If I Were Queen, Things Would Be Different

Sitting in a lovely cafe on 13th St. Where will we live next year this time?  So options. Brooklyn, Harlem, San Francisco ...comfortable, cozy and workable...with dog piss on the sidewalk. Ah, urbanity.

No, not "blues." Too busy reincorporating my real life into the fantasy/memory of endless road and sky, giant vistas and new cultures.

I'm still alone...the husband is on a biz trip, the son is off to parts north. The cat, however, is ecstatic that I am home. Or at least my shoes are, as he makes love to them hourly.

Tomorrow good times loom, theatre and dinner in NYC with old friends, husband reunited with wife, all feelings of home and comfort return. Meanwhile the laundry dries, the tchotchkes are sorted (mostly rocks, I do love my rocks) and dinner from the salad bar is procured.

As I sit on my deck and listen to the familiar sounds of crickets, birdsong and traffic, I remember the absolute stillness of the Painted Desert when, between other viewpoint-seeking vehicles, I stood alone, gazing at the magnificence of Mother Earth; It was a moment of silence supreme that will hang in my memory forever, on the same shelf with breathing the freshest air imaginable on the windy north shore of Maui, goggling at a sunset from Santorini's crater peak and listening to the lonely loon cries echoing over an evening reflection at Pharaoh Lake.

Actually, lying in a cheap motel room bed at five a.m. listening to the rumble of yet another interminable freight train and working myself up to my usual pre-travel level of nervousness,  great.

I have seen and learned much in the past week or so.  Kept thinking my brain couldn't absorb any more beauty, then I'd round a bend...and more awesome would flow in til it seemed it had to leak out somewhere. New flora, fauna and topography.  Different cultures (the Navajo language is wonderful to hear).  A sensibility I know of but don't live in (lots of gun merchants and merchandising, all-country-crooning-all-the-time FM, and picture ID requested with many transactions, for example). 

My tech kept me sane when I got lonely, and Native American radio and NPR kept me company on the long miles of endless desert vistas (iPod cord didn't work).

There's a lot of poverty here, too. Signs of the down economy abound, though to be fair I don't know that these small towns have thrived since they were formed. Indications of better times are random (apparently-new buildings with boarded windows, "coming soon" signs that are faded and torn).  Hunched old man plodding by the side of Route 40 clutching bulging plastic bags, brown old man sunning in a patch of high grass by a two-laner with a beaten-up bicycle and bulging plastic bags.

To the airport, more later. Maybe.

...

Well let's see. Almost ran out of gas in the lonely, sand-scrubbed foothills. Had to run the TSA gamut twice (forgot about my Leatherman).  Now sitting over a bland chicken sandwich,  a shot of Cuervo and a Heineken in Airport Land.

I will say that the two-inch tines on my heavy metal fork could be just as menacing as that Leatherman. Good thing they gave me a plastic knife.

As I wheeliebag my way to gate E9, I wonder where the slot machines are. No, actually I don't. I think how grateful I am to be able to have had the amazing experience of the last week. And that I actually diaried it each day, something I've striven for in the past with little success. I thank anyone who may have cast a critical eye upon my musings, and bid this short chapter adieu. 

Sitting in a roadside cafe in Seligman, AZ, watching the locals. Am on historic Route 66, which was the final item on my List...hit 'em all! Started today a few hundred miles back with a final look at de Chelly, then saw the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest and a huge meteor crater. Stood on a corner of Winslow because I should...had a wonderful Mexican lunch there, too.

Tomorrow morning is hellbent for airport then back to real life. Sigh.