Last Day of the Year

Little sweetheart, it’s the very last day of 2018. It’s New Year’s Eve.

I think I’ve never had much use for the holiday. Maybe when I was a little boy, when the excitement of staying up until midnight - and fading, falling asleep and being carried off to bed well before - was a thing. I don’t think you and I ever had an New Year’s Eve together.

What I do remember was talking to you on New Year’s Eve. Talking to you on the phone - me here in NYC, you in SF - and making plans for the New Year. In 2008 it was about me coming there, possibly forever. In 2010, it was you telling me you were at a party with Danya but that you’d just booked a flight here - like excused yourself into the bedroom, gotten on your Air Book and bought a ticket. That you’d be here next week.

It still feels so close to me, my little sweetheart, that feeling that you’re only a plane ride away. Maybe you’re even closer than that, now. Maybe you’re far closer than I can imagine and all I have to is to listen quietly for your presence. All I have to do is as you would have me and sometime, sometime very soon, we’ll be together again and forever.

As this year draws to a close little sweetheart, this year when I got hit by a car and actually died for ten minutes before coming back to life, let it be a thing that I hold dear - you. To remember and honor and be like you. To do our work, speak our truth, say our prayer and finally, when called, fly to you.

With all my love on this last day, which is also the first, the first of the next. And you. You. Forever.

Around Me, Home

I flew home to NYC on the overnight flight from SMF last night, little sweetheart, and arrived early this morning. It’s a cold, grey, rainy day here and I spent nearly all of it asleep after taking the AirTrain and “E” train home, climbing the stairs and dropping my luggage in the kitchen.

When I awoke, it was twilight, the day vanished behind me but my heart full and comforted with your things and hundreds of pictures all around me. I somehow get used to it when immersed, surrounded by what Sylvia calls “the heavy walls” of this place. But after being away for nearly a month it both strikes and comforts me to be home with your presence both spectral and photographic all around me.

How grateful I am for you. How grateful I am to you. How very much and deeply I love you. Forever, little sweetheart. Forever.

Writing Your Christmas Note

While everyone is opening presents, little sweetheart, I’m taking this time to write you a Christmas note and slip it into your stocking. There’s quite a few in there, I do this every year. Our stockings hang together, side by side, on the mantel. And your mom has added a stocking this year for Sylvia, too.

In the note I tell you lots of things you already know - how much I love and miss you, all that’s happened this year (which I know you know because your presence is always near and knowing, watching, guiding me).

I find myself thinking now and always of our Christmas here together eight years ago. How we sat together on the sofa and I wept with joy and gratitude to be at your side.

Happy Christmas, little sweetheart. Love you forever.

In Your Holy Room

I’m in your room in Davis, little sweetheart, sitting at your desk and writing you a letter, a note of love.

Just entering at the door, turning the handle and walking over the threshold, your holy presence and everlasting goodness overwhelmed me, as does the flood of memories of our times here together - waking with you under the canopy of your bed, hearing birdsong as we would stir and rise, distant train whistles and nearby owls as we lay quietly entwined at night.

You are the blessing and reason, you are my life, my love. How I long for you! I’d so like to just stay here, closing my eyes and wait for you to lightly touch my shoulder, call to me, crawl into my lap and tell me you’re back or perhaps rather that I have joined you, found my way faithfully back to your side, this time forever.

It’s so hard to leave this place, little sweetheart. Didn’t you always say so? But I know and pray we will return, perhaps we have always been right here and are even now, although I can’t see or understand that quite yet, I know that you will show me, teach me, guide me, as you always do.

I’m sitting in your holy room, little sweetheart, and all my thoughts fly to you. With all my love.

Stay

Maybe it’s too personal to share, little sweetheart, but it still shakes me how broken I feel when I first kneel before the angel where you are commemorated. I stop first, as we always did together, at the Nugget Market. I find flowers to bring and then sit with you, often for hours. In those first moments, I just cry and cry. I miss you so. I know this place is not where you reside. I know that you are untethered and everywhere and all at once in way I can’t understand because time is not what merely mortal I know it to be just now. I know you simply alight here as I visit to comfort and guide me. There’s something so powerful in it and I’m never regretful to weep. I welcome every feeling, even the saddest ones, when they bring you near me.

The Tree

We got the tree, little sweetheart. It’s much earlier than usual. Often it isn’t until the 23rd or so that we managed it but we went over to the place tonight and picked it out and they delivered it an hour or so later. It’s full and beautiful and we’ve decorated it with lights and ornaments.

I carefully chose a few and hang them -  one is beautiful little cupcake which so reminds me of you - and your mom tops the tree with the beautiful red headed angel, whose wings unfurl and whose arms open to embrace and invite our spirits to find each other with generosity and love, just as you so exemplify and taught me.

Over the days and nights to come, little sweetheart, I know I will come quietly into this room, sitting before this tree, gazing at it and thinking of you, in quiet contemplation. How I love and long for you, my little sweetheart. Please always be with me. And take me to you the moment Heaven will allow. With all my love forever. At Christmas!

Review from France...

There’s a beautiful review this morning, little sweetheart, of both the 2018 albums - Sometimes in Dreams and Til Morning Is Nigh -  from France. Citing you by name, of course, and some of the songs most bound up in your beautiful spirit, they call the new album “Dreamlike, luminous and enchanting” and have much to say about Sometimes, as well. I’m posting the full link in French below but here’s a translated excerpt:

“We couldn't talk about 2018 without mentioning Bipolar Explorer. The New York dreampop/shoegaze duo continues to deliver. Once again, the couple Summer Serafin (spoken word, vocals) and Michael Serafin-Wells (guitar, bass, percussion, tape loops, vocals, spoken word) send the listener into a parallel yet reassuring universe with Sometimes In Dreams. With this double album, Bipolar Explorer bring us with them diving into their intimacy in the most solemn and purest way possible.  Alternating between Summer Serafin's spoken word passages and Michael Serafin-Wells's emotional flights of lyricism, the New York duo astounds us beauty. Both cathartic and luminous, this eighth album of the New York couple puts shoegaze back into a state of grace…”
 - Les Oreilles Curieuses

As ever, my little sweetheart, it’s all for you. All for you, my gorgeous girl.




Les Oreilles Curieuses full review

Waking Up In NorCal

On a plane for the first time since getting hit by the car, little sweetheart. The doctor told me to get an aisle instead of my usual window seat, so I could move around a little, which is what you’re supposed to do  after you’ve had a pulmonary embolism, like me. But they never turned the seatbelt sign off during the whole flight, there was so much turbulence, so I didn’t wind up moving too much, anyway. We did get in a little bit early, though, and your Dad picked me up. “I’m alive!”, I said as we hugged.

Your mom and dad are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary later this month, so he’s taking her to the Galapagos Islands for am adventure. I’m house sitting while they’re there and Sylvia is coming from France to help too. It’s her first time in California.

I’m in the room next to yours, upstairs. I just woke up, birdsong in the air from the orchard outside. It’s a bit like how I imagine paradise and always makes me feel so close to you. The light is on in your closet, your make up table sitting there, and it’s like you’ve just left to step into another room for a moment.

And that’s actually so, isn’t it, my little sweetheart? Your presence lingers and hovers and draws so very close at times I can almost touch you and can very much sense you. Someday soon, I’ll understand so much better and so much more more and know that you are always with me and me with you.

Until that day, please help and guide me, won’t you, little sweetheart? And take me to you the moment Heaven will allow. With all my love.