This is Western Coffee—notes on building the creative body. Last time: Faster. The whole series is here. Please share this email; you can sign up free below.
I’m in a mood today that has become recurring, let’s call it the A.I. funk. So to balance that out I’m going to write today about some things that have recently happened to my body, currently an exclusive feature of human beings.
- I flew to Los Angeles, my old home, for the wedding of a friend I’ve known since the fates made us roommates 18 years ago. I read about the terrifying paralysis of heat everywhere else from my boyfriend’s work-trip hotel room in Santa Monica, which was—here’s a 2023 phrase for you—unsettlingly cool.
- We hiked in the hills above the Santa Monica Bay, on a trail I’ve done at least a dozen times but none in the solitude we had that morning. The sun was white and warm but soft; it fell on our bare skin as we looked down on a wall-to-wall carpet of cotton-ball clouds to the right and L.A.’s receding ranks of skylines to the left, in charcoal silhouette. Specks of airplanes rose at the outer end of our vision.
- I ran 12 miles at an easy pace on the sandy strip that runs from Venice to the parking lot near Malibu where once I broke my leg, then turned around and climbed the cliff to end up at a bakery so good it reminds me of a rock band in its best two or three years. There I got a Wagyu roast beef sandwich with pickled vegetables and a chocolate chip cookie that had been birthed that hour from the mind of God.
- And then we went to the wedding, outside a municipal banquet hall next to another beach. It was in San Pedro, a farflung southern annex of Los Angeles situated by the country’s largest port. My friends stood under an arch of flowers a few feet from the sand, where an unrelated family conducted an elaborate picnic. A lone saxophonist gave us music, and a stylish child settled into a tree above the officiant. We all went inside to eat pizza and drink champagne. When it was dark, James and I went outside again to touch the sand. The dance tunes whistled in our wake like a scene from Kundera, R.I.P.
- Moving on to Salt Lake City, my brother and sister and mom and nephew and I drove 80 minutes to a reservoir in the Uinta Mountains, where there is no cell service. We inflated some kayaks—near miss on forgetting to bring the right pump—and a stand-up paddle board, and my 67-year-old mother paddled out for her first time and stood up. We ate some cherries, caprese salad, chocolate cake for the nephew’s sixth birthday. We each paddled out again and drifted back in the stiff wind.
Kindly send me your thoughts, questions, and provocations: dmichaelowen@gmail.com. And say hi on Instagram or Threads, or let’s Peloton together: @leggy_blond.