with her husband. She heard you have to travel in a very large group. Like twenty people. It’s no surprise, of course, she felt that way. Especially during the Trump Presidency, but it was sad.

When we travelled to France, it was the first time I had left North America. The flight was long and the coffee was bad (always I will remember the coffee). But in the small towns, in the old castles and at the top of dormant volcanoes, grassed over for many years, barely cold, was an experience I couldn’t have had the same way if we stayed in the US because for me it was somewhere else. It felt different. People lived differently. I didn’t understand. It was isolating a lot of the time because I didn’t speak French. I saw people talking, familiar. Missing each other. I didn’t understand, but I could see.

You can have this experience traveling in your own country too. 

In a cabin-hostel at Glacier National Park, we cooked dinner quickly to avoid talking to anyone. There were black bears in the forest. PCT Hikers were passing through. Stopping for the night. Coyotes in the dusk, surrounded by brilliant snowy mountains. On the first floor was a general store that had vegan ice cream. The showers were gendered.

In The Painted Hills, we stayed at a bicycle hostel that used to be a church. The couple who ran it were getting ready for a big race that went all the way down the west coast. Big pots of pasta and quick-to-eat meals were prepared for the last day we were there. I played them The Blood of Others on Spotify. They said they liked it. The shower was in a small covered area outside of the church, a few feet away. There was water pressure, but also spiders.

Last February, we went to Hawaii on a family trip. There was a long ridge covered in spindly trees, the top of a mountain that ran through the middle of the island. It took an hour to get there. My brother went out ahead of us (he was more brave), and took pictures on the part of the trail that was too narrow for my comfort. We made dinner in a million dollar house. I read Isadora by Amelia Gray on the beach while everyone else went in the ocean. The co-op had vegan Musubi.

Last month, we went to Mount Hood and spent four hours trying to find a place to hike without a permit. I gave up and went to Timberline Lodge, so we could at least see some snow. It was ninety degrees and there were hundreds of people in the parking lot. We didn’t stop. Eventually, with no help from me, we found a spot to hike. Up into the trees and away from any sound of the road. The forest became another kind of forest - clover-covered and dense, up we went. When we decided to turn around, we’d only gone 0.7 miles. It was steep, but the day made me tired and grumpy. We were home before five o’clock.

At the end of my staycation, now, I feel the missing space of travel even more than I did before. I read books. I studied. I watched movies and made dinner. We walked around our neighborhood every night. The rest was nice, but the space grew deeper. When will we be able to leave again?

Reading Werner Herzog’s Of Walking In Ice didn’t help.

Watching Fran Meneses’ travel vlogs to Berlin and Tokyo and Mexico didn’t help.

But I recommend them to you. 

It’s hard now to see a world in which we can travel as freely, at least within the next couple of years. As Americans, I feel, it’s irresponsible to go to a country like Iceland or Finland, who have taken the proper steps - who have believed the science and helped their people - to control the pandemic, but I still want to. I still mourn the loss - over dramatic as it may be - of traveling.