No Encore

After the last song of the set, the bass guitarist raised his beer bottle to salute the fans and Ra Ra Rasputin left the stage. The crowd at the Black Cat applauded wildly.

"Encore!" someone yelled after a while, urging the local band to return.

Since the dawn of rock 'n' roll the formula has gone as follows:

1) Band leaves.

2) Audience goes crazy.

3) Band comes back.

This ritual apparently makes the band feel loved and appreciated. I like feeling these too, so who am I to argue? We make a lot of noise and they return. Our roles are scripted and ridiculous. Predictable. The songs are a surprise, the encore is not. If something enjoyable becomes predictable, does it lose its appeal? The cookies at every office meeting. The guy who buys his girlfriend a single red rose every Friday evening. Like fans cheering in the dark, the girlfriend acts surprised when she is given what she has come to expect.

"Oh come on," I told Eric after several minutes of solid clapping. My palms were starting to hurt. "This is just silly."

Then something entirely unexpected happened. The house lights came on. The show was over. We discussed it on the way to the U Street Metro. There had been no encore. Eric thought it was sort of a refreshing change. After all, shouldn’t it be special? Maybe…Except when you expect something which is taken away, you mostly feel frustrated. Open the fridge to discover someone drank the last of the orange juice. Your friend bails on your coffee date when you’ve got good news to share. When it happens to me I can’t help but feel a little disappointed.

In April, I started a co-op group house in Petworth, in Northwest D.C. I’d lived in three shared houses in a year and had gone to over two dozen housing interviews. There’s nothing like being judged by a group of strangers who warn they’ll steal your food, explain they like their TV on as "background noise" or ask how you feel about "loud sex".

My cunning plan was to bypass the whole system by creating my own friendly, shared house. I found a four-bedroom rental off Craigslist and attempted to root out the most interesting, fun housemates the internet had to offer. Food was to be communal with housemates taking turns cooking. I wanted to live with progressive, environmentally conscious folks who were looking for a home and not just a place to crash. I wanted potential friends. And no TV.

The four of us and a dog moved in after the cherry blossoms had blown off the trees around the Jefferson Memorial. In the spring, we had house dinners and friends over. My housemates played music. We went out for drinks. I had helped start something new and was feeling pretty good about myself. So good in fact, I decided to start dating again, which incidentally is another interview process, but with more alcohol.

With the oppressive, swampy summer, our house started to get grimy. Mice appeared. Dog fur piled up in clumps on the hardwood floor. Frustrated by the mess, I started nagging the dog owner. A superb cook, he was frequently too busy to clean up after himself. Our friendship devolved into clipped, functional conversation. I changed tacks and tried to make peace with the dirty kitchen. We bought fancy electric mouse traps. The rodent situation improved, but the dog owner seemed to still expect my rants even after I learned to hold my tongue. Towards the end of September, he announced he was moving out.

Fall and a fresh start. In Rock Creek Park the leaves started changing color and we had a new opportunity to shape the culture of our house. We scrubbed and swept. Up went the ad on Craigslist. In came a flurry of emails from prospective housemates. This time we wanted "clean and responsible," not just "fun and interesting". The result was Nancy, our young but poised, thoughtful new housemate.

The other night, Eric and I came into the kitchen to make ourselves sandwiches. It was late and we were too hungry to cook. We were surprised to find steaming brown rice with a delicious tomato okra stew. Nancy had cooked and made enough for everyone.

"I could get used to this co-op thing," Eric said, taking a bite. So could I, I thought. So could I.

Joshua Tree

Ask any cactus. Times are hard and when the rain comes, you'd better soak it up fast. In the Mojave Desert, barrel cacti have accordion folds which bevel as the plants swell with water.

On a sunny day in late December, Mark and I went on our first hike in Southern California's Joshua Tree National Park. We saw agaves with curled whiskers and silver cholla cacti. My immediate favorite was the park's namesake. To me, Joshua trees looked a bit like coral à la Dr. Seuss. In the mid-nineteenth century, Mormons traveling westward to Utah, likened their branches to the biblical story of Joshua reaching his arms to the sky in prayer. As always, you see what you want to see.

"How's the trail up ahead?" I asked the lone man hiking towards us.

"Nothing spectacular," he shrugged.

Why was the man underwhelmed? Mark and I got a kick out of speculating. Could the rest of the trail be completely featureless? Unlikely. Maybe the hiker's buddy bailed on him. Maybe he had blisters. Perhaps the desert scenery had lost its novelty. One thing was certain - as the third person we saw on the trail in four hours, his gripe was not with overcrowding.

We hiked each day of our vacation and as I became more familiar with Joshua Tree's giant rock formations and wiry shrubs, my admiration for the harsh land only intensified. We had a staggering view of the parched valleys from atop Ryan Mountain. Another day we scrambled over boulders in a dry riverbed, eating lunch perched on a massive rock. Inspired, I attempted to capture the landscape with watercolors. Mark turned his boulders into a monster.

Sunsets were glorious explosions of peach and crimson, but for me, the dread that followed was palpable. Darkness. As soon as night fell, the temperature plummeted to just above freezing. We assumed comically traditional gender roles: Mark would make a fire while I got dinner started on the camping stove. Even wearing multiple layers with four shirts and a fleece under my jacket, soon it became too cold to be awake. It seems winter isn't really the best time of year for camping, even in Southern California.

I was struck by my profound emotional shift between night and day. Days were filled with good conversation and a feeling of extreme privilege to be in such a beautiful part of the world. Nights were long and challenging. However, we were rewarded with apocalyptic sunrises, viewed through the opened tent door, swaddled in our sleeping bags like caterpillars.

Most visitors to America's national parks experience the swaths of protected land from the comfort of their cars. At 19, I drove through Yellowstone, my “hiking” largely limited to wheelchair accessible walkways. Obviously we get more out of an experience when we interact at ground level. To me this means pushing myself to chat with locals in a village cafe instead of taking photos from the safety of the bus. But I wonder if this philosophy is even more relevant for subtle, natural ecosystems. Driving, you see Joshua trees and outlandish rock formations. On the trail, you notice coyote footprints in the sand and bite marks in cacti.

When I am more aware of my surroundings, I feel present in the moment and this often makes me happy. However, each night camping I became a cold, sad animal, unable to remind myself that this was a temporary state of being.

We had already been asleep in the tent for hours when folks at the neighboring campsite started yelling.

"Happy new year!"

Such welcome words. I know I'm not the only one who was glad to say goodbye to 2009. Just like a trying night in the desert, this too shall pass. When times are difficult, as they continue to be for so many of us, perhaps we need to find ways to keep slowly growing in the sun's warmth and when the rain comes, be ready to soak it all in.