Joy Sorrow Holding Hands

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we made a bed in the bed

of your dad’s pick up six more

weeks staying home till our youth was

up in the tall grass

that i’d never move on

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august moved above the river made the

water sit flat and i knew we were

leaving

but i did know that it was all set in

motion

and we couldn’t go back

in the last summer

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in the last summer

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like the sixth moon landing

okinawan i

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we ain’t ever going back again

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when we made plans for the world

thinking we’d stay the same burn

like moses bush where the leaves don’t

change

and our lives were the dust

just the dust and light

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in last summer

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in last summer

like the sixth moon landing

okinawan i was standing right at tyre

all this

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like nixon’s helicopter

last stand for g.a custer alaska’s last

blockbuster

new orleans bound sultan

eisenhower the fourth ring for joe

montana

like all the myspace users

or the three queen tudors and open door

for dbq

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we ain’t ever going back again

i ain’t ever going back again

you ain’t ever going back again

we ain’t ever going back again

thanks

i made a living out of nostalgia or

maybe

sentimentality the sweet sad feeling of

the day has gone by

they say that the greatest storytellers

are the worst liars

and i don’t know if i’m a great

storyteller but i am certainly a liar

i lie about the past to make it more

colorful more interesting

to send it in a singular direction i lie

about the past because i want it to be

better than it was

full of possibility and magic

the truth of course is that the past is

complicated

it’s messy the nostalgists among us

have forgotten the troubles of the past

it makes

the ways of the present feel

overwhelming like they’ve never happened

before

in 2013 my mother passed away she passed

away in a hospice ward in spokane

washington

on the day after her 58th birthday

much like the cornerstone events of the

past

death comes quietly and without fanfare

or as my mother explained to me death

comes in the middle

that’s why people look kind of confused

all the time she said

because in the movies that we watch in

the books that we read

the end comes at the end but in life the

end comes in the middle

she was doing me a courtesy knowing

that it would be confusing the events to

come would be confusing for someone who

had twisted the past

into form at every opportunity

in the months prior we went about tasks

tasks that she called tidying

we wrapped the aspen saplings and

chicken wire to protect them from the

deer

and we went to the gym to cancel her

membership

at the gym there was a very muscly

standing behind the the desk with a name

tag that said kyle

kyle had been trained to resist people

trying to cancel their memberships

why are you canceling your membership

asked kyle

my mom with a big smile on her face she

says because i’m gonna die pretty soon

this was a new one for kyle

does that mean you can’t work out

anymore kyle asked

my mom was like five feet tall and this

guy was like mid-sixes and she reached

across the counter

put her hand on his shoulder and she

said kyle you’re doing a great job

but and i’m quoting here you should

probably read the room

on the drive home from the gym my mom

scooted across the bench the bench seat

of the pickup truck

sat next to me and she asked me a

question she said

what are you gonna do

what am i gonna do you are bad at

feeling sad

she said whenever something sad happens

you wrap it up into something bigger

more romantic and less sad than it is

and then she said something i’ll never

forget she said sorrow and joy are

holding hands

sorrow enjoy our holding hands i said

when i’m gone i want you to do something

stupid and irresponsible my mother said

this is i think the worst uh maternal

advice in the history

of mothers

said i want you to do something

irresponsible and while you’re doing

that irresponsible thing

i want you to think about why you’re sad

that i’m gone and i want you to think

about how

sorrow and joy are holding hands

what kind of irresponsible thing i said

i don’t know she said you do

irresponsible stuff all the time just

pick something

in the end the irresponsible thing that

i decided to do was to walk

really far more specifically i decided

to walk from san diego california

to san francisco california

600 miles of coastline along some of the

busiest and most terrible

freeways in america if i wanted to do it

in a month

i’d need to walk about 20 miles a day i

need to take in between four and six

thousand calories

i need to drink seven liters of water

all of which i would need to carry

in a state that is notoriously without

water

if i was gonna if there weren’t any

campgrounds around at night i would need

to find a quiet and overlooked place to

sleep

where i wouldn’t you know get run over

or robbed

quiet and overlooked places in locations

such as los angeles

none of these were things that i planned

for

landing my idea firmly within the

category of my mother’s assignment

on the first day my legs cramped up

i couldn’t bend them any more than about

this much right here

on the fifth day my feet or my uh yeah

my feet went numb on the fifth day

and they stayed numb for the rest of

time

on the 25th day i was standing at the

mouth of big

sur i’d lost over 50 pounds

i like to think of big sur as having a

mouth not in the way

that a river or not in the way that an

animal has a mouth or a river has a

mouth but in the way that an animal has

a mouth it looks like um

like some giant sea creature that just

washed ashore a thousand years ago and

started to sprout golden weeds

and ponderosa trees down south

the shoulders were glorious they were

six feet wide

plenty of space to dodge you know people

falling asleep at the wheel or

scrolling through instagram but here in

big sur the

shoulders narrowed and narrowed and

narrowed until at certain points they

were only six inches wide

it was here that i discovered my nemesis

the retiree

the retirees to be fierce to be feared

the most came from the state of texas

they would drag camper trailers around

the corners at 60 miles an hour

camber trailer is large enough to house

like two dozen

freelancers in any american city

and the air coming off these things was

enough to blow me off the edge

so i saw him coming i’d have to find

something to grab onto if i was lucky

there was a guard rail

there’s a couple times where i almost

didn’t hold on

on the 27th day i walked into a field

the field it turned out was made up

entirely of poison oak and stinging

nettles

i hadn’t taken a shower since santa

barbara

the next morning when i woke up i had

blisters from the poison oak and i had

scratched through the blisters from the

stinging nettles

all of which had mixed together with the

dirt on my skin covering me in a

beautiful

maroon colored mud

sounds sounds fun huh on the 28th day

i walked into a eucalyptus grove to go

to sleep

the fog from the ocean had come up into

the branches and the

eucalyptus trees when they haven’t been

cared for all the bark comes off in

these giant sheets like paper

the bark was laying on the ground about

six inches thick and the forest looked

almost exactly like the forest from the

princess bride

no fire coming out of the ground but it

was the spooky one that the knights

wouldn’t go into if you’ll remember

around midnight i heard something land

on the roof of my tent

and then it started sliding but like it

was

resisting sliding like it had

fingernails or trying to hold on

and then two more over here

a friend told me one time that if you

see one rat

you have a hundred rats

i wondered what it meant if you felt

three rats

like maybe there wasn’t enough real

estate in the trees you know

i took all the food out of my backpack

and i threw into the woods as an

offering to the rat gods

on the 29th day i put my backpack in

some excrement

it’s trying to figure out what kind of

animal can make something so large

later i would learn that there are only

14 public restrooms in big sur

and there are over 6 million annual

visitors

yeah it was a it was it was human

i really wanted to whisper that to you

guys

on the 31st day i was standing on the

cliff

as the sun was going down looking out

over the ocean

and there were no retirees

there were no rats

the sores on my arms and legs started to

heal up

and the sun was dropping down and it was

growing larger and larger as it went

started to flatten out against the

horizon line

and down below i could see the kelp and

the seaweed

moving across the rocks and the waves

like hair in a slow-motion wind

and for a moment i swore that i was

standing so tall

that i could see the bend of the earth

looking out in all of its infinite

vastness

it was the most that peace i had ever

felt

when i think about that moment now i

realized that i had never seen a sunset

like that i never have since

and it wasn’t in spite of my sufferings

but it was in every way because

of those things it was something my

mother knew

that you don’t get to have joy without

sorrow

you don’t get to have a full life

without a difficult one

you don’t get to have love without

heartbreak and you don’t get to have the

full promise of the future

without the complete embodiment of the

failures of the past

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said i walk to san francisco

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after everything was done

thought the noise and moving busy

kept my mind from really

knowing what was gone

when i finally saw it closing

all those miles above the bay

well i was only standing

closer to the man i tried to lose

along the way

but if i’m being honest

if i’m being honest

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well i would tell him that

it’s a picture book

it’s a hospital gown

it’s an aspen tree in the summer breeze

that she

saw as waving hands

it’s a watching chair

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it’s a holy company like a sailing

ship hard rod in it that will

never again float upon the sea

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when i finally saw it closing

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all those miles above the bay

i found i was only standing closer

to the man i tried to lose

along the way

but if i’m being honest

yeah if i’m being honest

well i would tell her that

it’s a pair of jeans

it’s a rude awakening

it’s a fine life lift and the privilege

of

standing there in the afterlight it’s a

photograph

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folded in my wallet to remind myself

that what she left is only

growing bigger over time

thank you

[Applause]

now i’m not i’m not suggesting that you

need to walk for 600 miles

that you need to battle a forest full of

rats

lose a bunch of weight for no reason

walking forever

to find peace or to find what you’re

looking for but i am suggesting

that we live in a society that is

increasingly uncomfortable

with the idea of failure with the idea

of loss

the idea of tragedy and i don’t think

that we get

anywhere that we want to go without

traveling directly through the heart of

those things

sorrow and joy are holding hands all the

things that i learned

walking along the dusty highway in

memory of my mother sorrow and joy

reign supreme i can see them there

holding hands against

the yellow of the california sunset and

the cold blue pacific ocean

holding hands in a silhouette and i

learned that before i ever even left

thanks guys appreciate you

you