But now the days are short, I’m in the autumn of the year
And now I think of my life as vintage wine from fine old kegs
From the brim to the dregs, and it poured sweet and clear
It was a very good year….
For the record, I dig Della Reese’s version that eeked into the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966, swinging hard on the Ray Bryant Trio backing. I’m here to set the record straight that this has, indeed, been a very good year.
It may not exactly look like so from so many observers. There’s been a lot of loss. There’s been loss for me. There’s been loss for others. There’s something to be said that some losses were the release of burdens and obligations far beyond their sale date. Some of them were the consequences of hoping that some vision of my childhood would never fade. Geminis are known to be quite Peter Pan in their refusal to grow up.
However it is wild that my favorite medium to practice, photography, really cements place and time as a pinpoint to delineate the before and after. There’s faces and places I’ve captured, not only in this year of life, that I may, sadly, or gratefully, depending on the circumstances, may never see again. There’s images that will forever bring sorrow. Some of them will continue to bring relief in some solid Fuck That and Fuck You (and not in the pleasurable way).
I basically entered the calendar year in the dormancy of my cold, only heated by sets of space heaters apartment. My slumlord landlord offers ‘bargains’ on these 1920’s courtyard units by technically violating California Tenant Law. People are clamoring over me giving up this place before I let it actually go cold. That’s the insanity of California; something so pitiful not only rents for 35% of a nearly six figure income after taxes, but people are desperate to sign up for it despite its obvious cracks and crumbling over a lopsided foundation, the fractures in the stucco visible.
I’m happy to get out of the place before Peralta Creek that runs beneath the unit threatens to swallow it whole.
California is quicksand and I’ve spent thousands trying not to suffocate in the sandtrap. Compared to the warmth and seemingly brickhouse stability I experience back east, even if I’m lying to myself, seems preferable. I allowed, to a degree, welcomed, depression from January into February into early March. I feel there’s a terminal disrespect of melancholy in American society. We need to truly confront and take inventory of what’s bad so we can throw it out. Man is it time to start taking out the trash.
I haven’t considered myself as much as a diplomat as I’ve been actually categorized in life. Again, and again, this year as I slowly backed away from my placating role, the more spontaneous combustion happened around me. Well, if I were to be honest it was more tantrums from adults long removed from kindergarten. It often reminded me when I got exhausted with placating my parents, quietly retreating into my own needs, leaving them to their own adult devices to work out their very unique, individual, adult concerns. There’s faces that were very love that was here but they’re now gone as the old Supremes melodramtic masterpiece warbles.
After you made me all your own
Then you left me all alone
You made your words sound so sweet
Knowing that your love I couldn’t keep
My heart cries out for your touch
But you’re not there
And the lonely cry fades in the air…
Okay, I’m being melodramatic.
Or as I look back at texts saved that screamed at me in hopes of disciplining me for not noticing unspoken, non-explicit needs or expectations, maybe that whole having a great relationship with the authenticity of camp made me look at such declarations and laugh them off. They cannot be that serious. If they are, there’s nothing I can do. I’m still laughing even thought dear some deity in the sky, do they ever still sting.
There’s nothing you could do is a central theme in writing elsewhere.
It’s sometimes weird to write here as practice and mirror for that project. These photos, these words highlight what happens when I realize there’s nothing I can do but keep living ’til my body gives up. There’s a thread of “I’ve always been me” but the person that has denied this for the longest time has actually been me. I love everyone for seeing me as is, and holding me in love and care until I showed up in myself.
It sincerely has taken til about 42 to 43 years old to get here. To get where I can say “this hurts” or “that makes me happy.” Honestly, I was rarely given permission to be this direct. I always felt pressured to put so much analysis around why something was painful, perhaps adding to the pain trying to remedy complex situations. This ate up so much energy for the direct blessings for joy.
Then there’s the fact that each time I come in the front door at Ted & Theo, Wiz is like ‘where you been, motherfucker?!” It’s exactly why I spoil him with pets and cuddles. It’s why I smile good morning when he unlatches the door to Ted’s office when I stay over and sleep on the futon. Someone is happy to see me day after day, soon as he wakes in his canine way says:
“Wake up, Motherfucker, it’s a beautiful day. We got shit to do.”
I know it annoys Ted that Wiz can be a lil bad at boundaries at times, but its everything I needed to feel. Sometimes you need a bratty dog to get you out of your fortress of fears and insecurities. Sometimes, Man’s best friend is just that. Therein that’s where it lies when I think about this year.
I really FELT 2025.
Or honestly I’ve gotten to know my own heart a lot more intensely, more consistently, more wisely in the last 3 years or so. It went from me giving up and letting my heart give out, to all the ways it felt that I was divinely saved. I’m not at some new peak, but I feel something has a second chance. I feel luck. I feel worth, I feel love. I really hope it shows in the way I’ve looked at the world more recently, even if it has had substantial notes of melancholy. I still think the more watery, emotional to mystic parts of my practice are important, but as Josh said to me a few months ago, there’s a certain light in the way I look at certain places and people. It’s a little more clear where the magic is these days.
More explicitly, some bullet points for 2025:
- I’ve been one that has honestly, even with my love of dirty jokes, long ignored the fire of desire. Sure, I’ve had some sex past year, but none of it meets the fire of the intimacy when I find myself deeply infatuated and spending the day to day with someone I truly cherish. I was told very recently that consistent physical love is a need that’ll continue to heal me. I said in response, I felt one particular ancestor saying to me “You ain’t got another shot at this not to be fuckin’…” It may look like I’m running from the possibility of that ever returning in my life, but I know better because…
- …Whew I spent a lot of time this year documenting how California and the Bay Area in particular are graveyards of capitalism. It’s virtually impossible to love in this region without multiple agitations that will at the very minimum, deprive you of the energy to fight for your love. It makes a lot of sense given that San Francisco in particular was established as a major anchor or western manifest destiny expansion through many waves of European colonial violence. The intimacy culture of the Barbary Coast was transactional if not all out rape. It still seems that way. I was lucky that the passion I felt above made me work mostly remote, away from my job’s actual offices that most likely sit on top of the gravesite of over 5,000 Raymaytush Ohlone that were victims of genocide perpetuated by Spaniard Catholics.
- I asked one in particular when they planned to leave the graveyard. I think I subtly said it in many other ways to many people in this inflection point of a year. It actually explains a lot of the emotionally, and even sometimes physically violent responses from those I posed this question of the crossroads to. It seems my duty, however, given that I’m still trying to make my first brush with death be one of those objects in the rearview mirror that isn’t as close as it appears.
- Which is, for all of us, the past is the past, and it isn’t coming back. It is 2026 y’all. 2019 ended 6 years ago. Your pre-COVID life and identify, if you haven’t modified it to exist in the new never ending viral disease – TechnoFascist KFC/Taco Bell existence, you are getting left behind. I can sincerely look back and see what I still need to learn from the spaces, faces, and even every parked car I’ve ever taken a picture of. More often than not for me it’s what really begs for the question. There’ll be multiple answers. You aren’t going to be satisfied with each one.
- 1965 was the best year this trash ass colonial project called the United States ever had. If you listen to the music, watch the television, the movies, read the literature and the stage plays, the critical thought. Legislation got this supposed egalitarian society as close to socialist policy while corporations cranked out the tools of capitalism at an astonishing rate. I see how it struck fear to have the 2nd most popular TV show be basically a blended family of Queer Witches and Red Blooded Americans, all sponsored by Chevrolet having its greatest year ever. I mean, Corvairs still drive great 60 years later. I can see how having 3 homegirls from Detroit beam into TV sets basically every week for a solid year disrupted the standards of class and beauty. I leave this year with another ’65 Corvair, every Supremes LP released in 1965 except the putrid Merry Christmas one, and I’ve let the first two seasons of Bewitched return to being my comfort entertainment.
- Florence Ballard was right tho: ‘Gimme DAT Gold! And I’ll do my own shoppin…’ (For the record I did cancel my subscriptions to DoorDash, Amazon, and Hulu this year. We’re back to pirating and actually owning and sharing what we have, at least I’m trying to be that way).
Sure I might shed a few more tears as I wrap up this witches year and the mundane year to end in 10 days, but they are tears that recognize in their shed is always a mixture of faith, hope, sadness, release and possibility. I really hope I get to take a picture of you in 2026.
‘Til I’m back in your arms again….
