Love ,Art and the Open Road

Three things that give me strength when the trail gets steep and I am starting to stumble. My family and friends, especially that steady rock that is my loving wife, ground me so I can deal with the daily trials and tribulations which are the stuff of life in this universe. When I get to caught up in the politics and arguments , villians and vipers, I've got my hearth and home, dinner table and easy chair to realign my sense and sensibilities. Through all the ups and downs this clan remains tight, though we drift in and out of orbit , disappear and re-emerge back into each others lives like strange cosmonauts.

Art, really just the fact that it exists, reignites my faith in the larger project. Painting, sculpture, poetry, music, literature, dance, these are the tangible evidence that civilization and all that it implies are possible at least and the struggle against barbarity has some meaning. I don't know what "progress" is but some sort of trajectory seems to be implied in a Coltrane solo. Not that cave art wasn't sublime, but every couple hundred years or so a new door seems to open and a Shakespear or Ella Fitzgerald seems to step through the threshhold. And a reason is perpetuated to try to get us through another couple hunderd years.

Then there is that wonderous freedom that is the open road. I spent a lot of my life as a vagabond, enthralled with that ever moving horizon, and though I have settled WAY down for many years now I still hear that siren call. And I still measure satisfaction, at least in part , in terms of miles travelled. I am hopping in my little car early Tuesday morning and heading down into the high desert country of New Mexico where I've got a little work (enough to cover expenses and maybe a little extra) and a lot of country I haven't seen in a long while. I spent time in the Four Corners area, Durango, Cortez, Farmington, back in my cowboying days but I am going to see some new territory around Santa Fey and Taos on this trip. I can't wait to get a little truck stop coffee buzz going and watch those telephone poles whizzing by, the white line stretched out ahead in this amazing country I call home.

I'll be back in a couple of weeks, rest up a couple of days and then head to Portland to be with my oldest daughter and her husband for Thanksgiving. Get over to the ocean for a few days, try to look up my old buddy Billy Mac Kay, check out the Portland Wobblies, spend a day at Powells Books( my daughter says everything in the Purple Room -radical heaven- is on sale). I suppose I'll end up owing a few carbon credits but if the War Fucker In Chief would get us out of Iraq there might be a few to spare for old road warriors like myself.