Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Sabbatical, or Something

2007. One year you roll out of bed with a terrible ache to go home, and you don't have the slightest notion of where on earth home is. So, you begin to set your heart on the journey. Not a journey with a destination to be settled in, but a roadtrip, flighttrip, floattrip, biketrip with the ones who make you feel like home along the way. There's only one home and it's not found here...but there are many steps to take and perhaps a few places to pitch one's tent along the way. Ben Harper says, "Life's the longest picture you're ever gonna take". But it really does move so fast. I don't want to wait for the perfect opportunity anymore.

Here I am...Ready to travel light, smile at strangers, make some friends, share some burdens. To talk about just where it is we're going until I can see the lights of home shining on all of our faces.

Love.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Reflecting


It's been a while, hasn't it? I would have written something sooner, but trying to channel a thought into wordsis like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Blindfolded. In the rain. With rubber gloves on. Anyway...

The reason for this altogether unthrilling photograph and the wordy counterpart which you now read, is to attempt to vocalize a frustration which (until now) has generally preferred to escape in the forms of tormented sighs and cries and the occasional reaches for ice cream.

The Sweatsuit and I were journeying home today from a visit to mom and dad's. The roads were wet from a momentary snow, and it didn't take long for cars to pass us (in all fairness, we got stuck behind a delivery truck who was making a turn), with tail-lights winking and tires casually spitting dirt in our faces...each one whizzing their way into a merry little future. Now this wouldn't be much more than a mild annoyance if we were equipped, like every other car and driver team, with washer fluid and a pump or sprayer that worked. But not so, I'm afraid. So each one passing by seemed to make the journey a little more unclear, until I began to doubt my sense of direction and ability to find my way. Lucky for me, The Sweatsuit is used to driving under such conditions, and it was not long before she slid into home. A happy enough ending for a car, but for me, the story goes on.

See, it's not just my windshield that's cloudy, it's my whole vision for my life. People zoom by, and I plod on. Adjusting my eyes to yet a little more dirt. Wondering if I'll ever arrive at anything resembling home. Every now and then, I stop and catch a glimpse in the rearview mirror and back window, and though everything is so clear, it doesn't seem to help me much when I'm trying to move forward--toward home. So...I pray for rain and I wait. I pray for something to give me even a moment's clarity, but I remember that my pump or sprayer or whatever doesn't work anyway. Probably clogged. But with what?

Eventually it becomes too much. The squinting into blindness. The wondering where you are, how you got there, why you can't seem to find the clarity that allows everyone else to zoom on. I guess you just do your best, and trust that Someone else besides you has got it covered. Sounds pitiful, doesn't it? But it is what it is, and there's nothing wrong with saying so. The wheels are in motion...and I along with them. Dad says it's easier to steer a moving vehicle, but I wonder if he'll still say so when he has to let me go. Anywho, it's 2:44 and someone is playing the accordion outside my door. If I wait for everything to clear up, I'll never go anywhere. I just have to get moving. I just have to get praying. And maybe, just maybe, I'll discover what this terrible ache is that's blocking the flow of any sort of clarity. Or not. Maybe it's a story that only hindsight can tell. Ouch.