Weeknotes: February 26 - March 1, 2024
No Weeknotes last week. I just couldn't manage it and I’m reluctant to force another weekly task upon myself unless it feels right. But I am enjoying capturing these little life details, so I'll keep publishing when I have the whim.
Monday, February 26
Driving home through western New York. The ski trip was mostly brown and warm. The brown Allegheny River and National Forest, brown leafless trees on hills of brown earth. At the resort white strips of man-made snow rolled like avenues down the mountainside, bright tarmacs of ice, slush, and gritty false powder. I loved it anyway.
We cross the bridge over Chautauqua Lake which so enchanted me the first time I saw it back in 2000. After lunch at a Lebanese restaurant in Mentor, Ohio, we detour to the Mentor Lagoons, a nature preserve bordering Lake Erie. A beaver-felled tree, its stump like a sharpened pencil, lays not ten free from our car. It's the second one I've seen on this trip.
We're in search of early migratory birds, but would love to see local owls. It's midday and the chances are slim, but the habitat is perfect for barred and great horned. We search the high holes of dead trees hoping to catch one sunning itself on this warm winter day. The trail winds through a hardwood forest parallel to the marsh and slowly deteriorates into a bog of standing water, over which we make sloppy crossings across rotting logs. It’s an owl-less slog as we fight our way through to the lakeside. Erie is calm and full of mergansers. It's a nice little piece of shoreline chock-a-block with interesting stones and heaping tangles of driftwood. Someone has built a pair of shelters out of the larger logs and I take a couple photos to post on Log Variations. By the time we're back at the car we've unexpectedly trekked three miles and it's late afternoon. At a service station just past Cleveland I buy a chocolate milk. I wish I'd had the foresight to take tomorrow off work and give myself a buffer.
Tuesday, February 27
I walk up to the polling place and cast my primary vote in an elementary school gymnasium. Footsteps echo across the buffed wooden floor, basketball hoops looming overhead. Some Girl Scouts have set up a table to sell cookies in the hallway. All around me are little spoonfuls of nostalgia. I step back out into the bright, gusty evening and walk down the hill past a house that claims to have once been the home of Rosie the Riveter, or a number of women who were the real-life Rosies over at Willow Run. As I walk south down River Street a motorcyclist pulls up to the intersection. His bike has a sidecar attached to it. In the sidecar is a husky, sitting upright on its haunches, wearing goggles. They turn left and head up Cross, the husky cool as a cucumber, as if they do this every day. It's like one of those internet videos you see of a dog skateboarding or playing a piano, but it's right here in front of me. No one else bats an eye. It’s like a sitcom cliche of an “eccentric small town.”
I pass several bars and almost feel duty bound to stop and have a drink and mark this strange day. It's so warm I don't know what to do with myself. 70° and sunny. I decide to go home and enjoy aperitivo on my front porch. I mix a negroni and set out bowls of green olives and peanuts like I learned to do in Rome.
Wednesday, February 28
The temperature has dropped over 40 degrees since yesterday, taking my mood with it. I struggle with work and a poor attitude. Two houses down a group of young guys whose names I don’t know have lost their cat. A gust of wind during last night’s storm blew open their unlocked door and he made a run for it. All day they canvas the neighborhood, searching under porches and calling out for their little gray Moose. It's heartbreaking. I help search while I'm out walking with Islay. There is nothing sadder to me than a lost pet.
Thursday, February 29
It's Leap Day, that strange calendar bonus during a month most people would prefer stays short. An exhausting amount of life has passed since the last Leap Day in 2020. Ever the optimist, my friend Jesse posts an elaborate Leap Day love letter on her Substack to which Greg and I add our thoughts.
Despite the rough day yesterday, I wake with a sunnier disposition. I send out a newsletter and review Daniel Romano's new album, Too Hot To Sleep. It's so good and punchy. It energizes me. I get out in the bright cold day for a five mile run and listen to my brother's Spotify playlist Maxximum TJ to the Maxx. It's a 24 hour marathon of Gen X nostalgia. The soundtrack of our childood. It was conceived as a tribute to the ubiquitous '70s and '80s soft rock hits that always seemed to be playing out of every department store P.A. well into the 21st century. A brief sampling: Mike + the Mechanics' "All I Need is a Miracle," Toto's "Rosanna," Starship's "Sara," Paul Young’s “Every Time You Go Away,” Chris de Burgh’s “Don’t Pay the Ferryman.” Over the years it has grown into an all-purpose, soft-adjacent ‘80s compendium that I soothes me when I need it.
Meanwhile, the search for Moose continues. Lost pet flyers appear on telephone poles around the neighborhood. It's gut-wrenching. I keep my eyes peeled for him all day, hopeful this ends well. In the evening I bring a bottle of scotch to reahearsal and we toast a bandmate's father who has just died. It's a somber start, but the night becomes warm and merry, more like a wake. Joyful for each other's company, we understand it's a privilege to be able to do something we love to do and the shadow of death only makes the music brighter.
Friday, March 1
"Rabbit, rabbit!"
I text this to my mom, a tradition we've upheld for maybe a decade or so. I think you're supposed to say it aloud when you wake up on the first day of the month to ensure good luck, but we've turned it into a greeting. I don't remember where I first heard this bit of folklore. It's the kind of harmless, good-natured superstition I appreciate. I don't have a lot of them. I keep a horseshoe (ends up, of course) over my studio door, but don't ever tell me a black cat brings bad luck. You'd be damn lucky to have a black cat in your life. They're the best. My mom's family was superstitious; her mom read tarot cards and had a touch of the mystic. Her dad was very adamant about never placing hats on beds and so on.
My mom texts back a pair of rabbits and we complete the circuit. March is her birth month. A beautiful Pisces who, in my mind, always signifies the arrival of spring.
After a taxing day I'm half asleep during my 15 minute drive into Ann Arbor, wondering if I should pull over at Parker Mill and rest my eyes for a minute. I make it downtown, coasting dreamlike into a perfect parking space on Washington facing Liberty. It's 4:30 and everyone is getting off work, starting their weekend. I love this time of day in a city, just like I love spring and fall, the shoulder seasons. Transition periods activate me. You can't beat morning or early evening in a city. The surge of energy wakes me up and I spend a pleasant hour hanging up posters for our show next week at the North Star Lounge. On Main Street I run into a friend I haven't seen in years. We duck into a little cocktail bar and catch up, chatting about music for a while. Jimmy Buffet, Hotline TNT, glitchy digital noise, Phil Collins, Majesty Crush, Mary Lattimore, a real breadth of stuff.