Seligman, AZ – late night

My computer thinks it’s two thirty in the morning.

I can’t say I blame it, that’s about what it feels like to me, too.  That’s what it would be if I was at home.

Turns out it’s still eleven thirty last night here.  Arizona doesn’t believe in Daylight Savings Time.  Except on the Navajo reservation.  Makes you wonder if they celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. day on the reservation…

It has been brought to my attention that some of my updates rather imply that I’m not having a good time.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I’ve seen things that make me think of myself differently, things that have inspired me and humbled me, things that have fascinated me and terrified me.  I’ve met wonderful people that make me think about others differently, people who have impressed me and helped me, people who have angered me and entertained me.  I now better understand my life as a journey to some destination I’m constantly defining, and better understand the role I play in the journeys of others, and they in mine.

I don’t think anybody really know exactly what we mean by “finding” ourselves, but I’m willing to bet I’m on the right track.

Those parts don’t always come across in the updates.  For instance, this morning.  I was sitting at a picnic table, in the shade, beside the pool with a cool breeze behind me.  I was eating breakfast that they cooked right there beside the pool and talking to a couple who I camped beside in Santa Rosa, who ended up having breakfast next to me in Gallup.  We just talked about all kinds of crap, laughed and joked, then wished each other luck on whatever came next.

What a fantastic way to start a day.  But it’s not the kind of thing that would normally make it into an update.

I’ve thought of several kinda flip reasons for this: I like writing funny updates and it’s easier to be funny when there’s something or someone outrageous going on, I can’t (and you wouldn’t want me to) talk about every little thing that happens, it really wasn’t that big a deal.

But I also thought of a real reason.  That breakfast is a part of me now.  I want to hold onto it and see it, smell it, twist it around in my hands and rub my face it in sometimes.

Then there are some other, oh, let’s call them situations, which I’m not so interested in ever taking out again to play with.  There are some situations I want to get rid of, to push out there away from me.

I want to get them, literally, out of my system.

I’m out here surrounded by people who’ve known me for nine minutes.  And that’s assuming we have a particularly intimate relationship, say, server/patron.  The normal outlets people have for blowing off steam are denied me.  So I sometimes do it in these updates.

I don’t mean to harp on bad stuff, but sometimes when I’ve driven for four hours at thirty-seven miles an hour not knowing if I was going to be walking before I got to the next exit and wondering if I was going to be letting down friends who were counting on me to be somewhere at a certain time or if I was destroying something that belongs to someone else and being thousands of miles away from everything and everyone I’ve ever turned to when I needed help…

Well, sometimes when I feel like that I write an update.

I don’t mean to overlook the good stuff, but sometimes when I’ve stood on top of blues mesas and looked out to where the world ends and picked up something that has made it through millions of years just to be here with me right now and I can see details of color and light that go smaller and smaller and then look around at those same colors spilling out in every direction for as far as I can see and everything is magic and wonder and possible…

Well, sometimes when I feel like that, writing an update doesn’t seem so urgent.

Don’t worry about me.  I’m having the time of my life, in every sense of the phrase.