Joy Sorrow Holding Hands
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[Applause]
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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