People and Things I Love

Twenty years ago, the human I cherish most decided to weave her life together with mine. I’ve yet to meet the person who doesn’t recognize her episodically devilish company as a treasure. She's an emissary of joy.

In our third decade down this shared path, she's still prone to disappearing from view and returning to display an unusual skill completely lacking precedent. A random sample of her never ending stream of surprise talents: speed bag; last-minute Halloween costumes; all manner of Etsy-level crafts; evenly tapering the back of a head of a curly gray hair; transforming a Tuesday-evening game of catch into a spiritual experience; and (oh yeah) making rocks smile. The list grows by the day and is just one of countless reasons the moments I share with her are the best moments I have.

She's also the strongest editor I know -- a function of her creativity, empathy, and verbal brilliance. (Her invitation to a game of Scrabble comes with a silent, sinister laugh.)

I love our simple pleasures, like listening to loud music, enjoying a cocktail, and watching the wildflowers sway in the early-evening breeze outside the living room window. (Outside the frame of this idyllic image is a vast, beautiful world utterly free of the possibility of any game of Scrabble.)

One of my life's missions is to make our shared, finite time together a tiny fraction as wonderful for her as she makes it for me.

My parents have given me far more than any reasonable person would have the gall to hope for. The gift I cherish most is the deep well of opportunities they created for my brother and me to experience wonder during our childhoods.

Currently, these heroes are performing yet another new feat: showing the world how to live rich, rewarding ninth decades. (A loud contingent of their adoring fans insist the secret is to heat your home through a snowy winter with firewood you've found, cut, hauled, split, aged, stacked, lugged inside, and ignited your own, personal self.)

Whatever the secret, I’m still taking notes and appreciating all the ways they continue to teach me about the enterprise of living thoughtfully, warmly, and well.

My brother has always been my chief role model. I had few close friends as a kid. That's the way you want it when all available evidence suggests few others are as smart, as fun to share adventures with, or as worth your moments as your brother is. And is. As a kid, activist, graduate student, teacher, thinker, dad, colleague, and friend, he has always been a person of obvious talent and exemplary character. (I wasn't around at the time, but legend has it he was also an infant of obvious talent and exemplary character, organizing the International Siblinghood of Babies, making sure the other members were changed and fed first, etc.)

An embarrassing quantity of my valuable, rewarding experiences began -- not out of any courage or ambition on my part -- but simply as efforts to take on challenges I knew he'd approve of. I've never matched him at anything, but my attempts have pushed me to do far more than I would ever have done on my own.

He taught me that conviction lives only in action.

I’m blessed with old and new friends and family who support, inspire, challenge, and encourage me. They help me experience wonders I’d otherwise fail to notice. When we disagree, I can be sure there's something important I've overlooked. They also create the unique, irreplicable conditions that conjure an uncontrollable, gutbusting laugh from thin air. (David Blaine, I'm riveted (truly), but I'll take the magic of laughter any day. And I'll thank the beloved sorcerers in my life who've mastered laughcraft and who share their handiwork with me.)

When I was twenty, I met one of several extra-familial sisters who've helped shaped my life -- a creative, fierce advocate for what's right and whose mind operates at light speed. (She decided to marry my brother.) One of her superpowers is the ability to ad-lib eloquent messages that help others see perspectives beyond those forged in their own limited experience. It's no coincidence that I did a lot of my growing after I began to enjoy the benefit of her insight. When I want to locate her, I listen for the whirlwinds of laughter that swirl like eddies in her wake.

I’ve never felt more welcomed nor more at home than I do in beautiful Oakland. My neighbors are talented, caring, smart, thoughtful, community-minded people. They share their time, good will, and creativity with a fervor I've experienced nowhere else. Oaklanders support a vibrant and resilient art culture, enjoy extraordinary restaurants by the Zagatsful, and treasure our priceless outdoor gems. (You did know that we have a gorgeous Redwood forest here, right?)

I’m a more productive and agreeable person when I’m able to spend time outside. Walking meetings, lunch in a park, Zooming on the porch, pedaling to a local, in-person meeting: these are some of the tools that equip me to support my partners.

I’m captivated by puzzles and learning how almost any physical or conceptual thing works. Once I untangle its mystery, I often move on to the next one. I'm a generalist with intense, short-lived inquiries that live on as long-term appreciations. This often equips me to help experts see their work from the perspective of the lay-audiences they hope to inspire.

I love eating, and I’m an inveterate do-it-myselfer. These facts put me in the the garden, the farmer’s market, and the kitchen a fair bit. My wifeperson likes to tell the story of the day I came home with fifty pounds of dried, un-Monsantified corn. She calls it another of my "Weirdo Food Projects (WFPs.)" I call it the beginning of our adventure in nixtamalization -- the three-thousand-year-old culinary technology that transforms the shape and nutrition of corn (and which made possible the extraordinary civilizations of some of my ancestors.)

WFP number 79 is fermentation -- mad-scientist projects that you get to eat. They offer a multisensory window into the transformative power of microbial life. Sourdough was my gateway fermentation project. Since then I've found myself making tempeh, pickles, sauerkraut, hot sauce, and vinegar. It's a marvel to see (and taste) what you can achieve when you create the right conditions for the right microbes. Like gardening, fermentation is a metaphor for what many of my partners and heroes do at work: build environments in which good things thrive and make miracles happen.

I'd leave a gaping void here if I failed to mention my time machine. On a moment’s notice, it transports me back to the novel awe we often leave in our childhoods. (If you saw my time machine and mistook it for a bicycle, you wouldn’t be the first.)

Remember the first time you saw a curving descent ahead, thought "faster!", and pedaled into it? Remember the wind in your ears and the momentum pulling your body down the hill and around the curve at the same time? Discovering that your speed would keep you on two wheels, even as you leaned toward the ground? It's so close to flying.

Bikes equip even the occasional rider to cover thirty flat miles in a day. But those thirty miles don't blur by; they come at a pace that allows you to see, feel, smell, and hear each changing inch of space you fill. If you know of a more pleasurable way to move our bodies and brains about the world, please share it.

I enjoy mining estate sales, flea markets, thrift stores, and Craigslist for fascinating artifacts from bygone days. Overheard:

Q: (Reluctantly): "Uhh, do we really need another inkwell (or antique typewriter, clothespin set, balancing scale, picture frame, construction tool, etc.)?"

A: (With disbelief): "You saying we don't?"

And finally: I know few achievements as satisfying as squeezing smoothly into a curbside parallel-parking spot only an inch or two longer than the car I’m driving.

World, when you finally recognize parallel parking as the art form it is, remember my beautiful, beautiful work.

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