📍notes from nowhere: #5
the routine of escape
Hello (-o, -o, -o!)
Anyone out there?
(Imagine, for a second, the sound of your voice: beginning on one rim of this canyon and traversing away from you, around each ledge, getting further and further away—and then, spookily, doubling back towards you, a kind of double-echo, a ricochet, a return. This is a bit what it’s felt like to be in isolation for so long: bending, craning to hear sounds from the world outside of ourselves; realizing, after a beat, that they’re still just our own.
But we’re headed, finally, toward a post-vaccine existence; a it-feels-so-good-to-hug-you existence; a canyon cacophonous and full of sound.)
All of this to say: I’m still here! And you? Where is here for you right now?
“We did a thing,” and: The Routine of Escape
What is the origin of the phrase “we did a thing”? Why can’t people in my generation just say the thing that we did? Let me give it a try: Mike and I bought a house.
The story begins in Florida, on our small patch of Tampa Bay that I’ve described lovingly to you before. Call it our age (32, and by all calculations “real” adults), call it the pandemic and its unexpected freedom to work from home, still stretching into the distance, or call it the humid Florida summer air, optimistic and comforting—whatever is was, a cocktail of these forces compelled us to start looking at houses.
(Worth noting: if you know Mike and I, you know the decision of “where to live” is one we’ve been putting off for a long time. It always felt so incredibly permanent, and we love—like, really love—so many different places. How would we ever pick just one … forever?)
We perused bungalows in Old Northeast, a historic St. Pete neighborhood built during the 1920s Florida land boom, including a vintage a friend was refurbishing by hand. We looked at flattops with giant Birds of Paradise bedecking the front yard and light that careened across old linoleum floors, which reminded me achingly of my grandmother’s house in Hawaii.
But what we loved most about St. Pete was exactly where we were: a simple 2-bedroom overlooking the Bay, in a row of faux-Hemingway-era pastel buildings that used to be projects. So we looked at houses for sale right next door, too, and arrived at the thought: we could do this. We hatched an unconventional plan. We would live in two places; make our lives into a predictable routine of escape. Home #1: St. Petersburg, Florida.
Fast-forward a couple of months and we find ourselves in Denver, after road-tripping across the American South and relishing the strange and transient existence it afforded. Our conviction that we liked to be on the move, always escaping, always in between places and a little bit nowhere, was at an all-time high. We’d chosen Florida as Home #1, solicited by its summer thunderstorms, lax relationship to ambition, its mystic and wild natural beauty. Now, we needed a foil; a place that felt totally different. Why not try Denver on for size?
I got in touch with a childhood friend who had joined his family’s real estate business after traveling South America on a Fulbright. On a bright and chilly Saturday morning in February, he met Mike & I to show us 8 listings across Denver: bungalows again (though with a markedly less topical vibe), lofts downtown, old Victorians. Once again, the world felt full of promise.
Mike and I have lived in 8 homes over the last three years, in 6 different cities (and that’s just the “major” ones; it’s 43 unique places total if you count nights like the one we spent at “Tent - St. Andrews State Park, Panama City Beach - Campsite 004”). What we’ve lost in time spent packing, unpacking, and traversing the terrifying service elevator of our San Francisco storage unit, we’ve gained in an exquisite understanding of what we value in a place to live. (Fireplace: meh. Superb ice-maker: yesss.) So when we walked into the 5-level, sunlit townhouse on Tennyson Street, we looked at each other and agreed: this is it.
We got smart about real estate transactions and closed on our new babe in under a month. Home #2: Denver. (*Dusts off hands.*) We are still looking for our Florida dream house, and I am already fantasizing about an oceanside room of one’s own. But for now, we are here, in Denver, in a house that we own—embarking on the next unknowable phase of this journey. There are still so many open questions: what will a future of entirely-remote work look like for us? Can we manage the logistical burden of living in Colorado for 6 months and Florida for the other 6? Will we like it?
But nestled alongside these questions is a seed of satisfaction, one that comes from the terrifying act of moving toward a type of a life we want. With this unconventional idea, we are investing in our love for more places than one; rejecting permanence and embracing a desire to travel from one version of our lives into another version we love just as much. We call this the Routine of Escape: the eros of picking up and leaving, transformed into ritual.
A few gemstones to keep in the collection
At some point this summer, when many of us are vaccinated, and we’re traversing the world alongside one another again, perhaps even sharing a Aperol-y imbibement together at an actual bar, we will collectively exhale. We will say to each other, fuck COVID. And we will kick the many horrors of this past year to the curb, never (we hope) to be seen or spoken of again.
However, there are a very few things that have changed for the better during this bizarre season, and they’re worth capturing and remembering while we’re still in the proverbial woods. So! Three precious gems I would like to keep from this pandemic:
Hand-washing as my religion. To be gross for a second, I was not into hand-washing prior to this shitstorm. Fully thought of it as optional at best, waste of time at worst. Now, hand-washing is a ritual I cherish that borders on a decadent spa day. So get yourself a fancy hand soap, invest in a post-wash hand balm, and keep getting your suds on.
Co-working with friends. In the before-times, visiting friends meant maximizing weekend time together. On our pandemic road trip, however, we were forced to commingle our lives with our friends’ lives during the week, which meant working side-by-side (in one instance, three of us from my friend Cait’s studio apartment in LA) and embedding into each other’s existences in a much deeper way. I can’t recommend this strategy enough. If you have the freedom to work from somewhere else for a few days, go stay near your friends in advance of the weekend. There is nothing quite so intimate and beautiful, to me, than living the mundanity of life next to someone you love.
“Zoom hangs.” Remember that time in early lockdown, when everyone knew that everyone else was also at home stress-cooking or inventing games or doing nothing, and so we all scheduled virtual hangs with groups of friends we hadn’t fully gathered with in months, or years? Your high-school clique? Zoom hang. Your college besties? Zoom hang. Your old coworkers/entire extended family/group therapy crew? Zoom hang! Don’t get me wrong: Zoom burnout is fucking real. But don’t @ me for saying I loved the collective realization that a virtual hang can be just as life-giving as an in-person hang, especially when getting the whole group together in person is prohibitively expensive and hard to arrange. Think of it as a shortcut to staying close with the people who matter to you. Just please—in the holy name of Zoom Burnout Prevention—keep them casual (no planned activities, no time requirement!) and short. Don’t forget to bring a Campari spritz.
Joy blaaaast (📷 edition)
What I’m reading, cooking, or listening to
Please reserve the last chilly day of Spring to make this brothy kale soup with farro and garlicky chili oil.
Back on my very favorite bullshit, I devoured this deep cut from The Atlantic, On Chandler Bing’s Job, about the romance of careers as portrayed by our friends the Friends.
Spoiler: jobs in real life aren’t as romantic as the Friends made them seem (they’re actually more like the punchline of a joke).
Also, this rendition of the Friends theme song in a minor key will f with you
Remember continental breakfasts? Heh.
A poem-share
In lieu of a poem this week, I’d love to gift you a passage from In the Dream House, Carmen Maria Machado’s haunting memoir about what, exactly, I’ll leave for you to uncover.
But I found this passage, describing the utterly pedestrian experience of bowling, extraordinary. Maybe that’s yet another unexpected pandemic side-effect: I miss bowling? (I think it’s more that Machado is an absolute master.)
You bowl the way you always bowl; your turns generally ending with no pins down at all, because you get too excited and the gutter slurps up the ball. But then every so often, a strike; so beautiful and devastating a crash that you get the sensation of being good at something, a sliver of confidence. You turn the ball in your hand, pearlescent and peach, and whip it down with that beautiful thunk-whirr.
I hope for you this week brings the sensation of being good at something, or any sensation at all. Please share a fragment of your days with me!
Sending the biggest hug from my nowhere to yours,
Becca
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Woah, you guys bought a house!!!! Congrats!!!!