On Tour in America...

I was never much for new year recap and resolution, but it does have a certain charm about it. And my good friend, i hope you don't mind if i borrow a page. For this past year was quite interesting and it will never be again...

A sigh for the innocence lost, that adolescent associative that neither existed in time nor place. It couldn't be helped... and now it's time to move onward. I wonder at which point i lost this undefinable, imaginary precept. Was it as i came of age, clueing into the melding wheels of academia and vocation? Maybe earlier, as i swirled my cap'n crunch berries in a sea of purple milk? Or later, holding a straw to the broken bulb? The three beds in a week that i slumbered?

The year began a veritable mess. Key components: a brain of booze, packed car, six thousand feet elevation, hour of midnight, and a blizzard, and the going-away gift of drinking water thrown in my face. Salud! Young Werther! Yet hey, when you start low, the inevitable climb awaits.

I climbed into the Sierras from the upper-plains of Nevada. A dear friend awaited with Mt. Gay Rum and Jameson and some similar turmoils. We mulled our thoughts together in the old-fashioned way, on the rocks. Then to the lights of Reno and the banks of the Truckee River for a spell, onward to the Bay for a spot of regathering my wits. Seven lanes of traffic brought me in and those same seven took me away. But the city was glorious with its music and food. Reconvening old friends and lovers; absurd situations that turned the dial and forced an objectivity to my life, just when i needed it.

I worked a few months for my parents in Washington, found the calluses in my hands and dirt beneath the fingernails. Caught a flight to Florida to visit an old friend. A week of smoking and margarita stupors that found us shouting prose at the alligators, joining a pool tournament in some Buffet bar, and pushing the mangrove coast to Willie Nelson on repeat.

Flew back to the West and repacked my car, pushed it across the flats of Eastern Oregon beneath the double-arch of the most amazing rainbow i have ever seen, and then up into the high valleys of central Idaho. Andrew and I scoured the hillsides for woodpeckers and bluebirds. We did this project on behalf of humanity, funded by hard sought taxpayer money. We marvelled at the scenery and our growing collection of bottles and cans.

Then it was the Inside Passage beneath the wing, flying over the southeast panhandle toward Baranof Island where recreational drinking compliments and strikes awe to the scenery. I haphazardly fished, visited the cultural saloon centers in my slippers, and became a familiar face to every librarian and grocery store clerk.

My year ended restless again without much learned or gained except that the wings of whim can be soft and gentle. If you're driven then do it, because we can only let ourselves down, and i can see now... there's really no need.