sounds familiar

Made it back to the sea today. Trying again, for maybe the fifth time, to read Ulysses. We’ll see how it goes.

Atlantic ocean Delaware. Last night in a sleepy Walmart parking lot near Hershey Pennsylvania. Lovely little campground on the dunes. Black tank was overfull on the way here, belching whiffs of sewage. RV feels perfectly level, hammock is strung out back between two trees.

Took a bloody mary to the beach, walked past an old WWII fort. Temperatures in the high seventies. Twenty-three stations over the air, good old westerns abd vintage sci-fi. Beautiful pink and orange sky at sunset, meteor showers tonight.

“Relaxed at a cellular level,” that’s what she said and I feel it to be true. I will it to be true when it might not be, for that matter.

Shrugs.

I want to learn to be removed from decisions.

Take my brain out of it. Discernment by feeling, heeding some tug that I can’t convey in pros or cons or spreadsheets. To sway with the leaning of my body, bones and blood and bile, to resonate forward and to follow the pull of my heart.

It’s shit-hard.

And people will make fun of you because it’s not logical and it’s irrational and what are you thinking you stupid hippie.

And it’s scary because I don’t know how to do it and I don’t even really trust it in my brain, it’s just a feeling, after all.

Sometimes you climb and you climb and then you’re at the top and then of course to move forward you have to go back down again. But maybe it’s a bowl, a caldera, and it’s up again in any direction to keep moving forward.

So which up feels right?

Hugs.

I think we are good guests.

We are aware of the space we consume, and endeavor to contain, or at least pick up after, our sprawl. We take the washing after receiving the charity of food, doing our best to divine what goes where in foreign cabinets and drawers, getting things right enough if not perfect.

Adopt the air of the house, drop-in with the routine and work to not upset, as much as us possible being in some other’s castle, the normal goings on. We stay clean, both body and occupied space. Listen 2:1 to talk, ask questions and draw-out stories wanting to be told instead of only regaling with our own.

Compliment the wine. Appreciate the local. Smile over shared interests, delicately unearthed via a fishbone path of light interrogation. Inquire after history of the things aland people and places. Genuine, all – not a putting-on.

In hopes that, upon leaving, it’s not just us that enjoyed our time.

Peace.

Morning.

Trying to go back to sleep but I’m awake. Went to bed too early, now I’m up. The light outside is grey light, all around, growing brighter. I enjoy watcyh it happen slowly, the day turning on.

It’s so comfortable in bed. I feel good. I smell myself and I smell good. Clean still from last night’s shower, but now with a night’s worth of my own smell on me for the better. Clean skin and the oils of being alive. Smells familiar, like my dad’s pillowcase when I was young.

The temperature is right. Colder than desirable if not abed, but perfect to be covered by the comforter and nestled into sheets and mattress. I like the way it all feels against my skin. Warm and covering while the light still builds outside. I’m looking for deer in the forest out the window. They were there yesterday evening.

Almost enough grey light now to read by. That’s what I’m going to do. Even before making coffee. Just stay here in bed and read.

Good morning.

I think maybe my notion of what this actually is changed, that’s why it seems like we’re partly misaligned.

At first, in the beginning, it was a journey to us both. A circular thing, long and purposely wandering yes but with a start and a finish overlapping in space. An out-and-back, a break.

Somewhere along the way, though, I got to feeling more and more like this is a becoming. Independent, then, of the route through time and space. Started thinking not only about the where but the why.

Not that the where and when aren’t amazing enough. They’re incredible experiences. But what’s happening with the why all the while? I’ve been trying to share that, but it’s that new twist on purpose that’s been challenging to convey, I think.

Yes, we’re moving through time and space, experiencing the world and each other. We are, too, moving through phases of self, the former motion through outside space driving internal movement of the mind and soul. Right?

I know a break is different than a change. One goes back, one might not. One is safe and the other is scary. Take a severe enough break though, a time-out long enough, and you might forget why some things seemed so important and remember why others should’ve been more.

Taking, then, the still dawning why, would we expect what will be to look anything like what was? When we’re changed and still changing for all the where and when we’ve experienced? Right?

I think not, but I’m not saying it well.

So far over the hump now it feels all slippy and downhill. That gravity I’ve written about before pulls more strongly the closer we get to making that singular turn – westward again.

Dramatic, yes, since that turn is still some forty days away. Forty days more in the wilderness. To contemplate and relish, to consider and calculate. May they go slow, dripping languid with a full twenty four.

So much still to see and do, to breathe in and taste. Shirts yet to soak in sweat and shoes to muddy, bites yet to scratch and lament. Inches still to be had on this unruly beard.

Love.

Places like this, Dachau, the American Civil Rights Museum, where you see just what humankind can do to humankind for the silliest reasons, are always hard.

After three hours I was ready to be outside again, keenly aware, after all we’d just seen, of how easily I could just walk through a door and do so.

The weight of that evil sits on me, almost oppressive, like, somehow, I should bear part of the responsibility or own a stake in the shame. And that by simply being a part of Earth’s humanity, even all these years later, I’m personally charged with never letting such a thing happen again.

You find yourself wishing maybe you were part of a better tradition if humanity… not the same bunch of the Crusaders or Rwanda or Kosovo. But, this is the history we got.

Important, but hard. Hope the kids understand a little, realize how quickly evil human ideology can turn to evil deed.

Peace.