Illegal Pete & a bucket of backstory
or when life is a madlib
The ecosystem of substack has shuffled the nouns in my life into a puzzling dreamscape.
You might find that too, as you’re reading a publication called the ‘virtual latte’ which speaks rarely about coffee and more frequently about the sorts of things you might enjoy over one - deep thoughts, casual observations, some how-to, and some nagging bits of inquiry.
What started three years ago this week at the request of friends and fellows who wished to read more of my writing more regularly (while paying my utility bill - thank you!) has expanded and migrated, and now plays in this interconnected ecosystem whereby various other writers recommend the [virtual latte] to their own audiences. Readers with whom I’ve never crossed paths, or streams, but who willingly (or accidentally) click ‘subscribe’ and land here.
Most of those of you who have been here from the start know me - as in - you’ve seen me cry or rant or teach in person, sometimes all at once. A dozen of you messaged me last Sunday when your inboxes were bare and you were unsure if I’d been snared by procrastination or a birth or (in fact) the paralysis of someone new entering the chat.
I know what (or at least how) to write for the core group of you - those who poked me Sunday morning, as though you’re the few in the front row whose faces are lit by the light bleeding over from the stage. The endearing crowd at the front of the back of the orchestra section - my staunchest supporters. If you’re an unfamiliar, the story is the same, and I supposed I’d love to hear how I wound up in your inbox, and more about why you’re still reading if you’ve gotten this far. The familiars say that even though I write about things that aren’t them, they relate. They hear my voice. The words stitch together something that felt unfinished or unresolved. The words softened the tension in the melody.
And now there’s a spotlight on a blast from my past - Pete, a guy I’ve never met, the icon of a burrito place born in Boulder - a name that evokes pirate themes and ramshackle whimsy. Which somehow gave me pause and landed me frozen and looking sideways over my shoulder like the tiny bunny that has some bizarre karma with my dog.
If you’re real, and reading this, Pete, I’ll say I’ve been a fan for 20 or so years. For a decade of my life, when I was adrift in the seas of post-divorce life I would find my way to Boulder and then occasionally pop up to Fort Collins, with a burrito in hand for my brother the foodie, who thinks yours are the best.
I don’t know my brother as well as I ought to, given that it’s just the two of us, and that our upbringing was profoundly strange, and that we’re only five years apart in age. Who else understands the ritual of unwrapping a new box of Lipton tea - a monumental ‘all hands’ activity whereby the Kwinns (doctors and otherwise) are summoned to the kitchen to inhale the sweet aroma of orange and black pekoe as the cellophane is pulled back?
Who else can navigate the needlessly complex naming conventions for all things valuable or quirky, and the context of the 70’s era shows from which they all seem to originate, like the compost tumbler named Rover? Who else understands me when I get going fast, with a mouth full of Oreos and the vocabulary of a modern mediocre polyglot raised in the context of Klingon?
He’s alive and kicking, and so am I, and yet there is an invisible forcefield between us. This happens, I’m afraid, to most of us. That closer-ness can feel impossible in the most probable of relations. But I know his order at Illegal Pete’s, and so this follow feels less random and more like god whispering.
[Not the vengeful bearded god, but the tricksy Bala-Krisna type].
I’m sure Pete got here because he follows Matthew…
who writes a blog about food in Colorado Springs, although I know him because we swashbuckled together in the back of a pickup truck for peanuts assembling sets for theatre plays at Colorado College.
I feel mildly reassured that the universe also connected me with the work of Erin Boyle this week, and she writes a blurb that’s (mostly) not about tea, despite the title.
Substack tells me she has 11K subscribers and a book coming out, and all I’ve got to offer is a midlife crisis shaped like a 43 year old on the path to medical school, which is rarely about coffee but does seem to resonate with friends and fellows and others whose current station in life is not precisely atop an empire they built with sweat and effort but rather a monument of endurance - a victory against the storms of life.
I write run-ons. I talk about hard things. I’ve taken to reading aloud for those of you who’d rather sip and drive, or walk, or whose eyes are as bleary as mine after a day of diphtheria diving. I smash the wisdom of genetics into the mystery of family, and mashup the whimsy of Star Trek with that of immunology - both places that touch into our insatiable urge to dance with the unknown, or explore beyond the edges.
BTW - diphtheria is a thing you absolutely do not want. Wow.
My most favorite substacks are not written by folks that I know, but folks the internet has dropped into my lap on late nights of doom scrolling in the depths of a dark sleeping bag.
I would do anything (other than move houses or states) to be Hanne’s neighbor. And while I’m confident that the sense of kindred-ness is not mutual, the unwillingness to relocate probably is, and so she’s an inbox treat.
And last week, my friend Jen Wilking joined the party with gorgeous, clear, useful words about stuff, and the stuff that makes it so.
The long and short (and rather long - sorry!) of it all, is that whether the internet or the universe is just random atoms tumbling along, or there is a bigger orchestrator of the cosmic symphony, I’m grateful for the opportunity to dive down the rabbit hole or through the looking glass when a spark of meaning catches the light and highlights a new way of thinking about things.
Onward,
K