Bedletter

What are the days of our lives, if not the passing of time into tomorrow? The moments here and now are stolen away and buried under all that will be, cast long like a shadow of the future. That darkened image sketched before me, mirroring back my movements, copying my arm waves and leg shuffles—it grows the darkest in December. Always black as the evening tide in the ides of December. I hate the twelfth month of the year, when everything’s rounded out and times tick down and everyone’s busy as the bees in spring. But it’s winter, it’s hibernation time, ice-time, time to batten down the hatches and cradle in warm, fire-lit living rooms with people we know, filling up on their chuckles like melted marshmallows in a mug of hot cocoa. Always so warm and willing and it’s December, the worst month of the year.

I shouldn’t be surprised. The calendar rolls out like an ancient scroll every year, the same months following one after another. I shouldn’t be surprised when November ends and December punches the ticket for thirty-one days to come. It always has. It’s the bookend, the capper, the final act of the play, the anticlimactic climax of two-thousand twenty-one just as it was in twenty-twenty, and all the gatherings of days before. I shouldn’t be surprised. But for some reason I always am, always struck by the mood of winter, the emotions of slumber. When dopamine finds itself in hibernation, leagues away from the meat of my mind. I wake up in December like counting to twelve, and am stunned that I made it all this way. All the way up the rungs to twelve, just like I did every other year. Still caught off guard, ignorantly off guard, still wondering why I can’t manage the melting enigma behind my eyes. It’s seasonal. And we’re here in December and I’m always dazed.

December’s a big pharma commercial. The ones we see on television while we watch “Christmas Special” football—this year it’s my green men, my Packers, versus the Browns. We won. It was too close, an ugly victory. And the commercials reel like fast-jargoned cinema. It’s hard to keep up and the small print is so small the pixels deflate when you step a little closer. It’s so lovely, though. Two grandparents, pacing through a meadow, hand-in-hand. They smile and sheen their pearly whites at each other, a kiss on the cheek, the woman rests her head on the collar bone of the man. It’s a snapshot of days to come, future days. Floating through love and life like the kitschy family room signs plastered up above entryways—live, laugh, love it all. They sure are in this forty-five second ad run. The screen shifts to a family, dancing around the holiday tree, lights blipping and beaming bright and it’s all slow motion and perfect. Their teeth are all so perfect, lined up and whitened up and spotlighting the aftereffects of December. The parts we all live for, the times we all pray, eat, drink, and hope for.

But December’s big pharma, it still lists its attributes to me and every year I forget what the coked-out auctioneer voice raced through as side effects of ingesting the twelfth month of the year. Short days, a low sun, cold temperatures, and holiday extremes may have secondaries including mellow moods, depression, existential anxiety, feelings of hopelessness, invisibility, and a disconnect from the world around you. You may also consider wrapping your car around the nearest telephone pole once every third car ride downtown, but results may vary. If you are pregnant or at risk of heart failure, please consult Father Time before ingesting the twelfth month of the year. It’s a doozy. Do all the consulting you want, you can’t out run, out hibernate, out navigate the onslaught of December. I still try.

It’s a month of extremes, a span of double-living. Either lost in the emotional sauce of another year passing you by, or flipped one-eighty and hugging and kissing and sitting with family and telling tales of the last three-hundred-sixty-four days. There’s scarcely time for anything in between. It’s all chaotic and whimsied and experience tries its hardest to live up to expectation, but it often falls short and I wonder if expectation is the root of all evil. The happy-juice brain robber, the self-convincing conman. But that’s just big pharma December—telling you that every day will be flowers and bliss, while most the month is dark and surprisingly hopeless. Maybe that’s why they smushed Christmas into the last month of the year. It needed a little lightening up, it was taking itself too seriously. They gave December a prescription of its own. Here, take a baby Jesus for your troubles.

And it’s not all bad. It ends just like every other space of days. Memories are a fickle thing; they inform decisions and warm up current moments when you’re around the ones you shared them with. So potent that we live entire lifetimes dedicated toward trying to make it all happen for fear of missing out. The absolute fear of missing out. But what is life, if not but the passing of time into tomorrow? What are moments, if not the ones you are living? 

I was given a new journal for Christmas. It’s leather-backed—real animal hide, you can smell it—and the pages feel like canvas. As looks and vibes go, this one tops the list. On the front there’s a quote stamped deep into the faded chestnut leather. It reads, “Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” That was spoken by Omar Khayyam, a Persian mathematician and philosopher who lived almost a thousand years ago. And I read that and I wonder how someone could ever be so spot on.

We are ruined by the future. Destroyed by the past. But the present is as blank as the canvas pages in my new journal. December is black and shadowed, and that’s fine. December has shorter days than most the year. The sun hides away, it’s cold, and the year ends and you remember how little or much you did or didn’t do over the last eleven months. You see a new year horizon-lining and recall that you’re about to start three-hundred and sixty-five days over again. And again. And again. And that’s fine. December is just December, and it seems to me that if this moment is my life, then this month isn’t that different from the rest of ‘em.

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“You ever look outside and just get lost in the seasons?” he said, pacing around the shop. His eyes were glued to the waves of tumbling leaves wafting around on the wind outside. It was their time to die, their time to break off the twigs and branches that once held them tight. Their time to gracefully flip over a few times before resting between the blades of brown and yellow grass.

I’d seen Gavin in here many times before, but rarely ever talked to him. We usually just exchanged glances, head nods, and when one of us sneezed, the other would bless. This coffee shop was a sort of home-away-from-home for us both. The same could be said for a host of locals that frequented this place. I’d been musing frequent visits into every day occurrences, cementing my time in routine. They had the best coffee, and the best side conversations to spy in on; great commentary on the problems that plague life and plenty of posited solutions. It all happened here, gears churning and wheeling ideas into new blips of caffeine-fueled ambition. The artists, the real estate agents, the business people, the dungeons and dragons folk, musicians—there was a spectrum of brain and brawn that crawled out from the trees of north Georgia and gelled together here. Coffee is coffee and when it’s roasted, they come.

“The seasons are really somethin’. The way they change, I mean. They’re all so different from each other. It’s honestly really quite wonderful, ya know?” Gavin said. He was still pacing and rubbing his chin, eyes still stapled to the autumn swirl stirring outside the window. I was across the shop, cozied up against a stretch of glazed oak that formed a table, staring out the window and humming the tunes of fall as well. His feet were restless and he paced and gaited around the shop to every corner and was grinding out some thoughts on the changing weather. Most people used the weather to break the ice or talk small, but Gavin had real substance to pick like a bone off the chicken wing. And he was.

“It’s like, summer is long and hot and steamy, especially down here in the south. But then there’s this transformation into winter that takes several months. And winter is completely different! The humidity is gone and you can see between all the trees and suddenly there are houses and stores that you never could see before,” he exclaimed, massaging his scalp, completely mesmerized.

“That’s a good point. I’ve always thought it interesting to be able to see between the trees in the winter. Everything out here always feels wild and forested in. Then the leaves fall and the trees grow thin and you can see everything. Like the south’s clothes got ripped off and everyone’s privacy is out and open!” The barista behind the bar replied back, and they were conversating now. Everyone in the shop was tapping away on their keyboards, scribbling in notebooks—doing something else, something we all came here to consume ourselves with. But really, we were just listening.

“Exactly! It’s so weird. But it’s supposed to be that way,” Gavin went on, bouncing off the barista’s perception of winter. “I think it was all created that way—which is really quite brilliant.” Gavin was halfway across the shop, still wearing tracks in the floor of the coffee house, chiming back to the barista over his shoulder. His eyes were wide and you could see the autumnal reflection in them. It was the little things that warmed up his blood. The little things, little like summer, spring, winter, fall. Seasons—the normal, everyday seasons, the ones we all live through year after year. But they weren’t so little now, they were happening. The world was changing, and it wasn’t miniscule or trivial. It was happening and we all took it for granted. But not Gavin, he was watching and graphing it all out across his mind. The barista was nodding and wiping a mug clean. She placed it up on a rack with fifty other mugs and leaned against the checkout counter and listened.

“God made the seasons this way. He really did. Which of course begs the question—why?” he said, using hand motions and stumbling down the subsequent line of questioning. It was like watching the penultimate moment in a crime scene investigation flick, where the detective bounds from one conclusion to the next and finally rounds out the clues into hypothesis.

Gavin went on, “He made it this way, with all the seasons being so different from one another, because it makes us appreciate the one before and the one after.” He paused his pacing and shifted his eyeline across the shop to the barista. She nodded and rubbed her palms against the counter and thought hard about that.

“See, summer is nice, but eventually we get sick of the heat, the water in the air, it becomes muggy and awful after a while. So then we get to flip over into fall, when everything’s dying. Which is beautiful, but all that death can really wear on you. So then we get winter, and everything is hibernated and cozy and the snow is so pure.” He was ironing out the answers and waving his fingers and stoking himself up on his ideas about God and the Earth. I kept staring through the thick glass window of the coffee shop, watching one dead leaf tumble into the gutter after another.

“God made it that way because it’s so easy for us humans to adapt and then take everything for granted. It’s one of the things we’re best at, truth be told,” he said, resuming his pacing and window gazing. I sat unblinking, listening with intent. Gavin’s bone was picking and his mouth may have been his own, or it may have been a conduit for some greater wisdom from the ether—either way, it felt like known information that was being told to me in a new way. And I was sitting and nodding, too. We all were.

“What’s more, the seasons aren’t just a little different, they’re hugely different! Now, some places in the world aren’t that varied. But on the whole, most places change a lot over the course of a year,” he chanted with excitement. Season theory was solving, and to me it was all making sense.

Seasons were changing and the world was adapting and melding over into something new, always moving toward something new, even if it had to die to get there. And it had to be that way, there was no other route to take. It couldn’t just be the same thing every day, for years on end. The same seasons, the same weather, the same earthly habits. It has to change like a river has to wind around the hills. And I’ve been in this coffee shop so many times and stared out this window so many times, my routines are grounding and slowly solidifying like wet concrete. Frozen in place like stone. The seasons are changing though, and they’re meant to. Most importantly, they are meant to. And I knew it all in a moment.

“It’s really just a beautiful process, isn’t it?” Gavin continued, “It’s an omniscient reminder that life is always moving along, because it has to.” He stopped pacing again, lifted his coffee cup to his lips, and took a sip. He let out a satisfied exhale and sucked on his teeth for a moment. Then he smiled, curtailed a little bow to the barista, said his thanks, and ducked out into the changing seasons beyond the glass.

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The other day I was pouring through YouTube videos, crawling down rabbit holes, refreshing new clips every ten or fifteen minutes. Nothing was connected. It was video game reviews, politics, then a tutorial on French pressing coffee. Music videos for the new country songs I’ve been vibing out to. And boy, have I. Country music—the hidden genre I always thought I hated but am winding up loving. It’s strange, but I’m here for it. Just shrugging my shoulders and crawling down rabbit holes all the time and letting the mud stain me up.

Along the way, I heard a quote. One of those blurbs that floats in past your ear drums and in a moment you know you won’t forget it, even if the context was utterly pointless. And this context was utterly pointless.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

I’m a package fanatic. Box up a phrase in the right way and I’m sold and jotting the letters down in my journal and reminiscing on them for too long. Wallowing in them like a pig out on the farm. Even an idiot is right sometimes. Nope, that’s not packaged right enough. That’s a no-brainer, a given, a little life-trope that turns out true every once in a while. But a clock? There it is. And there it went, floating, dubbing out loud across the back of the front of my skull. Just right enough.

And I suppose a broken clock is right twice a day. Two minutes of every twenty-four hours it gets to chime and cry like the town drunk just how right it really is. I love that—even something as useless as a broken clock can be valued for a slice of the time-pie every light cycle. That feels familiar.

I’m a broken clock. That must be it. Obsessed with the passing of time and the remembering of it, the jotting of it, the recording of it all, like I’m falling down and down and trying to grab the straws, the rope, the handles, anything that can anchor the world for just a minute. Pause it all and let me breathe. But it doesn’t. It just ticks on, ever on and on, and leaves me behind and I feel it. But it drags me all the same. Kicking and screaming and reeling out, living in the past and the future but always accidently existing in the present. So I’m preoccupied by time. The idea of it, the passage of it, the forming of new times and the graveyard of old ones. Troubled and haunted, walking through it all the same.

It’s seamless and perfect. Everything the same, like a row of blank dominoes lined up one after another, tipping and tipping with exact cadence. And they do, they always do and there’s not a damn thing you could ever do to pause ‘em, stop ‘em, switch ‘em all up. But even a broken clock can be in the right frame of mind twice every day. And I feel like a broken clock. Most of the moments I burrow in are strange and uncomfortable and seem to be ten minutes off, two hours behind or ahead. And twice a day I catch a weird little glimpse at what real life is like. I smile at it, wink at it, and I’m all right. But just for sixty seconds, and another sixty later on.

Two hits of exactitude doesn’t always feel like enough. Sometimes when I’m smearing all over the place and neurotic and wrung, I wish I could be right all the time. Wish I could feel in place, in time. But then I’m reminded that I’m three minutes off, and the right digits might sweep by soon, but they’ll disintegrate again and I’ll sit and tap my knees in the sunshine and imagine rain. The leaves will blow down and scatter across the pavement like dust and dog hair in the corner of the living room, and the world will die and remind you it’s dying.

I’ll weep for it, but those tears won’t be for the crunched and husked-out leaves or rotting bark, nor the trash and litter that blows around. They’ll be for me and my misplaced stake in time. Out of time, on top of it, below it, confused by it, lost in it and away from it. And I sure am. But it ticks on and I keep looking at my shoes and tapping my heels like Dorothy and thinking I’ll get wisped away home and be planted back in the present moment. It ticks on and the sun breaks east every morning and I miss it more often than not. And the sun drowns out west every night and I miss it more often than not. In these days, the days I’m lacerated out of and only feeling right twice a day. A hundred and twenty seconds of feeling like I’m exactly where I need to be.

Maybe that’s how it’s all designed. To be awkward and contorted while I tie my legs in knots under the table and fold my arms up tight and think about tomorrow and tonight and this morning. Still sitting and trying to ignore the hard chair under my butt, and thinking about my bed and pillow and couch and everything but the one I’m sitting on. Still sitting. Marinating in my displacement.

They say that God is always with you, always hovering around your body like a ghost and they use the word “always”. Always is no simple stretch—it’s before, it’s a century ago, ten years in the future, infinite, no start no end in sight. It’s time, the ticking clock. Always. Maybe God is time, the present time, present moments that never leave, always with you. They say that God is always with you and I think he’s the present moment. And that’s the one we’re in. God or spirit, or whatever mystical force, elephant-nosed goober you believe in. Maybe you just believe in time, and maybe that’s enough. And I’m out of time—not run out, but outside of it. And boy, am I ever. The leaves fall and my foot presses the gas pedal and I’m not there for any of it, even though my eyes and feet are.

It’s a lot easier to chime on about what you should do, than it is to actually do it. I can scream all about carpe diem and write it, scrawling the ink and injecting it like a drug into my veins. High and up and rosy to the idea, and I know I am. I’ve got a fortune cookie paper taped to the space above the keys on my laptop and it says, “Your power is in your ability to decide.” Seize the day, you bumbling, broken baboon. But I’m outside time like Billy Pilgrim and I feel that and I never even saw bombs drop or hid away in the cellar. Life’s already enough to feel nixed out the river of time. And nixed I am, traumatic and dazzled by the stars.

There’s one-thousand four-hundred and forty minutes in a day. And I’m only feeling rested and sturdy for two of them. Right and correct and straight up and down, like the human I should be. Two minutes of fine-time, when all the stalks add up and the melt around my skull doesn’t seem so removed. When the soup doesn’t leak, when the thoughts run glassy like the bend at the top of a waterfall. When it’s all pure like a fresh snow on the mountain side and the deer trot across and smile and wink and it’s lovely. When sun is bright and the sky is cloudless and cyan and a jet soars overhead and people move from one place to another and it’s all churning like earthen butter. Two minutes are right, two minutes I feel the wonder of the planet reach out and worm it’s tendrils around the folds of my mind and I shudder from the intimacy.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

And that’s me. I suppose it’s better to be a broken clock. Maybe I don’t work, but at least I can be right twice a day. Even if it’s only for sixty seconds and they pass me by and I wave goodbye, and wait for the next one to come. I suppose it’s better to have a bracket of time to wish for, than to be the dirt on the earth and have no idea about it. Tread on, kicked up, stirred around and dug into. At least I can do the digging and maybe that’s just it. Dig it all up like life and look for a hundred and twenty seconds to root into. Dig it up like videos and rabbit holes and be there for it because it’s sure happening and not stopping any time soon.

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In this week’s installment of Bedletter, I’m diving back into the discussion I had with Ashley Bernardi! Ashley is the author of the new book, Authentic Power: Give Yourself Permission to Feel. This is the second half of my interview with her, where we continue peeling apart ways we can get primal with our meltdowns, how Ashley’s FEEL framework can be used to navigate difficult emotions, how she has taken on the task of rebalancing her body after intense trauma, and what she learned from speaking to over 20 experts in her research for this book.

In Ashley’s new book, set to release on December 7th, 2021, she lays out the process behind her battles with depression, anxiety, addiction, and illness, and details how those very things have helped her grow into the inspired person she is today.

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Authentic Power: Give Yourself Permission to Feel: https://www.amazon.com/Authentic-Power-Give-Yourself-Permission/dp/195141232X

Ashley’s Website: https://ashleybernardi.com/

Ashley’s Podcast: https://nardimedia.com/podcast/

Ashley’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bookerbernardi/

This week, I’m joined by Ashley Bernardi! Ashley is the author of the new book, Authentic Power: Give Yourself Permission to Feel. She’s also the founder of her own media company, Nardi Media, and has previously worked as a veteran news booker with CBS, energyNOW!, and the Washington Post Live—just to name a few.

Ashley is the survivor of previous trauma and post traumatic stress disorder, as well as Lyme disease. Through her struggles, defeats, successes, and triumphs, she has formulated a perspective on life that is incredibly positive, realistic, and insightful. Not to mention completely contagious, once you get to talking with her! In her new book, set to release on December 7th, 2021, she lays out the process behind her battles with depression, anxiety, addiction, and illness, and details how those very things have helped her grow into the inspired person she is today.

This is the first part of our conversation, where we talk about the premise of her book, her connections and accomplishments, and how she “gets primal with her meltdowns”. Below are the links to Ashley’s book, as well as links to her podcast and social media if you are interested in connecting with her.

Subscribe to Bedletter: https://bedletter.substack.com/welcome

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Authentic Power: Give Yourself Permission to Feel: https://www.amazon.com/Authentic-Power-Give-Yourself-Permission/dp/195141232X

Ashley’s Website: https://ashleybernardi.com/

Ashley’s Podcast: https://nardimedia.com/podcast/

Ashley’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bookerbernardi/

I hate binging, and yet that behavior still worms its way into my life at times. My most recent slip came at the hands of Netflix’s new hit, Squid Game. This week I’m yapping about the dangers of binging T.V., why I enjoyed Squid Game so much, and how great South Korean movie and show productions are.

Along with that, as I round one of the final corners of writing my book, I’ve been editing the early chapters in tandem. As I plan to have the main meat of the book finished by the end of 2021, the editing process has been a roller coaster. Some days I’m left liberated and excited about what I’ve omitted and what I’ve corrected. Other days, those editing decisions are much more difficult and maddening. Overall, the process of writing my book has been incredible—proving to me that I’m capable of big projects with intensely challenging aspects.

Finally, I’m wrapping up this episode with a yucky little bow—my previous video game addiction. As you may have read in a recent column I wrote, I’ve been dealing with some inclinations to dive back into gaming. With a newfound ability to exercise some self-control, I’m scared of touching one of my bigger weaknesses again. I don’t want to fall into the cycle of binging, and yet, I feel that I should be able to balance my game time appropriately. It’s an ongoing battle. And yes, that is an old picture of me with long hair. No shame, those locks were beautiful.

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Hurricane Ida was the second most destructive hurricane to make landfall in the United States, with winds reaching up to 149mph. While many civilians were busy evacuating or hunkering down in their homes, a large population of homeless people were outside trying to obtain shelter of their own. Some made it into hotels, apartments, hospitals, and homeless shelters, while others were forced to hide behind walls and use trees to shield from the wind. The homeless story of Hurricane Ida is an interesting one—filled with tales of incredible endurance, striking survival, and a deep love of home: New Orleans, Louisiana. Episode 61.Subscribe at bedletter.substack.com Follow Christian on Twitter

This is the final part in my two-part series on the homeless experience in New Orleans. In the first episode, we heard the stories of Cris, Michael, Earlene, Lo, and Adam. In this production, we hear the voices of Elton, Eric, Stephanie, and Lane. Each person had a different take on the storm, and in many cases, weathered it in their own way. Some received help from FEMA while others found it impossible to catch word of where to be at the right time.

The voices we hear in these two episodes allow those of us on the outside to gain a better understanding of what it’s like in the middle of an intense natural disaster. What’s more, we are able to get first-hand accounts of those that were on the front lines of it. We hear about how the locals helped the locals, how dark the city got during the power outages, how loud the raging wind and rain were, and how dangerous it was to navigate the storm. Having never been in a hurricane myself, I appreciated bridging the gap between what I imagine happening with what actually occurred.

A huge thank you to those who gave me their time and energy throughout this production. Your stories are real, your voices are heard. Most importantly, they are remembered.

For those interested in donating to the relief of people most seriously impacted by Hurricane Ida, I have included a link below. Donations go toward food, medical supplies, construction, and other items required by frontline workers.

Link to the donation fund: GlobalGiving Hurricane Ida Relief Fund

A huge thank you to Bedletter subscribers and those who listen and enjoy the newsletter and show! If you have a thought, critique, or question, please feel free to share that below in the comments section, or send me a message on Twitter!

The best way to support my work is by subscribing to my Substack. It helps keep the lights on, the ideas flowing, and the content coming! If you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe using the fancy button below. Thanks for everything!

Where do the homeless go in a natural disaster? Do they find shelter, are they cared for? The answers may surprise you. In this Voices production, Christian heads back out on the streets to gather the stories of homeless people who endured Hurricane Ida. In the most intense hurricane since Katrina, Ida left destruction in its wake. This is the first in a two-part series detailing the homeless experience through Ida. Episode 60.
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Unscripted, off-the-record, brain-dumping fun in this solo flight. Christian rants about Covid-19 vaccination passports in New Orleans, his experience hanging out with the homeless for the upcoming 'Voices' release, what hurricane damage looks like in-person, how his book is coming along, and why it's always good to get new shoes. Episode 59. 
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Anam, a citizen living in Lahore, Pakistan, provides detailed insight on how the Pakistan government has handled the Covid-19 pandemic. Anam is an e-learning social studies teacher who records lectures for Pakistani students and uploads them to YouTube. In this episode, Anam and Christian discuss the restrictions and policies born out of the Coronavirus in Pakistan, whether or not she approves of them, and what the long term impact may be. Episode 58.
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