Regurgitation of My Twenties: Part 2

We Are Moving Backwards in Time, I Believe.

I’m considering a life of uneducated fuckery. A life full of Jacob’s Creek and a cabinet full of The Carpenters’ albums. I’m considering quitting. Like, everything. Job. Family. Friends. Society. I’m considering that all ropes have ends and that inevitably those ends fray. I’m considering becoming a fray. A lone thread separated from the illusion of oneness. I am considering the life of a headphone wire: tangled and lacking remorse.

I am thinking of taking off all of these silly garments, frumpy as they are, and running naked through the streets of my suburb: knotty, grease riddled hair of my body flapping in the air like the wet wings of a thousand tiny seagulls. I am thinking of filling the streets with my unbathed stench, stirring a hot wind like the burping of clams into the mouth of my Confederate neighbors. Maybe then they will keep their traps closed and their eyes on their own disheveled lawns.

I am considering food: I think I will simply live off of the sustenance of my own ego. The weight of which seems enough to last me the months to come.

I am considering sex, but it is exhausting.

I am considering a life of unbridled anger. Of release upon every rising tingle of a nerve. I am considering removing the wall from between my frontal lobe and the rest of my quivering brain. I am considering letting the neurotic jelly out onto the toast fields of Self.

I am considering the tides of great oceans and how they do not stop their rage for the sake of krill, or flounder or shark.

I am considering becoming the tide of my own life. Giving no way. Heeding no call. Carving my will into the sands of society like time ticking away the cliffs. I am considering the rose and its inevitable wilting. I am thinking I should like to wilt. To slowly cave in on myself. A life in slavery to the seasons but free of choice.

I am considering purchasing an Ikea table. Because waste is the sign of greatness and I have too long been conscious of decay. I have considered ignorance and found it blissful. Save for when consideration becomes contemplation. I have considered contemplation and found that casting shadows is the calling of the light. These realizations always cloud my judgment with clarity.

These realizations always cloud my judgment with clarity.

I am considering the oxymoron and whether to be offended by its connotations. What really, is an oxygen filled moron but the flopping of a human tongue in the wind?

I am considering that this is just an exercise of mind and finger and tongue. But I am also considering that there is an echo of truth in all the caves explored by men. That absurdity is the only gauranteed Truth. That Irony is the justice of a Soul’s gavel in the Court of Mind.

I’m considering that salt water is the result of infinity crying, or maybe of the sky’s laughter, or of two colliding stars — one made from the tragedy of atoms and one from the comedy of quarks.

I am considering that we are all moving backward in time. And if so, you must be so bored rereading this again. And again. And again.

Regurgitation of My Twenties: Part 1

Words, undigested in the bowels of my twenties scamper up my throat and leave tiny claw marks in my skin. The “Publish” button is my tums, my omeprezole, my tonic. I’m feeling obliged to choke down the past and move on. So I’ve flushed out these old yammerings for you peruse. Be kind. I was young and I did not know then, that you’d be listening.

There is a story in the shadows of these excerpts. But I’ll be honest with you: I’m too lazy to fill in the gaps.

Night-time. Or Several. Melbourne, Australia.

Once the page is open I will lose all inspiration. A damming of the mind through inaction. Waiting.

In the kitchen generational gaps are bridged over hot water and herbs. We have encased collaboration in cheesecloth and in the heat of conversation seep out sustenance. How many dreams have we painted with breath on the canvas between us?

A house of matriarchy without the political leanings. The walls adorned in femininity: flowers dried in mid-birth, paintings of one’s soul laid bare, a blouse curled upon the floor chants out the poetry of carelessness. When have we Men last gathered in the light of our nudity to discuss the softness of Gaia’s touch? When was it that we mistook our flesh for armor and set out fighting?

The architecture is from the 1920s. Hardwood floors scratched in ballroom rhythms. Windows placed with the sun in mind — Her smile casts pedal showers around the remnants of Spring and onto the walls. There is a lightness in the air as laughter echoes from the kitchen. I run my fingers down fabric meant for a new line of bespoke clothing. The patterns are made of sketches. The sketches are made of love. The love wrest in the palms of lust. The lust is a roar of freedom from the bramble vines of childhood in the city.

***

My heart sings of repose. It asks for release, rejoice, recreation: It seeks not quell and I have no balm of which to offer. I have restrained myself from dancing — we have only just met, you know.

Too often I have sought purpose in my prose. Staunched my creativity with this idea of need. Of finality. Of reason. The craft of words is my painters brush. I have engorged the rod of passion with the blood of youth and creativity.

***

Wherever in the world I run: The mountains they bring me love. Inspire me. Ignite in me a fire to create. To dance. To rejoice.

***

I have dissected the truth of myself in order to understand my follies. I have woven strands of symbols around the blankness of the page in order to capture the ethereal in corporeal bonds. My words are an attempt at creation. To play god is to dream. To sleep is die. I have sacrificed my passion for the illusion of stability.

***

Over the years my travels have led farther and farther away from home. In these distant places I am always overcome with a battling since of forlorn and belonging. Of loneliness and warmth.

I suppose this is not an unusual experience.

Love Is…

Love is a stirring. A whisper. A crash.
Love is an ache. A twisting. A balm.
Love is breath. Is the stretching of Self.
Love is Pause.

Love is winter branches holding on to summer leaves.
Love is the hesitation of lips.
Love is Falling.

Love is a spinning. A cry. A mess.
Love is an approach. A calling. Love is yearning bones.
Love is to depart.
Love is to Be.

Love is a collision of stars.
A symphony in the vacuum silence of space.
Love is a gap between notes. The crossing of paths.
Love is a spark between passing eyes.

Love is standing still. Waiting. Want.
A crackling fire in the winter of a lonely journey.
Love is the sheathing of swords. A midnight howl at moon.
Love is a tide. Waxing here. Waning there.
But love is Always. Endless.
Love is Awe.

A Night in Boulder (intersecting spirals)

The nostalgia of days past follows me like the sticky trail of slime behind a marathon of competitive slugs.  There is a lightness in the air as I remember the beautiful, elated joy that I felt upon first entering Boulder County.  There is a taste in the air here like saltwater taffy and acetaminophen.  I am lured like a rat to the flute and yet the caution of age hovers around my head like a like silver halo.  I ask the universe for peace.  To allow my path to merge once again with the path that I originally sought.  Asphalt and gravel; concrete and the plants that break free into highways and backroads like coyotes into chicken coops; like clay and glass intersecting at the moment of fusion, heat and transformation.  

Alone in the night of a campfire song I sit hovering fingers about a keyboard, dictating to my hands the sauntering thoughts of a man at once home again and homeless.  I am a bead of water in a river of oil.  I am the fingers of a little boy on the edges of high-end fabric, ever reaching and ever permanence evading.  Beyond the screen I am two eyes lit by the light of a headlamp in the midnight hour of  Nederland whereupon a group of free-soul, improve, gypsy voices of the dark bang out guitar chords and belt out lines to Old Songs.  Crickets in the midrange of my hearing drone on in their horny, dangerous wanting.  

I have become the observer of younger spirits.  Where once I found joy in the gathering of divine raucousness, I now find the joy of distant learning.  The sincerity of vocal tremors.  The sadness of a blue note.  The half-serious giggle of a scared girl behind a strong front.  I listen for stories and for the song of the wind.  I listen for the North wind blowing cold haikus onto fingertips a’fingering.

Life moves in spirals but there is no separation of x and y axis.  As the linear movement of our lives spins up and crosses over the previous arch, so too it intersects.  Geometry is a lie told to us at birth by our eyes and a prank ever continued by the brain. Don’t you feel my breath on your neck? Me, here, a thousand miles from you, sitting on a bench two-miles above sea level while you bathe in the beach sun and count letters in words until thoughts form and stories transform photons into the progression of time–oh, aren’t we so confused by our understanding of space!

A guitar chord rings against the steel hull of night, a shy girl belts a long note in a chain of rattling words like the sound handcuffs make around mice wrists in the cat jails of twilight. There is a moon rising above the tree line and in its shadow I see myself four years ago singing old-heart tunes with my chest and beating out love notes into stones with sticks and sage leaves.  

I recall the Night of Understanding.  When it occurred to me that I knew all the secrets of the universe.  I slept alone that night in a drunken fit and my sweat was the tears of Khalil Gibran and Rumi and twenty-seven Dalai Lamas and my dreams were of snakes with mouths of gold and teeth that sang opera arias between ssssllllitthers and snaps of the jaw.  I remember breathing in the confidence of Truth like the musk of lions and feeling my testicles jitter and jatter and timber and timbre in my scrotum like drunken disco goers who’ve run out of cocaine and forgotten their flight home. The body can tell you so much about the misgivings of the mind.  But tigers don’t often listen to the philosophy of deer, and the brain, like so many predators and CEOs does not care for the murmurings of middle toe apprehensions or the flutterings of stomach butterflies beating their wings against walls of muscle like cheese boxing with with a cheese grater until there is naught but dust left of their beauty and the echos of their frantic flight is lost in the gauntlet of acid pipes and chatterings.

The moral of this story is not to eat butterflies. They don’t spread like their namesake and they carry a poison in their veins called anxiety and when mixed with lust they form a chemical compound called doubt and doubt, like hydrogen, bonds quickly and easily with every chemical on the periodic table of neuroticism.  Lending a weight to the frantic spin of such things as envy, fear, agitation and love that is altogether unnecessary and impractical in a world where the lightest hearts touch the highest peaks.

The strumming of guitars has ceased. My mind has wandered me into the insomnia hours and I can hear the sun creeping up beneath the aspen trunks like the knee of a giant scraping against the sky. I think of spirals again and the way arms form appendage spirals around the chest when two people hug and how if you trace the boundaries of two pair of lips intertwined under the soft orange light of paris sky you will find neither a solid beginning nor end. Spirals, like pinecone spines or the life of a junkie, like chest hair in the morning or the wet swirl of lusting labia fuzz in the stalls of midnight clubs; like the extraction of screws from old wood or the tunnel of drunk eyes. Everywhere, lurking like shadows and singing like birdsong. It’s enough to make one spin.

A crest of magnesium fire rises up against the inky backdrop of my vision and in between the slow breath of my fingers on the warm skin of mechanical keys I hear a secret and a lie and I hold my breath for truth and stay my heart for reality.  The night fades, spins, spirals up into the coming day and find myself rid of doubt atoms and free of butterfly poison.  To a new day, I say, as I toast the sun and kiss the moon.  May it be as beautiful as the last, and more.

Today

Today a harmonica man made a small boy dance outside the coffee shop.

Today a dog was not hit by a car.  Today a cup of coffee did not go cold and unappreciated.

Today life found a way.  Today love won.  Today two cats danced on a fence pole and cried nevermore into a city twilight.  Today I consoled a lover’s broken heart.  Today a bird slept past dawn and missed the early worm.  Today a hawk did not eat an early bird.  Today smiles won. 

Today a car died in a freeway lane and became simply steel.  Today I did not smoke a cigarette.  Today I did not kiss the hand that feeds.  Today the world spun.  Today a newly single mother smiled into a glass of whiskey and paid though she did not take a sip.

Today two boys rekindled a friendship broken on the back of a Tonka truck and smothered in mud.  Today an Angel was believed in and today a fairy godmother found a princess to help.  Today we forgot to humbug magic and today a squirrel fell in love with an acorn tree.  Their babies had puffy cheeks and a tendency to root.

Today I thought of you and did not cry.  Today the world spun and did not toss us into space.  Today a star collided with a black hole and the entire universe sighed in relief; and in mourning.  Today a giant head did not pop on the needle of media. 

Today two sets of fingers touched two different clitorises and four different mouth corners rose and two different noses twitched and two pelvises shook and two spines tingled and two moans rose like symphony strings and four neighbor-ears groaned and four other neighbor-ears leaned towards the walls and floors and two mouths salivated around two different vulvas and today One moment rose like smoke and smelled like sage and musk and drove itself into the twinkle of seven billion left eyes and today two different brains agreed on One principle and that principle was Love and that Love was shivering flesh and that flesh was the spinning of atoms and those atoms were the exception to the nothing and Today, in the swirling incomprehensibility of infinity there arose a clarity, a breath of fresh air in a cloud dust and salt, a rhythmic cry of Yes, Yes, Yes,  and More, More, Oh, Please Don’t Stop and this collision, this meeting of Nothing and Spinning and Flesh and Eyes, built on a principle and held on an agreement, carried the world up into the realm of Gods and Gurus and for a brief moment all the manifests of this creation glowed with the light of understanding and in this there was silence. 

Today there was a poem read to a group of people.  Today there was a poet with shaky hands forcing a grin into the world like the birth of spiders.  Today I heard your name on the tongue of a stranger and did not miss the taste of it on mine.  Today a harmonica man made me dance outside a coffee shop.  Today I dreamed of sleep and woke up.  Today I remembered that memories are for museums and that this moment, here, now, is art and our lives are the gallery and the painting; the brush and the stroke; the paint and the sigh of the painter.  Today I took a breath.  And I did not stop for tomorrow.

Shorts (First Poetry in Portland)

I.

Stillness fell upon our journey like the grimace of a clown.

We painted blue smiles onto a canvas of clouds and called it “Finally.”

Have you ever seen a sun rise only to be struck down by Neptunian swords?

It looks like two blue whales made of cotton candy colliding; or two great shadows casting wet ashes onto a freeway.

The road is a mumbling creature with a yellow mouth and dashes tattooed across its face.

We are fleas with rubber feet and rainstorms are the scratching of an itch.

 

II.

Tomorrow the entire world will collapse.

Are you ready for the murmurings of I Told You creatures and the smell of their trailer park words?

Have you packed enough heavy smiles into the pantry and locked away enough tear fuel to keep you sane for the duration of this disaster?

 

There will be tarps at the emergency center.

They are made of leather and will not do well in the rain. 

Skin is also made of leather—Un-aged leather with a tendency to wrinkle.

From the Border to Salida

Quick recap from entering Colorado to our first hotel in Salida:

Colorado rolls in like a Roman army of Mountains on the horizon.  At the border I’m struck with a case of bubble guts and joy.

The wind chill drops.  The land rises.  We ride the waves of pasture like sailboats into the port of Flat-Irons and snow-capped mountains.

Colorado Springs has the highest population of Evangelical Christians in the country.  You’d never know there was so much hate and repressed sexual energy here.  How can so much beauty attract so much ignorance?  

The Magnetism of Majesty knows no religion or philosophy.  Only that of Being and in the act of Being, Love.

Garden of the Gods campground is a fort with walls made of RVs and we are camped in the middle like Generals in command tents, drawing up expedition plans and protected by an army of aging explorers.

The color of the horizon is red clay and dinosaur bones. Pikes Peak hovers above like a dare.

We take a train ride up (why are all the women who work for the Forest so beautiful? A conspiracy of Nature perhaps? A reminder of matriarchal beauty in the face patriarchal expeditions?) where a young woman tells us stories of Railroad entrepreneurs and races to the top of the peak.

The top of Pikes Peak is:  Snow feet, shivering hands, dancing clouds, horizons of white and gold and aspen green, deep breaths, the fall of a teenager in thin air, the worry of a grandfather, the scraping of ice, wet boots, long stares into an infinity of sky, hues of blue in a mirror above oceans like turquoise bracelets rattling between stars and moon.

Next stop is Pueblo: For Recreational Use.  Truffles and Root Beer and Gummy Bears and the flighty feeling of freedom from the heavy hand of Government Ignorance.

Across the San(d) Luis Valley into the Great Sand Dune National Forest and Zapata Falls.  Through tiny western towns.  Population:  80.

The sand dunes brush up against the butts of mountains as if Giants had been sweeping here and forgot to bring a dust pan.  Or the Winds of Arabia got tired on their way to the Deserts of Old Babylon and dropped a load of sand here to lighten their sacks.  Or the San Juan mountains sneezed in the summer after the Ice Age and wiped their nose in Zapata.

Desert Climate is tumultuous.  Sagebrushes speckle the campground between pinyon pines and flowering cactus.  The sun cast down rays of upper 80s and the wind fights back with gusts of 50s and speeds of 30s.  I burn in the sun and freeze in the shade and a swirling dark mass of grey and blue-hued clouds like smoke caught in jars and mixed with oil hangs above us like a warning sign:  Do Not Underestimate the Ferocity of Nature.  Clouds May Bite.  Do Not Feed the Trees with Tears.  

Climbing the Dunes is like climbing a slip-n-slide up a ladder in the wind.  Two-steps forward and one-step back.  I reach the peak of a dune breathless, sore and shaking with nostalgia, memories and awe.  

I think of young of hubris and wide-eyed companions as we discuss the spirits of trees and the voices of cacti.  I hear the whispers of time in my ear and it speaks in the flute songs and D-flat minors.

Salida (pronounce like you’re from Texas) is a warm blanket on a cold night.  The days inn greets us baking bread (again) and the charming smile of the attendant is a back rub and a glass of whiskey.  Through a gift of kindness we wash our clothes in the hotel washers and I take a long, hot shower like a ritual.  Beads of shower water like emeralds on the bracelet of medicine man wrists. The whipping of imaginary hair like rain sticks, my feet dancing around the tub as if it were fire and the steam full of sage.  I sit and listen to the droplets tell me stories of coyote tricks and buffalo medicine.  I close my eyes and fall into a cauldron of slow breath stew with spices of twitching muscles and chunks of lost memories floating around like islands in a sea of uncertainties.  

We eat steak and drink beer and a Freedom Gummy puts me right to sleep.

Next stop, Twin Lakes.

Thoughts Between Trees and Rocks

It’s a possibility that we’re all just Peacock feathers tattooed on some bartenders arm. Trapped in the Blues and aquamarine shades like they were heavy tarps placed over the top of an aquarium. Here we are just swimming around with swords in our teeth until we run into an undefeated creature with a smile for a face and bleed it out like philosophy bleeds out assurance and carves uncertainties like totem poles in our spine.

There is nothing keeping you from changing the world. What are these walls but the icing boundaries of a cake? Large and unreachable to the flea but soft and delicious to the Larger Ones.

Love has come at a time of dissonance and chaotic expression for change. Sentiments like tidal waves where there was once only drought. Moments, ever changing, offer a glimpse at all possible futures. The doors never close and locks are metaphysical boundaries brought about by a desire to remain impotent in a world of libidinous greed and wealth.

 

On Mountains (and the eyes that hold them)

The majesty, the beauty, the hauntingly salacious eye candy of these mountains is just unfair. Hovering in the distance like bulwarks against the horizon, holding back skyline line flood waters with their powder white heads and gypsy green skirts tattered by wind and snow. They stand tall and unfathomable as they hold up the sky on their backs and pierce the veil of our earthbound lives with their sharp headdresses.

What a tease. Like the woman you met in that bar in Spain at four am after the tequila has been granted citizenship in your veins and the loud thump of euro-dance music has set your knees into a jitter. That woman whose eyes spun you thrice in circles and whose curves were carved by hand on a small island off the coast of Italy by an aging old man with hands sharp and still as desert cold. The woman who stands by the bar spinning your guts into quilts and coasters and who meets your eyes only long enough to say “I will rake your dreams into piles of sheets at the bottom of our bed and drown you in musky waters” before she turns and giggles and walks right past you out the front door, leaving you dumb struck like a seal stranded in a desert.

Against the horizon these Giants sway the moon. Egoless and full of power; artists in the medium of time; creatures of granite bones and Aspen hearts; slip-slide roller coasters of feet and breath and spine; harborers of momentary weapons cast in steely dreams and visions of conquest.

I stare out like a car stricken rodent right before the brain seizes up and the legs concede to suicide. This campfire could burn me and I’d be but one more star dancing on the edge of infinity like a firefly on a charred crust of toast. I twirl my fingers around an invisible twine, winding up the world like a child winds a clamoring monkey trinket until the spring pops and all the gears set to make it work pop like a burning pinecone. I am deaf and dumb and chemically tied to the cycle of cosmic birth and death like a string tied to a kite in a hurricane.  My breath like stars exploding; my heart like lava meeting the icy touch of the Pacific; my eyes stricken with a plague of unblinking adoration; I shed a tear in an alternative time line and tell myself that experience is a meal best eaten slowly and with care.

These mountains are the Sirens of Muir. They sing harpie songs and spin gypsy fire around my consciousness like a pinwheel made of emeralds and ruby’s and sapphires. I am but an infant with the wisdom of a desert flower and in the shadow of these magnificent monoliths I am humbled, crippled and rebirthed.

Let the darkness come and swallow up this night and in the cold caress of its midnight fingers I will sleep and dream until the hug of morning brings yet another rebirth of breath and taste and sight.

Give me a prayer (praise) for the mountain soul and I’ll give you an AMEN.

Amen.

Out of Nola and into Kansas.

How to describe the drive from New Orleans (city of music and dance and booze to set you on fire in the night if you are not careful) to Kansas?  Well, here is a list:

Louisiana swamp lands swallow up the legs of great highways like giant mouthed bass gulping up minnows. 

The swamp here makes Florida look like a Napoleonic pond with a Palm Tree problem.

Flatbed pickup trucks with DIY crawfish cookers welded to their bed scurry along the highway like moths headed for a hungry flame.

In the distance a power plant blows unending plumes of smoke into the air like a cloud machine made in hell.

Along the highway there are fish farms.  Or algae farms. Or rice. Or Jazz Musician eggs.  They won’t say.

Picture this:  Two story billboard with wet hay yellow trim and a gray background like someone smudged an old ladies hair across the canvas.  In the forefront a giant Burger King burger floats ominously and without shadow.  Flanking the giant, sweaty burger are two half-cocked oil rigs standing guard like Monolithic Keepers of Industry protecting their King.  WELCOME TO TEXAS.

The route is all backroads through what is apparently a breeding ground for National Youth Cattle Rancher Champions.  Every three houses, nailed to the gates like royal proclamations hang signs claiming the latter.  Champion ’97, ’98, 2002 etc…

One light towns.  Yard sales in small fields where neighbors trade off hand-me-downs to neighbors who buy back trinkets for crockpots and ill-fitting pants for cowboy hats with loose straw in a cycle of barter that would make any Eco-Hippie proud (not that they practice any that ole’ bullshit liberal nonsense, ya hear). 

Alongside one roadway a table has been set up proudly displaying archaic porcelain dolls of negro children with unpainted eyes for sale.  A veritable venus fly trap for that wandering seeker of iconic, racist Americana.

Along the highways and backroads churches rise up through the ashes of dying cattle town like swollen, insatiable pricks.  Always with fresh cleaned brick and scrubbed windows they appear like invasive fungi leeching off whatever remaining life force runs through the sinewy veins of these deteriorating habitats.  I can’t help but wonder how fat the priest is behind his pulpit.  His knees sore and burning with the spirit of the lord as he babbles his sanctimonious bullshit like a creek through barren lumber fields.  His congregation, dwindling every year as the old seek heaven and the young seek to escape hell, sit stone eyed, skinny and pale underneath his gaze.  Amens being passed around like herpes and the donation bowl always filled to brim.  Does this preacher smile to himself at night in front of his big-screen TV as he watches whatever late night con-artist is begging for donations to The Spirit, searching for new tricks and lines to goad out more money?

On the plus side these towns make great burgers.  We stop once at a Roadside Diner and gulp down two burgers, a side of fried okra and corn-nuggets, too, please.  The only other customers are a leather skinned old rancher sipping coffee and a biker who pulls up and takes ten minutes to take off all his outer leather gear before he saunters in and orders a salad bar and diet coke. 

Again though, good burgers.

Oklahoma greets us like an aging prostitute with her hand out and her dry, barren womb open for the viewing public.  We pay toll after toll and say what you will about Texas—at least they upkeep their highways.  Miles after miles of potholes and rolling desert hills. Barbed wire left untended and a feeling that John Wayne might ride up any minute on the plateau in the distance and fire off a shotgun warning of “Indians Near.”  Here and there though, sparse like summers in Seattle, tiny patches of purple, yellow and red flowers bloom like rebellious intellectuals in the coffee houses of the Enlightenment standing up against the boring monotony of the dirt and grass masses.

Casinos and Kum & Gos.  Tolls.  More tolls.  And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to the beauty I found in the deep rolling hills of central Oklahoma that ride the horizon like green skinned dolphins diving into a sea of dirt and cactus.  Or in the Jutting plateaus carved into hillsides by the great axe of time and erosion. 

We enter Kansas like you might enter an Alabama bar called Bubba’s with a welcome sign that says: God-Fearing Christians Welcome.  Hippies Use the Gallow Door.  Needless to say, it is not with much enthusiasm that I greet the flat wheat plains of Lower Kansas.  We drive for what seems like too long until the bright glow of the Days Inn greets us like gypsy women blues in the dark still night between Full and New Moon, with her hands full of sparkling gems and eyes warm and welcoming like fresh bread baking in the sun.  I could hug the weary eyed counter lady when she hands us our room keys.  I could the hug the Subway “sandwich artist” who lets us order food five minutes before closing when she was clearly ready to leave. 

I do hug the bed and the comforter and the hot rush of water from the shower as I cleanse myself of 13 hours driving and of the long dull ache in my back and legs. 

Tomorrow is Colorado, Red Rocks and Pike’s Peak.  Sleep is a welcome panacea and I slumber like a winter bear.