Winter Break.

I hope everyone’s hibernation has been going well. Jenny and I are just about to head to Spain for a bit. We were in Italy and Austria a few weeks back and had a great time. Our winter break is a little bit of travel, relaxation, maintenance, and reading.

The island of Sardinia was a real treat. We drove from coast to coast and from the marshes to the hills. Some of the beaches, at this time of the year, are so empty that I’d imagine myself as being back at a time before even the Carthaginians. The food need not be mentioned except that it was refreshing beyond an American mind. The people are very personable, the small towns full of life, and the kids spent drastically less time on phones.

Truth be told, I get somewhat melancholy when visiting parts of Europe and Asia. I see how the trains run on time, social alienation is less severe, and there’s a greater respect for beautiful things whether natural or man made. Like, you can tell it personally touches them or it’s theirs. Americans haven’t really been here that long and many but not all see everything through a consumerist lens. And our lives are constantly sucked into lens, because for most of our history that’s all we’ve ever done. As a group, we are lost on the land we inhabit. We just don’t speak about our country as a belonging and rather a possession. Of course, when I travel I meet plenty of morons and assholes. I’m not saying other places are perfect, but our roots haven’t dug in yet. I’m more jealous of their mindset than anything. Sometimes I think of when I was in California, and maybe I was the outsider. But my time there was transformative and if anything I cared more about the land there than here in New Jersey. I grew up in Passaic, and it was shit. We tossed our trash everywhere because we just assumed we were shit, so who cares. At some point I thought “why am I trashing my own town,” but the sentiment of I don’t give a shit was always there. Maybe in towns like Bloomfield and Montclair it’s different, but I can remember a time when Montclair wasn’t so hot either.

Reading is important to overcome the melancholy. And I strongly encourage everyone to continue to read. It helped me a lot growing up along with music. Reading can transport you to different opinions, ideas, and even worlds. There’s a lot of pressure on us to perform and act a certain way, and reading and eventually writing helps us to explore. I like to think I’m a cheerful pessimist, and I think humans are mostly neurotic and scared sacs of biological matter except that we are gifted that weird thing we call consciousness. We may never be able to do anything good for the natural world, and at minimum we may be the only living things with the ability to admire and get drunk off the ecstasy of the natural world. Our imagination is boundless, but always richer when planted in the world. Today instead we look to barren dead planets as a place to live where we would be stuck in cages because the air is poisonous. When was the last time you sat listening to the wind and trees?

So we are off to Spain and specifically Andalusia. I’ve always wanted to see the Moorish architecture and to see the Mediterranean from that part of the world. We plan to see a few palaces and cathedrals, but aside from that just to soak in the place and maybe meet cool people. Maybe stare at a Picasso for a bit. When we get back in March, we will start getting the store ready to reopen. After a few paint touch ups, cleaning, and an additional AC unit we should be ready to rock. I’m thinking of doing stuff with citrus at the tail end of the season and tropical fruits.

Lastly, this was a weak winter with little snow and mostly just cold.

Stay warm,

Alex