FOREWORD
I'm writing this in late May of 2022. I’m in Joshua Tree, sitting on a concrete floor in a little white room out in the middle of the desert, surrounded by almost nothing. It feels like an ocean. I came here to finish this book. Mercury is in retrograde, if that means anything to you. I’m not sure if it does to me. There’s dirt and bugs for miles, and not much else. It’s perfect—as perfect as it’s ever going to be. I started writing these poems in early 2020, when everything started going to shit. I then realized (not as quickly as I would have liked, but eventually) that everything is always, somehow, going to shit. Everything is, at the same time, always coming together. There’s never a moment in life when it just stands completely still, even if that’s the way it feels.
My first instinct was to never publish this book, it seemed too big a burden to give to people who had already lived it, to then ask them to read about it. My next instinct was to wait until the pandemic was over. And then it kept going. And going. And going—until it looked like it would never end. I wanted to call it “Afterlife” for a while, because I naively thought I would be able to separate my life into two parts. One that had already happened, and now that everything was paused, another for the one that would come next. As if life were something that could be stopped or started at any designated time. Some different existence out beyond the months spent staring at a wall, one that had late nights and long days and new experiences, grand beginnings—that would suddenly commence the second this nonexistent “someday” bubble burst, when everything was normal and good again. Nothing is ever “normal and good,” you see?
It became clear there would be no “back to life,” we were here and we had been living it the entire time. The only thing we’re really given is the opportunity to make the most of what time there is left on this giant, spinning rock. It’s ridiculous—the whole thing. Ridiculous and beautiful, so finite yet infinite, it’s almost hilarious. If I’ve learned anything from observing the sky over the last few years, it’s that the sun never waits on better conditions to rise. It shows up every day, no matter what else is going on around it. I’ve learned to laugh at everything, that it might be the only real thing that matters. I know that each time the sun goes down, an afterglow exists—should you choose to see it. And if you never did before, make a different choice. There’s another sunset happening tonight, and if it already has by the time you’re reading this, wake up early.
I’m pulled over on the side of the road now as I write this. It’s golden hour. There’s a good chance I miss the sunset I drove all the way here for. I’m on my way back into town to get dinner, no matter how hard I tried to convince myself I would be fine if I didn’t. I got to this deserted house much later than I thought I would, and didn’t realize how far it was from any civilization. I had wanted so badly to get here, unpack, settle in and write this introduction when everything was calm, but that’s not happening. I wasn’t given that option today, not really. But I know what to say right now, on the shoulder of this dirt road, starving as I lose the sun, because it works that way. Jesus or God or Madonna take the wheel or whatever. I was almost born in the back of a car for the same reason.
Life is a mess. It doesn’t go on once you get home at a reasonable hour and neatly fold your clothes. It happens in the middle of something important, when you’re running late to church or at a party or leaving the place you should have stayed just five minutes longer, unknown to you. There are road bumps and hazards and closures, some that last two years or more, and you can’t control any of it. The only thing you can do is laugh or write or just keep going, all of which I tried my best at. I hope any of these sometimes silly, sometimes sad, sometimes hope-filled poems put some life back into what felt like a very strange time for all of us. This book may well be just an odd time capsule. But I wanted to give these poems space to exist, because they happened and they’re true and I want to include every piece of our existence in the story.
The road back to where I’m staying is lined with streets that have the word “sun” in them. Sunbeam, Sunkist, Sunfair, Sun Gold, Sunever—which I read as “never” on my way in and “ever” on the way out. Funny how perspectives change like that. There are more, if you can believe it—Sun Mesa, Sunflower, Sunny Vista, Avenida Del Sol, Sundra—which I can only assume is some sort of sun tundra, which I can only assume I’m completely wrong about. The last street is called Shifting Sands, and they are, I can feel it.
I didn’t miss the sunset. But if I had, it wouldn’t have mattered. It would still be light out. And often, that’s the best part, the part that happens after. It’s where the most magnificent colors come from. If I hadn’t made it back in time for whatever I had made up in my mind was the main event, there would have been an afterglow. And if that was all I was promised from that point moving forward, I was going to take it, and savour it, however long it lasted.
The definition of afterglow is “a glow remaining where a light has disappeared.” I believe that glow is always present, should you keep your eyes open and stay on the lookout for it. If I may leave you with one task, it’s this: I ask that you spend your life not chasing one that’s already happened, not looking ahead to one not promised, but taking in every ounce of this one, the one you have right here, right now in your palm, and spend the whole thing laughing. I hope you enjoy this book even though, honestly, most of the poems have nothing to do with this. We’ll get there in the end. I hope you think that’s funny in itself, because I do. Because I felt like I needed to write this regardless, for both of us. Because I love this book, I believe everything that happened matters, I believe in making jokes, and at the time of finishing this foreword—I’m sitting in the light of the sun that set well over an hour ago, and God, no matter how I got here, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
P.S. If you don’t like the word “God,” stay away from this book. I don’t know if I like it either, but I use the hell out of it.
P.P.S. I just looked up what “Sundra” means, turns out it’s just a name. I didn’t really even remember what the tundra was, which I’ll blame on growing up in Southern California. After some fifth-grade geography style research, I’m reminded it’s the world’s harshest biome, a frozen region in the Arctic. It’s the coldest place in the world. It’s also considered a desert, funny enough. The winters are hard, there’s a permanent layer of ice that stays frozen no matter what. The sun rarely comes out, but when it does, it stays for almost twenty-four hours. They call it the “land of the midnight sun.” Summers are brief, lasting about two months, and when they arrive, wildflowers come in bursts. They bloom quickly and miraculously, in a way that would make you think they either have no idea they’re going to die so soon, or that they do know and it’s the only thing they’re living by (or maybe they’re just unafraid, know they’ll be back in another life). In conditions that seem inhospitable, inconceivable for anything to be born into, let alone thrive, they do. Even in the coldest place on Earth, there are invincible summers, growth seasons, life still to be found.
