Driving across the state of South Dakota on I-90, it’s misleading to think you’re pretty near anything.If you’re wearing the visor of a new Detroit Tigers cap pulled low over your eyes, you can look like you’re grading papers when you’re really napping.
A raucus shuffle of YES, Jimi Hendrix, Howard Jones, Pink Floyd, and Steppenwolf,
cranked loud enough to make the windows rattle, makes good road music and entertains over-the-road truckers.Jimi Hendrix was hot.
Gyoto Monks Gregorian chant does not make good road music and can result in sleepy cross-lane drifting.
I was hot at 20. If Jimi Hendrix and I had met, let’s say a chance encounter in Omaha where his rig broke down and the part wouldn’t come in for three days, and we’d fallen in love then ran off to get married in Vegas, we would have had a troubled, volatile life and gorgeous children. Super-hot.
Wall Drug is a must-see. Once.
Time is a phenomenon of layers. At any given mile marker I pass on I-90, someone I know will be sleeping, directing a choir, dying, falling in love, giving birth, dancing, walking a dog, shoveling snow, planning a parade, eating truffles, moving a piano, playing a piano, driving north out of Louisiana, recording a new song, writing a new poem, choosing a college, or facing divorce.
At home on the range, the deer and the antelope do not play. They hang out in the shade, comparing antlers.
I wonder where my old scrapbook of concert tickets is…in a Rubbermaid tub in the basement? Did I see YES 4 or 5 times? Did I see It’s a Beautiful Day, or only dream I saw them?
Car clutter expands in direct proportion to the number of Interstate miles traversed.
I’m grateful for my job, my friends, my minivan mobile sofa, Mini Pearl. I’m grateful for Ray, my mom, our kids, dogs, parrots, peacocks, barn cats, even my three brothers. I’m grateful for shifting clouds of migrating snow geese. I’m grateful that sometimes love is so big it splits the heart like too much water in a ripe plum.
Dorothy was right…there’s no place like home.
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I'm glad to hear you had happy travels and time enough for contemplation and appreciation. "Time is a phenomenon of layers." I like that line.
ReplyDeleteTime is a strange thing, or a quite simple one, I have yet to decide. Perhaps a decision isn't even necessary. Perhaps I won't decide.
I've been letting go of time lately, which is a different approach for me. I've always had a definite modus operandi with Ol' Man Time. I used, measured it, scanned it, planned it, supposed it's course, and thus, was enslaved by it's incessant ticking and my own self-engineered, imagined and expected milestones. More recently, (as "time" would illustrate) I've just let it go and watched it scamper, hesitantly at first, and then scurry off like a released animal.
Now, when I compare two points in time, i.e my childhood and my present adulthood, it's begun to lose it's step-by-step sequential pattern for me. It's more dreamlike, more enveloping and less linear. After all, it has always simply been the present, and that's all that really exists.
For me, the road is like a vibrant meditation. The act of moving, traveling, exploring has kept it's hooks fast within me during my adulthood. I've always suspected myself a past-life gypsy. What's around the bend? What lies within and beyond those mountains? What promise does the undiscovered hold? I'm curious, exhilarated and bound to it's unfolding destiny.
My wanderlust is less potent now. I can watch a tree in perfect silence and feel deeply at home. I watch a tree move in the rain and wind, and the eyes watching it don't really matter. Nor does the location or condition of the tree or observer, the interpretation of the event, or the outcome. What matters is that the tree sways and the eyes see. What matters is the force that shudders the branches to life and bears witness via another expression of that same magical source. All forms of life are like dead leaves lying on the ground. The breeze that animates the leaves to flutter about the grass is life itself. Don't focus on the leaves, but understand the source of the movement... the energy that facilitates all being.
That being said, the point of my reply was to say, "welcome home" and to let you know that wherever we might travel or reside, the same wind coaxes us both into flight. We're not wind-blown leaves on opposite sides of the yard, we're the wind itself.
Or, perhaps I'm a bit off the mark, and those fancy gentleman from Kansas we're more accurate in their summation of our existence... "all we are is dust in the wind - oooohhh, ohhh, ohhh, ahhhhhh ah ah."
And here's where I tie it all back together; your blog mentioned seeing Yes in concert. Well, I have also seen Yes in concert, and guess what band opened for them...
...Kansas. Those fancy bastards themselves.
Love,
Ryan
P.S. - Please forgive my liberal use of the comma along with any other blatant molestations of acceptable grammar.
A beautiful reverie of your own, Ryan. I done gooder.
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