I admit that I've spent a fair amount of the 31,536,000 seconds I was gifted this year, deeply submerged in the muck. In fairness to me (and anyone else who made it through this year with the luxury of feeling bad and then being able to dwell on that feeling) this year has been a cesspool of nonstop horrible shit happening. But, and I find I have to un-suction my rubber boot heels from the mud drenched floor of my state of mind to admit this, it wasn't 100% bad. I mean it WAS all bad if you empathize with the world at large. But I'd be remiss to not acknowledge the pinpricks of starlight in the black sky. In the spirit of not losing the memories I have from 2016 that DON'T make me wish I was in a coma achieved by eating too much ice cream, I've decided to share a list of some here. This post and the list within it will be my vial of antidote serum when life (and Facebook) sprinkles dirt in my fries. Mind altering, laced with cyanide dirt. So here are some moments worth remembering, in no particular order, from 2016:
Getting two of my poems published in June
I don't ever expect anyone to like my writing, ever. It is always a pleasant surprise when someone does and I was thrilled that two of my pieces were published. I truly appreciated that.
Seeing Hamilton in November
There was a moment, during the song "One Last Time" when Chris Jackson as George Washington was ripping his heart out through his lungs and handing it to us all in the audience, when I felt like own heart would burst and I must have reacted physically because Javier Munoz, playing Hamilton, caught my eye and smiled. It was a remarkable, subtle and quick moment that I will always remember. Also, seeing Brandon Victor Dixon stretching in the wings just before the start of the show... it just made me feel with the show. Like we were all snugly protected inside a snowglobe with a beautiful, musical tableau.
Seeing Ireland in September
A hundred and twelve things stand out about this trip: the memories with friends, the flavors, the sounds, the images. The beer, and orange spiced marmalade. The Dublin writer's artifacts preserved in glass cases, the hundred bookstores. But two things stand out above them all.
Since childhood, I have had one recurring dream: that I am inside a house that has neverending rooms, hallways, doors within rooms that lead to other rooms. Invariably in the house, I am charmed and longing to belong there forever. Yet the house, though it is always different, always belongs to someone else, either a friend or someone I just met in the dream. (I had this dream a few weeks ago and the house belonged to my uncle.) Anyway, in Kilkenny there is a restaurant called Langton's. We stopped in there for dinner and quickly realized that one front room/bar was the entrance to a series of long hallways with rooms branching off them, each one either elegantly small and intimate or ornate and ballroom-like. There seemed to be no end to the rooms within and walking through it was walking through my dream. That's a cool thing that will likely never happen to me again. But I was lucky it did, even once.
The second memory is this: Standing on the lunar landscape of the Irish coast in between destinations on a chilly September afternoon, belly full of the most delicious seafood soup I have ever eaten in a lifetime of eating soup, is a visual, aural, and sensory fingerprint on my brain. I envision the future me, maybe having lost my mind to age or sorrow or some other thing that happens to us all and closing my eyes and feeling all of it all over again. That happened this year.
Radiohead Concert at MSG in July
From the moment I first heard Radiohead in the wee hours of a lonely dorm room night in the winter of 1995, I was hooked. For life. And though I've seen Radiohead many, many times I don't think I needed to until this year. I needed that switch turned on. And the opening bars of "Let Down", the first time I've heard that song played live, did it. I was high fiving strangers and crying and it was beautiful.
Harry Potter World in June
Nancy and I sat in the shade on a bench in between rides and drank frozen Butterbeer and laughed. Is there a more fun sentence?
Maine in November
I took a girls' weekend to Camden, Maine this November and the road trip was so fun that I was able to think about everything but my sad, broken heart. There is nothing better than friends (and booze) to help you and don't let anyone tell you differently.
All year long
I am surrounded by love and support, by friendship and comfort and I would never have made it without you, you know who you all are. I get the same feeling around you as I do when I'm tucked underneath my electric blanket.
So there is always that.