After nearly two years since our first date and having lived together since March, Jill and I broke up on the 28th after I moved her into her Santa Cruz apartment. It was an amiable breakup, as I mentioned previously. This is an edited version of my first correspondence with her since that fateful Saturday.
Hey Jill,
I want to talk to you SO badly, but like I promised I won't call you until the denial has passed more completely. Tell me if this is cheating too much. I graduated to using the correct tense in reference to our relationship, but I know it's still only partially sunk in.
I've talked about you a lot, such that I feel like I understand you and what we were better, but it was really just putting words to things I'd known deep down. I talked about all your flaws and all your good qualities and all the things I love about you. The tragic irony is that we broke up when the good things outweighed the bad by far (as they always did), something I've long said was true and something I've always been terrified you didn't truly believe. Bri says that amiable breakups heal cleaner and faster.
I think about you at least every few minutes. At the same time talking has confirmed to me that the things I liked about you far outweighed anything I didn't like, it also confirmed to me that breaking up was the right decision. My increased confidence in the wisdom of that decision has come hand in hand with doubt so severe I frequently feel like a ship without a rudder near shoals. I doubt the decision every few minutes. I'm constantly afraid that I'll betray myself and what I know is right to chase those things that I miss so much. Of the stages of grief, I think I've moved past outright denial through anger (which flashed in the last few seconds before you walked out the door) to bargaining. I keep trying to think of ways that I can have you again.
Bri's done a better job taking care of me than even you could have hoped, I think. That girl has wisdom beyond her years. She shamed me out of writing this letter (while tipsy) Sunday night. Now I'm taking advantage of having woken up before her, but I think her main point was that one day was too soon, even though the thought of you unpacking your room alone after your mom left was tearing me up.
We saw Avatar in 3D yesterday. It was everything you or anybody else said it would be. Twice in the movie theater, I forgot that Bri wasn't you next to me and did a double take. We made intricate plans to backpack to Santa Cruz from Monterey and plans to go home to SoCal. Both fell through, so now we're just going to chill for the remainder of the week. It's probably just as well. I don't think seeing my parents would be helpful.
As much as I look forward to the day when I can look upon these times with a knowing smile, I want to remember you and our relationship in all the beauty and color you and it deserve, and I will do you and it justice by embracing the pain of loss with curious wonder and a desperate thirst (anguisette that I am).
Please tell me how you're doing and call me if it'll help even a little. I'm sure you know I'm secretly hoping you will.
Love,
Max
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Friday, August 20, 2010
Brewing: California Sunshine Ale #1 and #2
The results are in. Howard and I's first outing with brewing was a modest success. We cracked open our first beers with Matt Smith and Cory Logan, whose considerable brewing expertise informed a lot of my beer-making decisions.
California Sunshine Ale recipe #2 was the Amarillo-only version of the recipe. The fermentation had stalled according to the gravity when we were preparing to bottle it. Since we'd already added the priming sugar, we added boiled water to keep the gravity from blowing up the bottles (though a few blew up anyways). The final product didn't end up tasting as watered-down as I'd worried it would, but there was a slight odor of foot instead that I suspect came from brettanomyces contamination. Matt and Cory kind of liked the foot thing. The Amarillo hops imparted a open, bittersweet flavor that I have come to identify as the taste of the color blue. While they didn't taste exactly like grapefruit as they are reputed to, there was enough resemblance to make it the obvious descriptor.
California Sunshine Ale recipe #1 was the basic scale down of the posted recipe. We accidentally doubled the priming sugar for this one, but otherwise things went without a hitch. The Cascade-Amarillo blend came out fruity. Fruity enough to compete with the sober end of the hefeweizen scale. Matt and Cory, who are obsessed with the impact of yeast strain on beer flavor, thought a lot of the fruitiness had to do with the less-than-clean yeast we used, Dan Star's Windsor Brewing Yeast. The beer also came around the darkness of a brown ale, which was a little darker than we were shooting for. The body was a tad too light, but I'd expected body to be tricky. The recipe is supposed to push the edge of acceptable body for a pale ale.
All told, I think recipe #3 of California Sunshine Ale should have half the chocolate malt and an additional part biscuit malt equal to the crystal malt. I'll definitely keep the Cascade-Amarillo pairing, but I think I'll scale back the finishing and bittering hops overall and push the Perle hops forward in the mix and later in the hop schedule. I think we'll also add a secondary fermentation to clarify the beer before bottling.
California Sunshine Ale recipe #2 was the Amarillo-only version of the recipe. The fermentation had stalled according to the gravity when we were preparing to bottle it. Since we'd already added the priming sugar, we added boiled water to keep the gravity from blowing up the bottles (though a few blew up anyways). The final product didn't end up tasting as watered-down as I'd worried it would, but there was a slight odor of foot instead that I suspect came from brettanomyces contamination. Matt and Cory kind of liked the foot thing. The Amarillo hops imparted a open, bittersweet flavor that I have come to identify as the taste of the color blue. While they didn't taste exactly like grapefruit as they are reputed to, there was enough resemblance to make it the obvious descriptor.
California Sunshine Ale recipe #1 was the basic scale down of the posted recipe. We accidentally doubled the priming sugar for this one, but otherwise things went without a hitch. The Cascade-Amarillo blend came out fruity. Fruity enough to compete with the sober end of the hefeweizen scale. Matt and Cory, who are obsessed with the impact of yeast strain on beer flavor, thought a lot of the fruitiness had to do with the less-than-clean yeast we used, Dan Star's Windsor Brewing Yeast. The beer also came around the darkness of a brown ale, which was a little darker than we were shooting for. The body was a tad too light, but I'd expected body to be tricky. The recipe is supposed to push the edge of acceptable body for a pale ale.
All told, I think recipe #3 of California Sunshine Ale should have half the chocolate malt and an additional part biscuit malt equal to the crystal malt. I'll definitely keep the Cascade-Amarillo pairing, but I think I'll scale back the finishing and bittering hops overall and push the Perle hops forward in the mix and later in the hop schedule. I think we'll also add a secondary fermentation to clarify the beer before bottling.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
End of the Davis Era
There's suddenly a chill to the dawn air again. To be sure, there are still hundred degree days ahead of us in Davis, but the worst of the summer is over. As with every year, I face summer's end with the melancholy of anticipated change.
This year I have particular cause for melancholy. Jill starts a PhD program at UC Santa Cruz this September. Brandon left for Washington DC in June and Howard will be leaving for home when his lease finishes at the end of the month. My job with Monsanto finishes this Friday the 13th and after that I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not going to Santa Cruz. I'm not staying at my house in Davis either. My lease finishes the same time as Howard's. I plan to help move Jill into Santa Cruz and then take the month of September off, backpacking with my sister and maybe surfing a little back home.
After that is anybody's guess. I've started applying to Monsanto full time positions, microbreweries and tech jobs. I'm at a stage at my life where I can take a job anywhere in the country. We'll see what comes of it. Cross your fingers. Whatever happens, even if I get a Monsanto job in Davis for the year, the end of this summer marks the end of an era. There's no longer anything left for me in Davis in terms of people.
Jill and I are parting ways when she moves to Santa Cruz. It was something we'd known was coming since we started going out, but it's been a year longer than originally envisioned. As you can imagine, too, it's something we've made an effort to blot out. It's coming quickly and soon enough denial won't be sufficient to insulate us.
My sister wisely pointed out that mutual breakups are hardly ever mutual. I think Jill would very happily do the long distance thing. I however, besides hating the idea of a long distance relationship, need more diversity of experience before I can contentedly commit. The idea of marrying my first girlfriend is many times more terrifying to me than a return to loneliness. Between you and me, that is saying something.
So I can look forward to either moving back in with my parents to a town I love but with only a handful of friends remaining or a year of gainful employment in a place completely without friends. Gosh, guys, post-college is a blast from start to finish. Tell me when it's over.
This year I have particular cause for melancholy. Jill starts a PhD program at UC Santa Cruz this September. Brandon left for Washington DC in June and Howard will be leaving for home when his lease finishes at the end of the month. My job with Monsanto finishes this Friday the 13th and after that I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not going to Santa Cruz. I'm not staying at my house in Davis either. My lease finishes the same time as Howard's. I plan to help move Jill into Santa Cruz and then take the month of September off, backpacking with my sister and maybe surfing a little back home.
After that is anybody's guess. I've started applying to Monsanto full time positions, microbreweries and tech jobs. I'm at a stage at my life where I can take a job anywhere in the country. We'll see what comes of it. Cross your fingers. Whatever happens, even if I get a Monsanto job in Davis for the year, the end of this summer marks the end of an era. There's no longer anything left for me in Davis in terms of people.
Jill and I are parting ways when she moves to Santa Cruz. It was something we'd known was coming since we started going out, but it's been a year longer than originally envisioned. As you can imagine, too, it's something we've made an effort to blot out. It's coming quickly and soon enough denial won't be sufficient to insulate us.
My sister wisely pointed out that mutual breakups are hardly ever mutual. I think Jill would very happily do the long distance thing. I however, besides hating the idea of a long distance relationship, need more diversity of experience before I can contentedly commit. The idea of marrying my first girlfriend is many times more terrifying to me than a return to loneliness. Between you and me, that is saying something.
So I can look forward to either moving back in with my parents to a town I love but with only a handful of friends remaining or a year of gainful employment in a place completely without friends. Gosh, guys, post-college is a blast from start to finish. Tell me when it's over.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
The Love Revolution
It seems an age ago that I was sitting with Marisa on our high school bleachers during lunch period, discussing love. It was a conversation that had been waiting to happen for a few months. She kept telling me, "I love you, Max." I never knew how to respond. I didn't feel like I understood what love was well enough to profess my love for someone.
So there we were, five years ago, Marisa finally asking me why I wouldn't say I loved her. I explained that I wasn't sure I loved anyone and that I didn't want to say so until I was sure it was true. She pressed on, "What about your family? Don't you love them?" She asked with the incredulity of a Mormon and ultrafriend. I thought for a minute, mulling things over, and decided, "I guess I love my sister. If I love anyone in the world it is my sister." "Don't you love your parents?"
So often love appears like water. Clear and invisible when we're standing still in the midst of it. I told her that I wasn't sure. I told her that I supposed I must, but if love was there I didn't know what I was supposed to be looking for. This was how I assuaged one of my best friends about refusing to say I loved her back.
I think at the time I thought she might use the word love too liberally. I was also wary because just a few months before my friend Caius had broken her heart by telling her he didn't love her anymore, concluding their brief, intense relationship. I didn't think love should be the sort of thing that could be recanted, so I gave the word extra caution, sometimes even hostility.
It wasn't until midway through college that I began to respond "I love you too" on the phone to my parents. By then there'd been enough motion and distance between us for me to witness the invisible bonds of love I had for my parents. It wasn't until a few months ago, between Marisa's return from her mission in Czech and my trip to the Lost Coast with Caius, that I finally admitted I loved my close friends. At the beginning of the summer I broached the subject of love with Jill and over the course of the conversation decided I loved her and told her so. That adds another first to the long list of firsts that Jill has on me.
Recently, I've been paying attention to older-fashioned uses of the word love. People used to use the word so much more freely. They talked about love of friends, cousins and their favorite possessions. Love is now used in romantic comedies as something earth shattering and singular. It may be irrevocable, but love is not singular. I think I've been shielded from the nature of love by hyperbole. I've been divorced enough from the source of the word that I've had trouble recognizing it in my own life. Love happens every day.
To some extent I guess I love everybody. That's not to take anything away from the people I first declared love for. They were first for good reason. I love you guys. I just think we should approach love in that old fashioned way. Not the way hippies treat love as if it's some supernatural, omnipresent, omnipotent force and not the way romantic comedies elevate romantic love to the point of alienating all other forms and degrees of it. I want to reclaim the word from poets, panderers and theorists back to the simple meaning it began with. I want it to refer to the affection we feel for the people around us.
So there we were, five years ago, Marisa finally asking me why I wouldn't say I loved her. I explained that I wasn't sure I loved anyone and that I didn't want to say so until I was sure it was true. She pressed on, "What about your family? Don't you love them?" She asked with the incredulity of a Mormon and ultrafriend. I thought for a minute, mulling things over, and decided, "I guess I love my sister. If I love anyone in the world it is my sister." "Don't you love your parents?"
So often love appears like water. Clear and invisible when we're standing still in the midst of it. I told her that I wasn't sure. I told her that I supposed I must, but if love was there I didn't know what I was supposed to be looking for. This was how I assuaged one of my best friends about refusing to say I loved her back.
I think at the time I thought she might use the word love too liberally. I was also wary because just a few months before my friend Caius had broken her heart by telling her he didn't love her anymore, concluding their brief, intense relationship. I didn't think love should be the sort of thing that could be recanted, so I gave the word extra caution, sometimes even hostility.
It wasn't until midway through college that I began to respond "I love you too" on the phone to my parents. By then there'd been enough motion and distance between us for me to witness the invisible bonds of love I had for my parents. It wasn't until a few months ago, between Marisa's return from her mission in Czech and my trip to the Lost Coast with Caius, that I finally admitted I loved my close friends. At the beginning of the summer I broached the subject of love with Jill and over the course of the conversation decided I loved her and told her so. That adds another first to the long list of firsts that Jill has on me.
Recently, I've been paying attention to older-fashioned uses of the word love. People used to use the word so much more freely. They talked about love of friends, cousins and their favorite possessions. Love is now used in romantic comedies as something earth shattering and singular. It may be irrevocable, but love is not singular. I think I've been shielded from the nature of love by hyperbole. I've been divorced enough from the source of the word that I've had trouble recognizing it in my own life. Love happens every day.
To some extent I guess I love everybody. That's not to take anything away from the people I first declared love for. They were first for good reason. I love you guys. I just think we should approach love in that old fashioned way. Not the way hippies treat love as if it's some supernatural, omnipresent, omnipotent force and not the way romantic comedies elevate romantic love to the point of alienating all other forms and degrees of it. I want to reclaim the word from poets, panderers and theorists back to the simple meaning it began with. I want it to refer to the affection we feel for the people around us.
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