Where the Light Is
Notes on a regular life
“Everybody wants to rule the world,” declares Tears for Fears over the loudspeaker as I skim through a newsletter entitled, “Iran War Dispatches,” the dark irony not lost on me.
I’m sitting in Half Price Books, sipping a matcha latte, surrounded by other people on laptops, some flipping through comically large coffee table books, and some playing mahjong (someday I will learn what this is).
As of late, I have been spending the majority of my free time on freelance projects—much of it here, on a reclaimed church pew in the cafe area. (“Cathedrals everywhere,” etc.) I have begun to notice a cast of regulars and find comfort in the steady presence of the same impressively large security guard and Chick-Fil-A cup that might just be permanently affixed to his table. We patrons disappear inside the hours, some of us typing away, some absorbed in novels as he periodically winds his way through the labyrinth of bookshelves, ensuring all is well and that it stays that way.
I take a little break and think I should’ve chosen some different reading material (I am surrounded by thousands of options, after all!) As you can imagine, talk of invasions and air strikes doesn’t exactly inspire one to relax and lean into their creativity.
So I see what else the internet has to offer (terrible idea), then quickly decide that I do not have room in my brain for one more think piece on international relations or AI or how college graduates can’t read, and that I positively cannot stomach another rage-bait video about “culture wars” from Bible Belt megachurch pastors.
I put all my devices on Do Not Disturb instead, and in the spirit of Barbara Brown Taylor (and Philippians 4:8,) I ponder all the things that are “saving my life right now.” That’s to say, the things that are keeping me sane and grounded and relatively happy. There are more of them than I sometimes remember. Lately I’ve been juggling more projects and tasks and ideas than I ever have, living in what feels like a constant state of start-stop, which is giving me a little bit of emotional motion sickness, as Phoebe Bridgers would say.
But even still, spring has sprung, and the flowers and trees — coming back to life after one good storm — have reminded me once again that life is worth the living! It’s the butterflies, too, dotting the air with bright orange and yellow flashes. Have you thought about metamorphosis lately and what a bizarre miracle it is? The 2003 Hilary Duff album, yes, but also the process by which a slimy little creature encapsulates itself inside a piece of cloth and then eventually emerges this radiant thing of beauty? I fear we do not talk about this enough!
These days I’m saved by old movies and listening to my friends explain their “analog hobbies” in great detail. There is something deeply satisfying about seeing them pull chaos into order with paint and yarn and ink and two-by-fours. And I am genuinely shocked — shocked! — at the space my brain and heart seem to have for new skills, new people, new ideas. Turns out there is no ceiling on that. The world just keeps on handing you things you didn’t know to ask for.
I love that the youths are discovering The Goo Goo Dolls via old celebrities’ throwback thirst trap videos, because their July 4, 2004 performance of “Iris” (in the rain!) in Buffalo sometimes exclusively keeps me afloat. That and John Mayer’s “Where the Light Is” show. Put those on, specifically on a rainy Sunday afternoon, and thank me later.
Other days it’s hymns and thousand-year-old creeds said in unison with the teenagers on my left and the senior citizens on my right that carries me through. And sometimes it’s the way a very specific color of coffee makes me think of my grandma and her litmus test for recognizing the perfect cup of joe on sight. Or it’s the smell of the sprinklers in the morning and how it suddenly becomes the summer of 2002. If this is as close as we can get to time travel, I’ll take it.
It’s chopping vegetables and sketching and learning how to use power tools and this thing that my friend and I have started doing, which is to assign each other a color of the month, then hunt for it out in the world and send photos when we find it. Suddenly I am noticing things I’ve walked past a hundred times!
It’s, “Will you help me host a neighbor night?” texts. The answer is always yes, by the way. It’s the Body and Blood and the sun pouring in through stained glass. It’s bowling after church and family dinners with friends and their out-of-town cousins. It’s one barista ringing up my order as soon as I walk through the door while the other starts in, telling me about the novel she’s writing.
And then there’s The Pretty Good Singers, a band of Boomers (complimentary) who perform monthly here at HPB and draw a loyal and energetic audience ranging in age from about 21 to 81. I am always glad to be among them.
It’s long walks with my cousins, old dive bars with my brothers, and the ongoing prank war in which the little dove who’s made her nest above my kitchen window and I take turns scaring the living daylights out of one another! Other times it’s soft jazz and the steady percussion of the washing machine as the sky is set completely ablaze out the window, and the particular peace of having nowhere to be.
It’s early mornings, bleary eyes, starting the ol’ engine with that first cup of coffee by lamplight and talk radio, resisting the Blue Light (derogatory) for as long as possible. It’s the smell of Field Trip Air™️ as I step outside and the warm light that glows in the occasional kitchen window as I make my way down the quiet street. I wonder about each person’s little rituals, how they take their coffee, what they’re nervous about.
It’s a gentle “Mornin’” from the ones shuffling down their driveways to collect their newspapers, as if trying not to wake the folks next door. It’s the jingling metal of collars and leashes on the friendly neighborhood golden retriever twins. (I don’t know for sure that they are twins but I really want them to be.) It’s the sky turning neon pink just as I make it back to my front door at the end of my route.
It’s baby showers for old friends and our genuine shared surprise at the math when adding up all the years we’ve known each other and arriving at a number that cannot possibly be right. It’s falling right back into step and pretending for a few blessed hours that it's 2013 again — learning that the things that were funny then still are, that we can still finish each other's sentences. Thank God. There is such relief and joy in discovering you haven't lost your mother tongue.
It’s neighbor game nights with pizza and cans of sparkling water and cupcakes picked up hastily from Whole Foods on the way. It’s the simplicity and clear emphasis on “togetherness,” even if that means imperfect, room temp, store-bought. It’s walking to the bar down the street and talking politics and religion and pop culture and Mavs basketball for hours over chips and salsa and $5 glasses of house cabernet. It’s waving to the folks we met earlier at the dog park on the way out.
It’s a quick trip to the sandwich shop that turns into four separate conversations before you make it to the register because old friends keep walking through the door. It’s running into one of my first grade teachers at church and being handed a welcome gift. Twenty-seven years later and she’s still opening doors.
It’s the videos of friends’ kids at piano recitals and birthday parties and rolling over for the first time, followed by the middle-of-the-night “we’re in our Sleep Regression era” texts. Though I also received a photo of a friend’s teen children recently and thought, “Geez, I remember when they were in carseats.” Then I felt like a certifiable elder and had to go lie down.
And then there’s the merging of worlds: the people from all my past lives who’ve found each other and formed their own friendships, their own inside jokes, their own text threads that have nothing to do with me. The overlapping storylines have become so delightfully tangled that I have to stop and ask, “Have I known you 20 seconds or 20 years?” 🎶 When we’re all in the same room we share one collective consciousness, and when we’re apart, even distance and overstuffed schedules are no match for the ongoing stream of 8-minute voice notes received and returned between errands.
The texture and color and beautiful noise of a regular life, it turns out, is saving me. As it always does.
I've had Mumford's Prizefighter on repeat lately — specifically "Alleycat," which tosses a person’s existential question right back to them: "'Is this all there is?' What do you mean — is this not enough for you?"
That line might be the whole of what I’m trying to do here, actually. If we boil it all down, every list I've ever made, every installment of this newsletter… I hope it asks, not in an accusatory way, but one that gently lifts your chin and looks you in the eyes: What do you mean — is this not enough for you?
The Pretty Good Singers are setting up now, hauling equipment, unwrapping cables--their efficiency and precision suggesting they’ve done this many times. A man who might be 70 is tuning a guitar with the focus of someone for whom this is the most important thing happening in the world right now. Maybe it is.
My prayer these days — simple, wordless mostly, the kind that lives more in the bones than the mind — originates with St. John [Mayer]: just keep me where the light is. Turns out it’s right here. It's been right here. And it is indeed enough for me.
I pick up my phone once out of habit, put it back down. Outside, presumably, the world is still on fire. The dispatches are still dispatching. And I am here, on an old church pew in a used bookstore, waiting for a Boomer cover band to start, and I cannot think of anywhere I’d rather be.