it’s such a beautiful day

on our second night in truchas we laid down on the balcony and stared up into the sky. it was my first time seeing hundreds of stars at once and you could barely make out the shape of the milky way, but with a better camera and longer exposures you could capture thousands of stars in a single photo. so we made plans to order and assemble a telescope, because where else would you get such a clear view of the sky?

three weeks in, during late october, it snowed for the first time, around eight to twelve inches in total, and the world recolored itself into wonderful white landscapes and gray skies and gingerbread houses. the days were still too warm at the time so all of it melted away in a couple of days but i was excited regardless, because if it snowed this much in october how much would it snow in the month to come?

coming from a childhood where consecutive snowfalls often stood years apart from one another, maybe i should’ve known better. i should’ve known not to take these things for granted, not to assume that tomorrow would simply be a colder version of today, but somehow i forgot when i saw so much snow at once, and yes, it did snow several more times afterwards, but never in the same copious quantities as that first time

there was an interval of around a month when i continuously felt the full warmth of living with twenty-seven other people, when i was constantly learning about them and experiencing pure joy and openness, and solitude was nowhere to be found. that kind of feeling had previously only lasted a week or two at a time, so i was surprised when it took a month to evaporate, but it was still sad when it finally wore off

at some point people looking for friendship inevitably make a shift, whether deliberately or not, on the exploration-exploitation spectrum. when a few people first move from exploring towards exploiting it’s very easy to suck other people into doing so as well if they’re not consciously avoiding it, simply by spending more time with them. that’s how extremely well-connected groups can suddenly crystallize into cliquey subgroups in the span of just a few days or weeks, and that’s what happened here, but then again i’ve never found a community which truly avoided this

i used to think loneliness was the result of other people establishing social circles that weren’t inclusive enough, and that the reason i’d been lonely my entire life boiled down to either my inability to find those circles or my refusal to join the ones i did find. but maybe in this instance loneliness was also the byproduct of not appreciating the people around you enough, of forgetting or becoming accustomed to the fact that you were surrounded by twenty-seven other sparkling souls, of seeing all the lights around you but choosing to bask in the dark instead. so in that sense i don’t blame anyone for this any more than i blame myself

there was a period this summer where i tried to stop talking to you, and it was awful, and i don’t know exactly how to classify how i felt during that time other than that you can plot every feeling you ever had on the axis of how suicidal it was and these were clearly the worst ones, which isn’t to say that i was actually in danger but i could tell it was further than i’d gone before

so when i stopped talking to you again while in truchas i was worried the same thing would happen, but it didn’t. the typically tranquil moments of the morning that immediately follow waking up would feel impossibly heavy, but then i’d get out of bed and stare at the trees and tell myself it would be better tomorrow, and i did get better, and after a while i stopped feeling it entirely

five weeks after arrival, one of our neighbors’ dogs showed up at the front door, a very adorable husky named nala. the first time she visited i was too scared to go near her because of deep-running impressions from negative interactions with dogs in my childhood, but she never displayed any signs of aggression. in the subsequent weeks she would often visit once or twice a day and that was how i learned to enjoy petting and feeding dogs

it’s a bit strange and a little disappointing how when a cute friendly dog like nala walks in the front door, the people fond of dogs are overjoyed for at least a few minutes. it’s the single most reliable mood changer i’ve ever observed, and i know this because i experienced it myself and i don’t even particularly like dogs. and yes, those feelings are incredibly fleeting, but so are the ones that bubble up when you greet a friend every morning, and it feels unfair that we can’t consistently make each other as happy as dogs can, like, why do we have to keep transmitting alienation and apathy and hate to one another? why can’t we find a way to love each other as much as we love dogs?

around an hour after arriving in truchas, we were standing on the balcony staring at the nearby mountains and someone declared, “wow, this view is never going to get old”. and in some sense they were right, the view didn’t get old as much as it vanished entirely — it faded into your subconsciousness and you looked at it less and less. you’d remember again during a sunrise or after a snow when the peaks glowed golden or flashed white, but apart from those few sublime moments you simply stopped paying attention

the stars receded too, as you became busier and the nights became colder and less welcoming. when you did remember to look, the stars were still as majestic as ever, but truly remembering these things is impossibly difficult if you’re not already accustomed to it, and i wasn’t. our telescope did arrive but only after a month, and by then most of us had already stopped gazing up at the sky

the last time i saw nala it was still early in the afternoon, so i was expecting to see her again later that day or perhaps the next morning before leaving truchas. but of course that was just another entry in the long list of flawed assumptions i’d made, no more or less vain than when i’d assumed there would be another snowstorm or that we’d still be friends today or that i’d see you all again

so i’m looking for a kind of gratitude, but it’s not the gratitude they teach you during school or church or thanksgiving. it’s the awareness to love the snow every time it falls and the stars every time the night awakens and the world every time you glance outside; it’s the empowerment to think you’re such a beautiful person every time we meet and you’re such a beautiful dog every time nala visits; it’s the mindfulness to look at every day in spite of how miserable or lonely or conflicted you might feel, and think, it’s such a beautiful day, and to believe all of it, passionately, wholeheartedly, ferociously