A year ago I woke up from trying to sleep sideways in my mostly broken armchair after making one last push to pack up my things for the movers to take to California. It was an inauspicious start to my the day, which ended up being pretty darn awesome. I left Minnesota with a heart so heavy that it dragged on the ground, but something about the endless blue of the sky and the intensity of the sun has kept me sold. A couple of weeks ago Sarah and I walked along the beach — me waist deep in the icy Pacific and her skipping through the frothy edge of the waves — and it felt like what should have been happening all my life.

Sarah is here now, living with me, and my huge one bedroom has become a little claustrophobic: we have two offices, a dining table, and a living room jammed into the living room. When I work from home, Sarah makes me the most amazing turkey avocado sandwiches with smoked cheddar and red onions. Eating one is like being punched in the face with happiness. Not that Sarah punches me in the face — that would leave visible marks.

Call the police, she hits me!

(this is just a joke)

Here are my contributions:

Besos

Untitled

The 400 pixel width diminishes them somewhat, I suppose. There is still something to be said for the printed form, no matter how digital I have become.

After the show — or rather mid-show — we lit out for Buster’s and got lit.

The motion. The endless movement, the endless workings inside of him. He knew not what they built, but they seemed to be making ready.

The day stretched on endlessly, and he slept, awakening to stars above. He squinted and made out the silhouette of his car where he had gotten out to pee by the side of the road, not twenty feet away. The door was still open, but the battery had run out, leaving only darkness. His eyes closed. Morning arrived, bringing the sun and a distinct hum.

He felt his pinky curl, but it seemed beyond his control. The humming grew nearer and sharper. A fist made itself from his hand, then opened again. He coughed. Was he regaining his body?

A shadow fell across him. The hum became a drowning buzz. His legs shook and stiffened. He coughed and the phlegm ran down his cheek. It was sweet in taste. The shadow surrounded him in a blur of black and yellow. Their wings trumpeted. He could feel the sound in his sinuses. Suddenly, he rolled over onto his stomach. His lips pressed against gravel and his arms jerked wildly. His legs curled under him, then all at once he stood — no, he was made to stand — stood up, dragged up, hauled into motion from inside like a waxy marionette.

Bees swarmed him, crawling over his skin, into his nose, his mouth. He couldn’t scream, couldn’t move, couldn’t close his eyes. The swirl parted in front of him, and a gleaming insect the size of his fist appeared, flying slowly, inexorably towards him. It — she — was flanked by several thumb sized attendants, and they in turn were orbited by bees that in any other company would be considered horrifyingly enormous.

He knew at once that this was his queen.

He reached down and put fingers into the hole in his stomach. Pulling. Honey ran down his abdomen and stained his pants.

He was ready for his queen.

Okay, sleep tight!

“Oh yeah, we had two or three of those buggers living up in the top of the maple at the house on 16th street. They loved to eat your marigolds… and the neighbor children.”

“They ate the neighbor children?” I asked, blown away.

“Well, not really — the kids didn’t live there — it was a day care,” she answered. “They weren’t the neighbor kids because they were just visiting.”

“What?”

“It’s like vampires, they can come into your place of work without invitation, but not your home.”

“Manticores are vampires?”

“No, Jesse, stop being difficult. You know what I mean.”

So, there you have it. Marigolds and children. I suggest a window box for the marigolds, and a bucket of “Fun Sized Snickers” on your front step to draw in children. In Minnesota, you will probably have to supplement fresh flowers with dried ones. You could also try the other favored foods of manticores, which include squash, goats, and cedar.

As a side note, there is a new sasquatch deterrent on the market made from Quorn. Look for “‘Squatchaway” in the pest control aisle of your local hardware store.

I’d point out one bit of conversation as a highlight, but there were few lows in contrast. Instead, I will merely pluck, as if from a tree heavy laden with conversation fruit, a tidbit that has been rolling around in my head like a bb in a metal bowl since.

As a recent transplant in a city under near constant assault from gold-seekers, my origins were a natural topic of discussion. One gentleman, from Denmark, who hinted speaking at least three languages, commented that he had always assumed that name of it was not from the Sioux word Mnisota meaning “sky-tinted waters,” but rather the Swedish phrase minne söta, meaning “sweet memory.” His theory was that the Swedes had named the state themselves upon arrival. I said that I would ask my Norwegian friend when I got home, but the Dane looked at me funny.

Naturally, I toe the party line, but a part of me wants to believe the other: that homesick immigrants had put axe to tree and plow to field and come away sweaty and inspired. Memories sprang up in green rows, were tended, and harvested. Families sprouted, history, memory, children: sweet — sweeties, perhaps.

That’s what it is to me, perhaps, a land of sweet memories: family, friends, cold beers on patios in the height of summer — memories rosier with each day away.

It’s just a place, I want to say. California is just a place. Minnesota is just a place. I’m the same me everywhere, but the sun is closer here, and when I look back, the old home is sweeter.

I only seem to visit the ocean at sunset.

We went to the various gardens in Golden Gate Park. I wished as hard as I could for things to be in bloom, and it seemed to work, since there were flowers everywhere. My mother walked sideways and backwards through the botanical garden, peering and poking at every inch of greenery. This one grew indoors in Minnesota, this one grew outside, but no where near as big, and wouldn’t show its face for months, this one was just like the one in the pond at home. Every crablike step she made, every hunch of her back, and every wave of her stumpy finger were steps in a ballet. Adagio: pas de valse, plié, degagé, coupé, demi pointe, en relevé, cou-de-pied…

We also visited the Golden Gate Bridge. There were more plants on the way up, which offset the tunnel that smelled of hobo urine and the general feces smell from me shitting my pants on the bridge itself*. I believe that I have mentioned my fear of heights, and now I am owed pants.

One thing I have noticed about the Bay Area is that people love to bitch about tourists, but at the same time, love to show off how fucking amazing it is here. We visited the top of Twin Peaks, and Alameda, and Fort Point, and ate dinner watching the sun set over the Pacific Ocean and it’s associated Ocean Beach. I’ll let my mom’s photos tell the rest, since she did a good job.

* I didn’t actually crap my pants, but it wouldn’t have surprised me.

The snow and cold had come too swiftly for plowing, and then lain nearly twenty feet deep since December. I watched blankness slowly be replaced by the tops of trees and houses, points and tufts poking through thirty foot drifts to squint at the grey sky. As we approached our runway, I spotted polar bears trotting across the solid ice of the Mississippi in lazy pursuit of playful penguins. The runway was merely lines spray painted on a flat area between snowdrifts. We touched down and fishtailed a little before the chains bit into the snow and we straightened out. The pilot wasn’t sure where the terminal was since it was too deeply buried, but the flight attendants threw out a rope ladder into a hole in the snow demarcated by flares. The hole led to a tunnel which brought us to an ice cavern, where we loaded onto sledges pulled by pure white snow oxen.

“Heeyah!” the teamster called, and not an hour passed before we had pulled around to the front of the terminal. Sarah, Stan, and Noah were waiting there, and after many hugs, they loaded me into Sarah’s car. My frozen ear broke off, but it has since been reattached, and that, indeed, is a story for another time.

Okay, some people seem to like photographs, so here we go.

My mother

Sarah and me

Sarah, the Keathlys, and me

Dani, her wife Zach, Sarah, and me

Elise, Ian, Sarah, and me (with beard touching)

One more with my mom and John and Noah and Sarah and me

I am a total ham, and these photographs were taken all within approximately ten minutes on the last day.

Update: The official trailer is out

I’m still processing the trip back to Minnesota, so in the meantime, please enjoy these two videos:

Chris

Seth

Another view of the coast.