Treasure Hunting for Fast Sneakers
Email sent 9.15.2024 | 1 yr, 11 months, 3 days
Hello Sassies,
We are on a treasure hunt. Every day all the time, awake or dreaming. And I have a feeling we’ll be hunting for now and evermore, so it’s definitely a pirate's life for me. It’s often while laying in bed trying my best to remember my dreams, or better yet falling back into them, where the treasure hunts begin. I’ve learned quickly my favorite hang is this familiar mysterious place between. I can find him here and there’s a fuzzy knowing peace about it. That is before the harder edged agenda begins once my feet hit the floor.
It's in the dark where the veil is thinnest and our visits a whisper secret. I pine for the peace of good search while in the quiet of my mind. It’s akin to being alone when the sun sets without a chatty friend in sight, while I'm afloat in warm water ears just below the surface, or sitting on the floor wrapped in rainbows at Miles’ alter.
The hunt evolves and becomes quite exciting when treasures can be found in the harsh light of a normal day. While living in the graphic novel of real life, hard pants and all the irritating tasks between. Some days, when the heart is racing right, the hunt will have an adventurous Indiana Jones energy. I’ll go searching under Miles’ bed or closet or dive deep into his digital footprint before it has a chance to disappear. It’s daring, exhausting and surprising. Plunging into the world Miles left behind to see if there is a trace of him I haven't experienced yet. As it turns out, these hunts tend to be quite rewarding. I always find something and sometimes I can share the golden plunders with you.
A few months back I found this recording from 2019. Miles in a word spinning session with his dear love Bella and their friend Aurora while they were living in Tahoe practicing how to be adults. To hear his voice. To find his voice! It had me suspended in pride and wonder and, as you would imagine, I’ve listened to this song an embarrassing amount of times. Harkening back to my proud, peak dance-mom behavior, but in the privacy of my own private groundhog day.
While transcribing the lyrics, and hoping I captured them correctly, I recognized once again that part of this treasure hunt will be to bring forward new pieces of the puzzle of this child. This wise boy was attached to the universe in magic ways and now, with much of his guidance, I am convinced he still is. I don't think he will mind but I have named his song “Soul Soldier”
Christmas 2020 Miles received his beloved OP-1 synthesizer and Christmas of 2021 his less than pocket sized speaker from Grandma. These were key components for his timeless canoodling either solo or with his musical right hand man, Edge. At the time of his death, he was all grown up at 22, working his cafe job, loving and living with his family and his dear Bella. He seemed to spent every waking hour otherwise with his friends, smoking gobs of weed and ingesting whatever brain tickling mind expanding druggos and herbs du jour were needed to kick start their minds. They were at the beaches, in the woods, crashing fields, talking shop, in his room or at Edge’s studio making music.
For most of 2022, Miles and Edge invested buckets of their creative energy together, afloat in their ability to ignore the confines of time. They'd free fall while building their collaborative music in the dream of making this debut album! Nes Pas “in recent future”, their work, their band. Last week, on my treasure hunt for meaning, I happened to stumble upon it.
We all continue to process and live with our personal versions of grief and what life is like without Miles. Including the collateral loss felt by all the ripples in between. One can imagine how many dedicated heartbreaking hours it took for Edge to complete, produce and release this album to the wilds. A project of the heart unimaginable and a feat to be so very proud of.
If you’d like to treasure hunt for Miles’ voice, he’s the first voice on “the good get 8” and “el lechero”. The rest is up to you to find. Buy it on Bandcamp!
On my hunt, alongside these treasures from Miles, there is of course the endless quest to find my sea legs in this new life altered by our loss. Amongst the many resources I continue to explore, I attended a much anticipated grief retreat.
“I like your sneakers” she said. I looked down and had forgotten that I picked out the most fly pair for the occasion. Multi Colored Adidas Gazelles with great magenta, teal and a pop of white. I don’t blame her one bit for liking them and this particular pair actually makes me run faster.
It's amazing what a complement will do and how we become the simplest of humans when giving or receiving them. Suspended in the grace of the moment, it’s an unavoidable feeling that is good for the core. Compliments open a fleeting portal and a sense of belonging with that person. I looked at her and thought “and I like your face”. Which thankfully, or regrettably, I didn't say out loud. Not sure what the etiquette is at a grief retreat, day one especially.
But as it turns out this was the beginning of a friendship unavoidable and graciously welcomed. My sneakers, her face, our hearts so tangled in the dark pond of our stories. On our first day we were gently dropped into the sieve of 3 sizes and divided into break out groups of loss, Spouse/Sibling, Parent and the unmentionable Child loss. We both sat in the unmentionable group.
As the weekend progressed, our collective tales of loss were eventually revealed, no matter the sieve you passed through. Together, our stories weren’t forced out of us since the words are always waiting at the cliff of our lips, ready to jump. We are welcomed here and this was the place for the words to tumble off freely. Our drive to speak up in these smaller groups, at the dinner table or from behind the mic when all 50 of us present in the conference room, was a welcomed rarity compared to our usual audience. Our usual lives, where the tales are waiting like a dog at the door with an absentee owner too busy to let us out.
The retreat was scheduled without much pause. 8 am - 9ish pm daily with only 15 minute pee breaks and 1 hour meals to actually hang with your fellow grievers. It was during the short breaks, the pedestrian time passers, that conversations of gravity trickled out through bathroom stall doors, or walking the lunch line like school kids and finding your place to sit. It’s there that you would find out about the darkest hours of others and because our pain was theoretically equalized, we could then pivot to a raunchy joke in a flash with these special people.
Not everyone felt the propensity towards levity together. Personality is personality no matter how much shit pain has bound you together. The quiet ones stayed quiet and the loud ones got louder. I personally haven't felt this light in the heart amongst a group of strangers in a very long time.
This place was more of a conference setting than a retreat and like any conference the food tasted as inspired as the lighting and our name tags were gaudy and bold. But at this place the emotional playing field was leveled. The entrance exam passed with flying collective colors by all. I have never cried so much over the tender stories of others, igniting the ability to exercise my natural empathy which had been mostly incoming only as of late. We had experienced what others can only imagine is the worst possible thing so now we could “plop on the couch” relax amongst our tangled torment.
I couldn't help but think about Miles and his handful of strategically placed teenage years at Cottonwood Gulch. In his words, he entered camp a talker and left a listener. Even awarded “most transformed” (or something like that) in his last year there.
I certainly entered this retreat a talker and one day I could only hope that I would evolve to the listener that Miles became. Just like summer camp, at the end we exchanged our contacts and long hugs and hopes of staying in touch. Are we off to another retreat again or shall we cut straight to the martinis at the hotel bar? Time will tell.
On the eve of this retreat, I camped in our beloved VW to greet the full Hunter’s moon alone. Staring at the sky for the stars to answer my questions and wrapped in the unabashed beauty of being alone in the outdoors. “Why does it seem that all the answers are here?” I thought to myself.
Yet it was walking in through the doors of the lack luster hotel the next day, looking for my friends I had yet to meet and on the ultimate treasure hunt for answers, that I learned the stars are everywhere, as long as I keep searching for them. Wishing always that David and Izzy were in my pocket, while knowing that Miles always is. We are all hunters and gatherers no matter how pedestrian or grand the pursuit. I think we should all strive to reach for the “make me run fast” sneakers, god forbid we miss a compliment waiting in the wings.
I love you all, we love you all and thank you for making it to the bottom of this email.
Big juicy gross hugs,
~ Laura, Izzy, David and Miles
Importamt! It’s so exciting to add Nes Pas to the Create tab on Miles’ website! PLEASE SEND ME YOUR MILES INSPIRED CREATIONS AND I WILL ADD YOURS TOO.
