BaxterJames

zora neale hurston said “there are years that ask questions and there are years that answer.” in going through my childhood stuff at my mom’s house over christmas, i found a journal from around 2000 with that quote on the front and in the inside i had written “THIS IS A YEAR THAT ANSWERS.” what did i, my 17 year old self, think that meant? that my life was going to fall into place, that the truly consuming questions of where i was going to go to college, where i was going to live, and who i was going to BE would become clear to me in the year 2000? i respect that younger self, that little girl, i know where she was coming from and i appreciate the struggle for answers but these 12 years later i know that if you’re alive and truly living only the questions are constant and endless, and some of them scare you and some of them excite you, and some of them do have answers and some of them never will.

i have spent most of my life being grateful for being alive and being given all that i have been given, by whatever cosmic concoction or purposeful god or sheer strange luck, but in 2011 i have begun the lifelong journey to learn being itself. to accept and sit with the fact that i exist, without needing to immediately change that into a statement about who i am at this moment, or what place i have in the universe. i do have a place in this universe, i own a part of it. and though that brings up a lot more questions than answers for me, i am beginning to see that the asking is whole point.

here are some of the things that asked and answered this year.

thanksgiving

on our annual thanksgiving roadtrip around the south chris and i started talking about the universe and haven’t really stopped since. somewhere in between new orleans or my great-great grandfather’s farm in opp or spencer’s hunting camp in demopolis, i learned about what i’ve been missing all these years — the unimaginable magnitude of the universe, of the galaxy and of the 150 billion other galaxies that we know about but that we could never, ever get to; that for some reason matter just appeared and some stars exploded and now all of these billions and billions of years later we have marketing teams and sally hansen nail effects and green cards and movies about emotionally stunted young adult fiction writers who go back to their hometown to try to reconnect with their old boyfriends (don’t see it). so we come to spencer’s incredible thousands of acres of land with cows roaming around and horses and deer and other creatures and the beauty of it is unreal, surreal, and it was just an incredible reminder of this living breathing world we’re all a part of. and then beth and i were riding on the golf cart at dusk and we come across these bones, which are initially scary and unsettling to see, because how often do you see bones? but as beth said, “there are deaths in the cow tribe,” and in the end we all become bones, and maybe even back to stars, if you can let yourself believe it.

atlantic city

in speaking with mark about this year end review, he said that atlantic city on this list is like meryl streep at the oscars. there will always be a nomination. of course i am going to tell you that this year was different though, the best and most important of all of the six years. the main reason is because we (the original four peskies) were joined by the ferocious, outrageous, hilarious ali and anjali, who took us in wild and new directions and reminded us why this whole tradition is so meaningful to begin with — it is this one weekend where you can be whoever the fuck you want, as loud and as free as you want, and if you do it and fall in love with yourself then everyone else does too. somehow giving yourself the permission to wear a wig and dance and laugh your way through a weekend gives other people in your path the same permission, and its always a comforting joy to see that the vast majority of people appreciate rather than resent it. the older i get the more important this is.

nova scotia

if you have yet to take a long, long drive to one of the world’s most beautiful places in a 30 foot RV with five friends who you really, really like spending time with, i just highly recommend it.

authentic leadership in action

speaking of nova scotia, a volunteer that i work with at YWLN recommended that i attend this program called “Coming Into Your Own” which is a retreat for women who are, yep, coming into their own. (very scientific process, let me tell you). so the next retreat was happening at this nova scotian institute called “authentic leadership in action,” taking place over four days in columbus, ohio. the specifics of me getting the time off of work and actually getting my employer to pay for this is a different conversation, one that i would be proud to share with anyone who cares. i should write something separately about my entire experience there so i can try to do it (ALIA, CIYO, meditation and the shambhala tradition) justice, because to say it was life changing is just silly. i will say this — the first keynote address on the first night i heard these words: “confusion is clarity. the questions themselves are the answers.” and then i sat amongst the fireflies at dusk, i watched them wake up and talk to each other and then go back to sleep all in that gloaming hour, and something in me was changed forever.

zumba

on the topic of being changed forever. for so long i was churning away on that hideous treadmill, counting the seconds until i could frantically hit the slow down button and walk away feeling more drained than i was when i got on it. and then i started taking some weights classes and really loved them because i’m good at being part of a team and i get my energy from the energy of other people, and one day i was early and i saw the end of a zumba class. everyone was going crazy, feet never stopping, arms pumping pumping pumping, and there was this girl in the back who was about my age, who had her eyes closed as she just fucking went nuts, dancing like the world was ending. now i’ve been taking zumba and some other dance classes for awhile and will never set foot on a treadmill again. i love seeing what my body is capable of, moving in ways that i had never before, feeling my legs get stronger and that rod that was keeping my upper body stiff and straight snap as i learn to truly move. and even though it feels like most people in my cliquey class hate me, i’m not giving up my front and center spot and i’m not going to turn it down a notch because maybe there’s some other person chained to a treadmill who’s watching out of the corner of her eye and saying, hell that looks fun.

south by south west

even if i hadn’t of hung out with jon hamm in my friend’s garage and danced to “wagon wheel” with him, even if the weather hadn’t been so perfect in the middle of the longest hardest winter of my life, even if we didn’t dance with spankrock onstage, even if those tacos hadn’t been the motherfucking hottest things i have ever put into my mouth EVER, even if we didn’t have that fancy lunch in that insanely nice old mansion, it would still go down in the books as one of the most fun weekends in a long time.

ryan bartley

which brings me to my next point. when ryan bartley and i were living together in los angeles we would fight all of the time. horrible fights that resulted in broken car windows and near deaths by 100 mph on the 10 and general hysteria. someone once said that we were like twins growing up trying desperately to assert our difference and our independence. but the crazy thing was, it was so fun. i’ve spent more hours upon hours laughing with ryan than with any other person, so i’m glad that i got to see him five times more this year than i have in the past six. waking up for work to see ryan bartley smoking a cigarette on your couch at 8am watching hoda and kathy lee makes even the worst hangover manageable.

finland/sweden/a boat

spending a whole week at chris’s granddad’s lake house in the finnish countryside, sleeping in a little cottage without electricity, canoeing on the water that has never had anything motorized anywhere near it, taking a sauna and then flinging yourself into the cool clean lake — its relaxation and quiet unlike anything else in the world. this time we started our trip with an overnight cruise to stockholm and a night there, which was bizarre and fun (the cruise) and lovely and fun (stockholm). i know i have found the right partner because we can have as much fun in a swedish karaoke bar on a cruise ship as we can canoeing around a lake — there are no prerequisites or conditions that have to be in place for us to enjoy each other and find an adventure.

my granny (part two)

last year at this time i was writing about what it was like to watch my granny get sick, to think about her death and the pain that comes with not knowing when and how it would arrive. margie victoria greenwood majors passed away on june 13th, 2011, five days before me and chris’s big ass do. while she was suffering, and my mom was suffering because of it, i couldn’t see any positive reasons for the end to be so painful and drawn out. but my granny lived a hard life, and came to a point during her sickness where she said out loud, i have no regrets. i don’t think she could have reached that point, and i don’t think we would have become as close as we did had she not lived through those last weeks and months. i looked forward to talking to her on the phone, though it was hard and she struggled to speak, i knew she knew i was with her and i knew she wanted me to know, so desperately, that she would always be with me. i’ve told many of you this but one of the last things she said to me was, “just enjoy sweetheart. enjoy all this life has to offer.” the life she lived was very different than the life my mom lives, which is very different from the life that i live. i believe that each of our paths has gotten easier because of the sacrifices of the ones that went before, and i hope i honor her joys and her struggles with the life i am living now.

the big ass do

the journey that chris and i have taken has been non-traditional, to say the least. but what does tradition mean and why do some things become tradition and others don’t? why don’t people get married at courthouses and then live together for a few years and then decide to have a big party that they plan with the help of the people they have chosen to be their family, a party that includes a full blown multi-act play of their lives and a glitter bomb that hits your head like a sack of sugar and a bottle of champagne per guest and a joint DJing session at 4am? chris is the single most authentic human being i’ve ever known, and in my own quest towards authenticity i am learning that sometimes we stay in line because it causes the least resistance even though to do so is to deny what we really want or need. i am pretty sure that the big ass do, which combined so many people we love and adore and admire for a night of playing together, was the most authentic way we could express our love for each other and our love of this tribe we have assembled for ourselves. i think it was the best example, five days after her death, of what my granny meant when she told me to enjoy all this life has to offer. it was a gift from this crazy universe to the two of us, it was a gift from all of you to us, it was a gift from me to him and from him to me, and it was, i hope, a gift from us to the people who have said, your tradition and your path in this life is just as valuable and just as “normal” as anyone elses, and we’ll go along with you and dance until the world ends.

i wish for all of us to be more comfortable with questions, to not push so hard for the answers, to accept that while there are years that ask and years that answer, most years do all of it at the same time, at the same minute. and maybe that is actually what zora neale hurston meant when she said that — not that its one or the other but that it is both all of the time. but 12 years ago i needed the hope that the year in front of me would be one that answered, and now, as a little more of a grown up, i know that i can’t know what questions will confront me tomorrow. i can only take one next step in the direction i feel called to and hope that my cow tribe will continue on the path with me.