Maybe You Don't Need to Live a Bombastic Life

There's beauty in quiet.

We’re barreling down the 405 to a miniature apartment tucked behind a baby blue house. I’ve lived in Southern California for nearly eight years and I’ve learned to spout out freeways names knowing the story behind them. So, perhaps I shouldn’t say “barrel,” more like inch, crawl, move at a glacial pace. Because that’s the only way one moves on the 405 freeway.

I’m in a car with a man I’ve hired to move my belongings (and cat) to a temporary home. He’s young, a kid, but we have much to talk about. We enjoy each other’s company as single-serving acquaintances do. I tell him about my move to Bakersfield, the 1940s house and the stairs I’ll climb in socked feet. I’m jubilant about the stairs, the padding of flat feet, but he looks concerned, tells me there’s nothing to do in Bakersfield. It’s dead, a ghost-town, tumbleweed and like that. And, for a moment, I’m sad. Have I mad a mistake? Should I have stayed in the thick of it? Should I have wanted a town where cars bump their bass and bodies pour out into the sidewalk from the brunches they eat and the booze they drink?

I consider his age. He’s maybe…26, 27? His hunger is palpable while mine has been satiated. And it occurs to me that I don’t need a big city, a big life—I’ve had one for 47 years and I’m so very tired. Now, it’s time to slow down, think, rest. It’s not a death, mind you—more like easing into a stage of life that doesn’t require theatrics and amusement park-level entertainment to live.

I’ve lived a bombastic life. The stories I could still tell, but haven’t. Riding in a limo with Tommy Lee (yes, that Tommy Lee) while he cracks open a Bud when I expect champagne, befriending a bleached-blonde Lana Del Rey when she was Lizzy Grant and far from gussied up. Parties in Prague with gay boys and cocaine on planes before 9/11, and dancing on couches in penthouse apartments, and remember that time at the Delano in Miami and ceviche on the beach? The drunk boat rides in Newport and standing in a mansion in front of a Picasso and marveling? Volcanos in Nicaragua and tearing apart thick cheese with my hands. The trips to Japan, Cambodia, India, and South Africa and so many countries navigated in between.

I’ve been ridiculous for far too long. I grew up in a big city and have always lived in the center of things, but now I want something different.

Give me my tumbleweed and a black sky streaked with stars. Give me my slow walks, longer short stories and music that sounds alive. Give me my mountain lions and hiking through wind and ice. Give me my boarding pass on planes and parting bamboo in the jungle, the fakirs and their serpent siren songs. Give me a man who plays a harmonica into the gloaming.

I would very much like to exclude myself from the frenetic life narrative.

I will be honest. My mental health has endured a sizable blow because I haven’t traveled. Every year, I’d board a plane and get lost in an unknown land and I liked the solitude of it. I liked setting my phone down in a hotel room or an Airbnb and combing open air markets and canoes through lakes. Traveling grounded me and gave me perspective, reminding me of how small I was in contrast to a world that shifted like tectonic plates beneath your feet. I haven’t traveled because I’ve been pragmatic. I haven’t worked in quite some time and selling clothes online pays the bills, but does little for the extras, the privileges I’ve long savored and enjoyed.

Yet, I remain resolute that a smaller life is what I need. I like the consistency of knowing a handful of stores exist, that navigating a city doesn’t require a PhD in cartography. And this desire isn’t predicated on age—more and more we’re seeing a desire for quiet and simplification because noise is ubiquitous. We want to keep pace with the ever-changing world but don’t want to be engulfed by it—yet, that want is sometimes tenuous to navigate. It’s easy to get caught up in the cult of consumption, the desire for more, when more isn’t what we need.

What we need is to define what is enough.

For me, it’s a small house with stairs and a kitchen where I can fix my vegan chilis and pasta bolognese. It’s sleeping without a sound machine or earplugs. It’s a single glass of wine in the evening. It’s holding a book in my hands. On occasion it’s boarding a plane to an unknown country. But it’s giving my friends my full attention. It’s setting my phone down. It’s digesting enough to be knowledgeable without being caught in a typhoon of rage and despair. It’s letting my hair airdry even if I hate the curls. It’s wondering less about how to survive in a capitalist, greed-centric, always-on culture, and laying your head down to rest.

Because maybe more isn’t what we need. Maybe it’s the best we can get. Maybe it’s deciding that enough is fine and necessary and there’s nothing wrong with tampering our wants for more.

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Antecedents:

• For my paid peeps—I’ll be sharing an essay on memoir and perspective soon. I’ve just moved, so my head is all over the place. And I’m moving again in May so head, place, etc. I’ll also be sharing a round-up of my favorite articles and reads of the month.

• Some folks (read: five) have asked for links to buy the clothes I sell online. You asked, I delivered: Poshmark, eBay.

• Since I sell clothes, if you have some fancy duds you want to pass on (instead of donating to Goodwill, which is totally corrupt), drop me a comment with your email and I’ll write you.