This morning, I woke up to picture perfect snow in Bozeman, Montana. When I looked out my window, it felt like Christmas! I had not seen this kind of snow in many many years, probably since living in Upstate New York. I went to the Cateye Cafe in downtown Bozeman. It was an old downtown district, and while there were some new cool shops, it felt like I'd timetraveled back to a Utica-like town in the 1970s or 1980s.
While I sat by the window, sipping my coffee, overhearing some elderly people gossip and chatter (about nothing related to business, ROI, venture capital, or marketing), and watched the snow fall outside as people scurried in the streets, I felt a deep sense of nostalgia - not just for my own memories, but of an America that I thought I'd never experience again. A sleepy, old-fashioned downtown where people probably generally know each other. The cafe felt familiar in an odd eerie way, as if it had been expecting me.
This kind of nostalgia haunted me all day. I suppose now that I've rediscovered ritual and nature, perhaps it is time now to begin mulling over the past. But not in a hard, analytical way - like a therapist would have you do. Instead, in an emotional, impressionistic way. Dealing with the past would have been too soon early on in my journey. I had to first strip away the present and rediscover ancient rhythms so that I could think of the past in a healthier way.
As I drove through and out of the Bozeman snowstorm, I recalled so many Upstate New York winters where, yes, the snow was awful, but living through it gave me a real sense of the seasons where I'd be truly thankful for spring when it came, and I felt closer to my fellow citizens. We LIVED through winter together. It rained the rest of the way through Montana until it cleared up around North Dakota. As I stepped out of the car in North Dakota, I took a look at the Badlands.
I felt a cusp here. Through many hours of loneliness over Montana and North Dakota, it peaked here. These windswept, rocky lowlands are as bleak as it gets. With the wind howling around me, relentless and fierce, I felt the apathy of the universe. Or perhaps an indifference. It wasn't unfriendly. Just without much pity.
However, it is up to me, and it is up to you, to create meaning in this universe. That is why nostalgia is so powerful. It is meaning that I have created, and that others have created. We sift through various meanings, just as I've been taking all of my accumulated life experiences and sifting through them during this sabbatical. These bleak, lonely landscapes have reminded me that nature is simply a backdrop. An empty house. An empty hotel room. It's there. Some of it is more hospitable than other places, but there you have it. Now, it's up to you to create meaning within that space.
And I'm realizing that people have created meaning out of the most obscure places. Places that I've never paid attention to. Grand Island. Rock Springs. Boise. Coeur d'Alene. Bozeman. Bismarck. In fact, this last stop in Bismarck reminded me a lot of Utica. Here I am, in the middle of North Dakota, and I was sitting in Perkins Restaurant and Bakery - a typical Americana restaurant next door to my hotel where I stopped in for a quick bite to eat. I happened to be sitting near the kitchen, all by myself, and overheard a lot of the employee banter. Mostly college folks, young, exuberant, making inside jokes, referencing 80s songs ("everybody have fun tonight, everybody Wang Chung tonight"), and just making the time fly by at a typical restaurant in a town far away from bigger cities.
It brought me back to a time in Utica, New York, in a similar situation, where me and my outcast friends had many obscure jobs, lived in crappy apartments, battled our way through college, and armed ourselves with an endless supply of energy and inside jokes as our future burned bright. We glowed despite living in Utica - or maybe BECAUSE we lived in Utica. I struggle to understand my nostalgia. Some of my most vivid, joyous memories come from the more humble places in this world - and vice versa. I think when you're living in Utica, or Bismarck, or Rock Springs, or Bozeman, you're scrappier, humbler, and not as conceited about your place in the world.
Or perhaps I am painting a fairy tale. That nostalgic picture of "Main Street" versus "Wall Street." Fair enough. But I grew up in "Main Street," then lived on "Wall Street," but now I'm revisiting several "Main Streets" across America and finding value and meaning here. Memories and nuances I'd lost along the way.
With my day framed by the Cateye Cafe and Perkins Restaurant, both places made me feel like this Tom Waits recitation of a Charles Bukowski poem. Maybe that's enough said.
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