Notes From the Road...New Mexico and Texas.

I’ve had a hard time getting in. I wandered around like a tossed-about storm cloud through New Mexico. Up through Farmington, Shiprock (a plateau that resembles a ship) and down to Gallup, through Navajo country where one can still hear echoes of the medicine men chants carried with the winds. Oftentimes we’d cross by the famous Route 66, where small Casinos glisten in the desert sun and Native American craft stores sell dream-catchers and tell old tales. Then through Albuquerque down down into the strange town called Roswell where weird people sit around drinking beer and seeing massive spinning objects with bright lights whirling through the air. My companion was this fellow from L.A. We rented a VW Jetta and hit the road going to Walgreen’s stores, correcting our company’s racks. We finished earlier than expected and intended on flying out early. But no planes were available for me until Saturday. So sitting in a hotel lobby looking for other options, maybe renting a car to Lubbock, Texas (a very special place to me) or taking a beloved Greyhound bus there, in walks this Texan and noticing that I was diligently trying to seek a way to Lubbock, said that he was driving there early in the morning and that I could ride with him. Prudence taught me not to just jump at an opportunity like that, to contemplate it for a bit. So he left me with the option, if I wanted a ride to meet him down in the lobby at the brisk hour of 5 am. After a moment’s reflection, I ended up that night setting my alarm for 4:30 am.
The next morning, I was awake and sitting in the lobby when he appeared and we took off. He was a building contractor from Dallas and was in a rush to get to the airport in Lubbock. The 3 hour ride passed by quickly. He was very talkative and was glad that he had someone there to keep him awake. A person driving anywhere near Lubbock, Texas needs as much help to stay awake as he can get. Its a flat, treeless land. Miles and miles of nothing but fields. I arrived in Lubbock and ended up on the front door step of one of my friends, Randy Kerrigan, who is currently doing the AIM program much like I did.(I like surprising people like that.) I’m staying with another friend of mine, Jonathan Towell, who was in my AIM class many years ago. As I enter the city, I seem to swim through a fog of nostalgia. It’s been 4 years...since I last stepped my foot down in this town. 6 years since I lived here. I seemed to have blown into this town alongside this April chill. Memories stream by as I walk about the place. I have met with many faces that are here and many faces that are no longer here, but live on in the memory. I can never really get away from the past nor return to it. Instead, I’m caught somewhere between the two...eyes on the future but heart thumping to the beats of the foggy past...and completely bombarded with the bittersweetness of this thing we call life.