Not more than a moment after school has let out for the summer and I am put to a test. More papers- letter grades as such and more words words words- but have I learned anything? Do I listen more closely of voices contrary-wise to my own? Can I speak without presumptuous notions and regard the good of the whole? I see you, but I cannot save you. I hear you, but I cannot banish the resounding silence of fear. I love you, and that is all I know.

Because we were just kids who didn’t know yet what was ahead of us; we laughed freely. Now damn this flame against the wind.

“Do you believe in destiny?” Daniel asked. “Like we were all supposed to be here?”

“Yeah, probably,” I replied.

Fifteen years and I’ve not found such solidarity in thought nor in action as I have here with friends. Dragonflies’ flight like erratic brush strokes against a chorus of frogs and cicadas announcing their existence, heard only and not seen. The wind-songs of the south nothing like the northern chorus of stark contrast with beast and beats divided as Bach and G-Eazy- each renowned in their own right.

“Dragonfly whiz by and sing now teach it.” 

Poets and dreamers and the like toil with words and ways to give the moon her dues and here I will not try except to say we weaved and bounded along the beach under a full golden sovereign lunar expanse pushing and pulling tides and fates and illuminating our fates yet not our years. Easy laughter liberated from heavy resolutions. The boys tear off their shirts and tie them round their heads like juvenile crowns and rap nonsensical lyrics against the wind and the girls keep pace and talk of other wonders as if we aren’t all tasting our twenties but reminiscent of our teens. And by God if there aren’t red lights revolving in an unworldly synchronicity, a mile off over a luminescent Atlantic and before true fear and paranoia overtake us we boast our impending fates with the Martians surely coming and the lights now green and white pulsing against heat lightning and us embracing delirious reality and if we had to be taken at least we shall go together and finally where art thou Will Smith when we are in need of the MIB?

“Will Smith!” I cry out.

“Wilson!” My sister replies.

Wrong beach misadventure, I intone.

Here at the least I have listened and heard a language my mind is unable to decipher elsewhere. I know not always by mine eyes yet I see and I look with eyes wide open and know this exchange as friendship. As it has always been. This simplest truth the greatest fortune. Until we meet again.

I’m desirous of everything all at once. It rips and tears at me like a madness. I am only a human; struggling with raw ambition, methodic duty, and freedom-however restrained. My consciousness has grown trapped and bursting against the nearly insufficient borders of a finger painted mortality, primary colors that clash and smudge and may be eradicated against contesting secondary impulses. My paws rake the earth, too large and clumsy for the path they’re put upon. Would that I were a dormouse, navigating my daily due diligence to from nature and nurture, instinct and pleasure, through high-rises bladed green and cobwebs like silk refracting molten gold Helios rays like a micro-supernova.

The desensitized giant that I am is a destroyer of worlds; crushing the intricate lattices of networked communities governed by Prideland law and a council of small woodland creatures. Cities of belly-crawlers and under-foots.

The immensity of minutiae; that was what my last chapter was all about. My observations solely my own and prone to obsessive detail and outcries of rebellion against foes I knew not. Heavy doses of narcissism under a telescope autobiography- a role played well past its welcome. I sit. And breathe. And know the detail in a singular purple blossom, but only now have I opened mine eyes wide enough to glimpse the greater garden before the lone flower.

Here I am, risen to heights with blackbirds in this impromptu sanctuary. Love is love is love. Zoom out, broad strokes, “Be of the solids in need of its fruits,” and this is no longer my story alone.

We five now, let us begin.

We always take it for granted, waking up in nature as if out of the ether. Might we truly exist in between the moments of each other’s stillness; between the uneven breaths? But then the vortex inside of this bottle – like downtown London in the rain, light refracting prisms off of puddles and perspectives off of brick walls. Stark contrast for thought.

Arise, wake, shine, drink of the air as if all before this moment was contained within the atmosphere of a barren planet, and now the fledgling lives of a new race take their first breaths. Never homeless but home-free and here on this spectrum of crisp reality and saturated, longing colors of azure skies and emerald forests, making their way from the ground up against my skin rubbed raw and clean by nature- my paws liberated from their canvas traps and triumphed in the muddy waters, toes wiggling, tadpoles reaching the shallows and seeking the depths.

Moonshine, we shine, what living we have wrought. This spring green the vibrant color of winter’s redemption. Faster and faster racing through the branches and tumbling down, down and into one another’s’ orbits, collide and disperse and reinvent each other in the moment. Creation is creation is love is abundant is visceral is everywhere. The geese fled before us, the turtle sat among us, the turkey vultures dropped around us and the dogs danced in the firelight and the horses shared the dusk with us as we ventured finally home and greeted the moon, yet not before the cows spurned our wobbling advances and we were as children on a playground.

This cabin, this home, the answer to my burdened conscience. Tomorrow I will rise again and conquer the hours and do the work I was born to do. As for today, so we begin.

It had all started with the mountains, and here we are again. Arizona my sundial, has been turning. I come back for those mountains, and I stay for the saturated blues and sandstone gradients of adobe bricks and the dry, dry heat and for the deep breaths that span miles of baked desert sand and lifetimes, under an endless cosmic convergence of the stars.
I’m here in this geographic tangent just long enough to break my heart for love of clarity and freedom; each and every time I lose the mountain giants on the eastern horizon, through plane pane or roadway or mindscape. Me of late had forgotten the laws of nature, forgotten to move with my sundial though it has moved on without me while I freeze in the recompense of my wintered, weathered soul.
Early dusk solace of quiet contemplation and rhythmic sweat of the mind; a worry there, as always, where goes the mind of yesterday when the sundial lights your neurons on a different part of the world? Another shadow revealed?
Then, peace- sister, peace brother, peace friends, ease our minds, the road will be there always, to burn rubber when there’s need – and the mountains, as if they could be moved. When my world gets rocked, I must remember to breathe before I kick myself in the teeth with my own selfish compensation. A rhyme and a reason a reason and a hope – tread lightly upon that which you hold dear, and greet each horizon with a resounding roar.

Time and time alone is the master of mankind. Time is a gift- and I feel close to him now.
Where to even begin. It is with great necessity that I dare even broach that which cannot be seen nor caught, nor easily measured; but in the rise and fall of kingdoms, healing of mortal wounds and his closeness to me now.
Seconds, minutes, hours, hold life like a vice. His starkness blacks and whites hung squarely above a chalkboard with his rules never erased, no matter the extraordinary explanation.
Adolescence willing him forward to no avail and wisdom backpedaling the wheel fruitlessly. We are all pitched headlong into the madness we pleaded for. If only we knew.
At its kindest, providing brief respite in the minutes between the ages, knowing of love and triumph- carried wistfully on high sea winds and held in a smile.
Time. That Bastard. Flagging you down, when he comes to a screeching halt hand and hand with his lover darkness, you know the moments – the ones where we can’t breathe for loss, and fury, and death. Yet we all bow. Whether on bended knee or from the weight of the world on our shoulders, or from the absence of Time. We all bow.

I can’t see a damn thing on this island. The fog’s hidden everything but the outlines of our cooler round’ the fire ashes and our canoe flags limp with condensation, like a defeated army, dead in the stillness of the morning. Canvas tents heavy with dew – eyes heavy with drink from the evening past.

Recognize the sublime.

This moment which can really only exist in fleeting seconds, but synapses reminiscent of similar revelations. Awake and seemingly alone on this sandy island – I’ve only just set foot here – yet I’ve breathed the air of this moment for 25 years. Same particles, same heartbeat, but a different brainspeak –  heavier and lined with caution. To what end?

The morning’s not yet penetrated by human noise, only the echo of crows’ call and drying ink. “So familiar yet so foreign.” –Nahko

Wood smoke clinging staunchly to my flannel; the trees that burned for us consumed by flame to consume our hunger and heat our hearty meals and sting our eyes and remind us of days past. Slumped back into our chairs to eat and drink and smoke and laugh loudly under summer constellations that have watched us immersed in this life for an eternity and then some.

The stillness is home – and I am warm as a swaddled child, smile upon my lips in the translucent light amongst the chorus of daybreak’s new beginning’s. The shore laps against wet sand like symbols crash and resonate, while the birds cry out and us two leggers shift in our makeshift homes to greet the day.

Chip, chip, and chip away. Sun baked brick walls to my left and right in the Arizona heat. Stark and stucco and like the walls barring my heart from this sun kissed love. Built brick upon brick these last few months in the unforgiving winters of the north.

Ice will fall to clay will turn to stardust as I chip, chip, and chip away. Crumble and begin again.

Walls that have formed unbidden like a drop of blood drawn to the surface of my skin – under assault of thorns hidden beneath sheer beauty – red and white petals.

What is must become what was. Just as kings do die, flowers must wither and walls must come down. Then rise the yellow sun gloriously.

So must end the shadow of my own stifled winter. Dry my shallow sorrows under the desert moon and breathe the calm of the west. The here and the now.

Emerge a flutterby in the budding hours of change.

The highways out of town are suspended on concrete pillars above the marshes and brackish water inlets that wash over Louisiana. It’s beautiful. Traffic is also at a standstill presumably due to the Saint’s game about to start. I haven’t gassed up yet and I really, really have to pee.

Inch off the highway over an hour later. Find the middle of town easily as there’s only one road in and out. Gas up, standing at the pump, a chorus of lion’s roars emanate from my empty belly. Skipped breakfast yet again. One bar in this little Podunk, walk in through saloon style doors, over scuffed dark floorboards as all four occupants of the joint turn and stare.

“Hi there. You guys serve food?” I say to break the mildly awkward silence.

“No hun,” says the female bartender who ended up being the owner alongside her husband behind the bar. “But we’ve got pulled pork warming in the crock pot and warm rolls and some slaw ready for the game. Grab a plate.”

The other two at the bar are their neighbors. I join their little party for the first half of the game, trading stories. I can tell they are a little worried for me in their half smiles. They way many adults look at me when I tell them I’m on the road by myself. I probably shouldn’t tell people that but hell, then I wouldn’t make any friends. They are sincere as they come though and wish me luck when I deign it’s safe enough to brave the highway pre/post-game mass exodus.

It hadn’t settled in me until now, that feeling… I knew it’d come all along but had been hoping all the same it never would. The comedown -but I’m sober as I’ve ever been. (Bud Lite doesn’t count.)

I’m driving home. My venture near the end and what have I learned? Coffee is life – and don’t drive ten year old tires through the desert. Something more profound than that, I’m sure but it’ll take weeks for me to sort through the layers of this new skin I wear; foreign yet familiar and glowing with new hope…and in desperate need of a long bath and good scrub.

Summer’s long gone, but the warm Louisiana sun masks autumn’s hurried retreat as the miles bleed north and the colors fade from southern greens to a few lingering Midwestern fall’s furious reds and blazing yellows, to the stark browns and trees just becoming barren in the chilled October winds on flat Illinois plains.

My meager belongings scattered in boxes throughout Wisconsin, my soul waiting still in the dark shadows of the Redwoods and my heart beating against the tide of the ocean. I will come back, back to this dreamer’s landscape, but for now there is work to be done. Things to give back.

I’ve been taking taking taking, each breath of air and beauty glimpsed and feeling felt on high a precious gem added to a mosaic now near complete. I am full, and ready to unleash a tide of creation and positive energy back into the universe from whence it came. All of His wealth and His creation and glory coursing through my veins from living on the road, learning the curves and crests of His kingdom on earth, a reflection of His Kingdom above. And, I’ve got this killer tan.

My cells are on fire. This is bliss. Crank down the window and filter Nahko through the Bluetooth speaker on the dash.

I see God in the darkest things, in the quiet of night I hear villages sing, there’s a demon in that dragon purge it out…

I fear nothing, no thing fears me, justice has different hats for different days…

I feel God in the slightest wind, at the rate I manifest every dream deepens, and I know I never want to stay the same.

“Awhoooo!” I howl out the window and burn rubber through the last glimpses of a dream. Who I was, thought I was, am and want to be, as well as the stranger I appear as now, all fighting for purchase in the forefront of my brain. Pieces and more pieces to the puzzle.

I’ve seen the eastern sun rise against an Atlantic daybreak as a child, and that same sun but one day older, set on the Pacific – me sitting on the sidewalk of a quiet hill in San Francisco. I’m not sure what’s left for me back where I’m headed, but I’ll soon find out.

Taylor has offered to put me up at her little farmhouse outside Chicago, but that’s a long haul and the sun is creeping down upon the horizon at my left. A Walmart or suburbia neighborhood would be ideal, but somehow I’ve driven into a Children of the Corn B flick remake and it is all corn stalks and county roads and what the hell how did I end up in Arkansas?? I wasn’t even supposed to drive through Arkansas. Whoops, too much daydreaming about my profound future to listen to my Siri. Idiot.

I retreat to my fallback trick I learned in NorCal – find a hospital parking lot. Now, calling the single floor E.R complex with a fitness center next door a bon-i-fied hospital would be a stretch, but I’m bone tired, and I’ve driven quite far enough out of the way.

Pull Delilah into an empty slot near an outbuilding and a plain, fenced in structure resembling a barracks. If not for my sleep deprivated mind I may have noticed the strange setup and large, painted concrete rectangle enclosed within the fence.

Nope. Too tired as I tie towel ends off over the van windows, snuggle up exhaustedly and close my eyes. I’m the kind of tired that needs winding down before slumber, with so many impossible things on my mind. Brush my fingers through my greasy split ends and settle into the sweet and mild Arkansas October night, door slams from afar occasionally breaking the vibrant chorus of insects chirping into the night.

Think slates drift to dreamscapes.  Remember the chill in the air under the moon in Estes Park against the backdrop of elk siren mating songs – or many miles north and to the west of there, behemoth redwood giants creaking in an otherwise dead silence, soft pine bed underfoot. Slip deeper then – “WHHHHRRRRR WHHHOOOOOOOSSSHHHHH WHOOOSHHH WHOOOSHHH WHOOOSHHH!!!”

Sit straight up wild eyed as the van begins to shake and a growing rumble fills the air. They’ve caught me now! Towing me away to meet my maker with myself in the back all the while. Rip my towel-curtains off the window and let out all my breath at once as I see the helicopter landing on the other side of the fence next to me.

I parked next to the emergency helicopter landing pad. Not in fact being towed. Idiot…Stuff the towels back over the windows and fall back again onto my warm foam mattress, a familiar buffer of foldout chairs stacked on my right, my machete floating somewhere inaccessible about the back, more likely to stab me in the back as I slumber than ward off any enemy. Turn off my rambling mind again and finally sleep.

Wake shortly after the sun, hop out the side – skip the shoes – van in gear and get the hell outta Arkansas. Peace. It’s like I’ve been on that spinning playground ride. You know the one, the really dangerous one that you hold onto for dear life while someone continues to whip you at breakneck speeds, laughing maniacally and grinning wildly all the time til’ a body inevitably flies off and eats shit.

I can’t maintain this speed forever, else I too go flying, and so the ride is slowing. But I’ve grown for every circle spun and I carry the lessons with me when I step off onto the flat sturdy ground again, head spinning.

The landscape is starting to show more primary colors as the air cools a bit and the miles catch up with a more northern autumn and its beautiful progression to a starkly naked fall. I’m all thoughts, lightning bolts and balderdash, only kept from floating up and away by the seatbelt pressed from hip to shoulder.

Illinois greets me a lifetime or an afternoon later, I couldn’t tell, with endless soy and corn fields and the rich stank of livestock. And all its stupid tolls. I hate this state. But Taylor lives here in a cozy little farmhouse outside of Chicago with her hubby and it’s been too long since we’ve broken bread. County lanes and pull up the gravel driveway, snag the hidden key from under the 😉 and let myself in. Tay and Brentley are still at work.

Make a beeline for the shower. There’s black dirt under my nailbeds and I’m not sure if the bottom of my feet will ever be scrubbed pink again, brown and calloused as the Native Americans’, treading a lifetime, light of step as not to disturb nor destroy the earth. But seriously I stink. Crank the handle to hot and holy begeezus that’s cold! There’s no hot water. Of course. I laugh out loud so as not to cry instead.

Oh well, retreat to the back porch that looks out over their fields, spread a blanket on the afternoon-sun warmed wood while the wind blusters a bit and just lie there awhile and breathe. Bask in the glory of the day, another precious, beautiful day. Strum a few notes on my guitar and scribble a few words in my book.

Tay is home before long. Hug like sisters and I can’t help myself putting my hand on her barely rounded belly. My little Godchild. Catchup, tales and smiles, she fights exhaustion and nausea, wearing it plainly yet proudly on her face. She’d wanted this for a long time, but the little loved one is not making it easy for her.

Brent home and fixes the shower. Hallelujah. Scrub and scrub and scrub as dirt all the way from Dallas days before, washes down the drain. Have a happy, quiet little dinner, light laughter and good company. We will continue our separate lives in the morning, but step back from the rush for this moment and just be here, the night before life goes on. Until the morrow.

Wake rested in the guest room, Brent long gone at the firehouse and Tay off right after. Finish packing, sigh deep, lock the door and replace the spare key. Point my tires north and head home, or back to the place that used to resemble one. Winter will be coming soon so I must find a place for my sun child heart to rest easy and warm while I brace for the change and the unforgiving cold.

Still soaring though, in my head and in my heart and over the Chicago Skyway catching the morning sun that lights the city skyline on fire in the distance. This is familiar now, I’m running out of white lines and pavement, and money… definitely money.

Twenty-five years and my life is still, trying to get up that great big hill of hope, towards a destination.

I realized quickly when I knew I should, that this world was made up of this brotherhood of man, for whatever that means…

I’m rushing now, galloping through the gates while the portcullis closes behind me. One door closing while the Lord opens a window on a different horizon. Familiar exits and suburban towns blurring along beside me and Milwaukee appears on the green road signs like a fond memory I had just now recalled.

God knows I’ve changed. But am I the moth just emerged? Or the caterpillar yet sealed in a silk cocoon merely awaiting the circumstance of my next metamorphosis, blanketed in a summer high yet subdued by the constant roll of the highway and roar of the ocean, floating outside the breakers – just out of reach.

It doesn’t feel like the end when Delilah’s tires brush up against the curb of a two-hour parking slot on Water St., outside the Milwaukee Ale House. It’s unseasonably warm and sunny, as if to ease my transition from a summer now dissipated in full.

I’m back but my head is still spinning madly in L.A. I shift into park. My eyes an eagle’s, looking out over the badlands and circling high above South Dakota Mountains. Put on my shoes, lace them up for the first time in weeks. Heart beats in Venice Beach, keeping time with the skaters dropping in and a perpetual tide breaking upon the sand. Pull a hat on backwards over my tangled, sun streaked hair and walk down the street. Soul as old as time and young as a sapling, sprouting new shoots and taking to root beneath soft earth in the heart of the redwoods. City sirens in real time a familiar lullaby to my ears. Gray matter soaked rather, way back in Denver and my senses still afire in the night, watching the house band from a barstool on Bourbon St. where the doors never shut, the whiskey always flows and the music stops for no man nor beast nor bar close, while the devil fiddles away.

‘Welcome home,’ they said to us when Michael and I first began this journey – way back at Shangri La under an oaken forest. September and October have seen me around the country and sent me back from whence I began. I don’t ever want to come down, but I’m crashing through the troposphere into earth, full speed, lightyears older yet as green as a wavering fawn. A thousand more questions for every answer. It’s heavy and impossible, what I’ve taken in. Like trying to put the whole beach in a sand bucket. But it’ll sift in time. For now, I’m going to walk into the Milwaukee Ale House and have a drink with my friends. Tell them about a very, very long drive. Welcome Home.

“There is a house in New Orleans, they call it the Rising Sun. It’s been the ruin of many a poor boy, oh God well I know I am one.” -The Animals

This is it. The crescendo is behind me as I stand at the top. The grand finale and beginning of the end of this plan hatched many moons ago. Blessed and cursed, to be where I’ve been. Damn the beginning sure looks like the end.

Sit in the parking lot outside Angela’s a minute, let it all wash through me. The miles and mountains of creation and lands traversed like a prayer on the wind. Then leave the dry Texan heat behind, dust billowing in my rear-view.

Everything is heightened and running across my synapses one second at a time, but it’s like I’ve been here before, in a different life and am just now remembering the sensation. Nearing New Orleans and it feels like a different animal, this place. It feels a place bespelled. Before I ever even reach the heart of the city I’m on the verge of catching that fever, this Saturday night.

Almost forsake the whole damn place – parking is worse than freaking San Francisco. Round and round and round again over endless cobblestone circles flooded with foot traffic, blaring horns and obscenities abundant. Finally find a fifty dollar overnight lot, park the damn thing and hit the pavement.

I’ve no time this trip to explore the greater parts of the city, just a drive-by shot in the dark at the French Quarter and of course Bourbon St. I hit the Quarter first. Stomach rumbles…beef jerky and a Coca-Cola for breakfast. My kingdom my kingdom for a catfish po’boy.

Eat the aforementioned po’boy in a two-walled open air café, resembling many others on this block. It’s near five o’clock and the day walkers and nuclear family shoppers bustling through this shop and service part of town begin to head back to their homes and hotels, tuck the children in and give way to the madness awaiting upon the dusk.

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…” –Jack Kerouac

A palpable force of energy begins to creep into the warm air around me, with each intake of my lungs. I should really check into my hostel before I lose myself in the city. Head to Madame Isabelle’s House, twenty minutes southbound walk off the main scene and check in. I’m welcomed by a pink exterior, a turquoise interior, and a small Asian man.

Meet the crew that is holding court in the back patio yard, next to a concrete water fountain bubbling quietly against the chatter. A lot of these kids have been here for some weeks and there seems to be a high school like hierarchy among them, led by a tall blonde with wild hand gestures. Introduce myself and tag along for one bar on their guided pub crawl, and slip quietly back into the foot traffic solo. Team player I am not and Bourbon Street doth call.

Now Hollywood was pretty o ‘de ripe but N’oleans is downright putrid, like piss and burning garbage masked subtly by whiskey tinged vomit. Colors and senses swirl with reds and blacks and tall green plastic hurricane cups housing the puke juice and boys playing drums like an omen in the street, on crates for dollars and quarters.

Boom de boom de boom echoes and vibrates against the buildings and airspace already filled to the max with jazz, a chatterous uproar, and evening cicadas and crickets beginning their raucous choir. My guitar is across my back and I play three songs, but there’s no room for me in the din. Mayhaps today I simply listen. Welcome to the jungle baby, I’m gonna die. Cheers and challenge accepted.

There are people everywhere. Dodge gutters and various sludge patches – make my way down the length of Bourbon St. There are just so many bodies and the night has barely yet blossomed. Ask around and house bands don’t start til near 2 a.m. most places. It’s barely past 9 p.m. now. Let’s start this party with a bang…

Enter a dark a blue, low light tinted little joint on the corner, two walls open to the cross streets, three men on stage, tall fella on the stand-up bass, older fella, dark shades, grey salt and pepper close cropped hair on the drums smacking the snare tat tat tat, young fella greasing the mic in velvety lows and pure highs. Soul music and bourbon, neat.

Let the music take me and I sit on that bar stool for a two hour set, the next band’s through round 1 a.m. and I’ll be damned if I never did see the house headliner nor make it til’ 2 a.m.  I’d absorbed all I could possibly absorb and my wanderlust had me again and so I walk and walk down uneven sidewalks until my senses slow, my phone dies and I become lost in the night and my thoughts.

I should probably feel fear, but there is none. Only a mild sensation, like a phantom limb touching my shoulder, reminding me I’ve somewhere to be, that I have someone to be. Don’t pull me back yet.

I never do make it back to my hostel. I cross paths with a woman and a man. We walk for a time and the man eventually goes his own way. Talk for long hours at the woman’s home, well into the morning and wake suddenly on her couch, birds chirping, sun only just risen.

There’s a stark difference today, my mind sharp and completely clear, not just of the whiskey, of the clutter. Like seeing the real thing after knowing only the reflection thereof for a lifetime. Maybe I’m just happy. Or delusional from living in a van for six weeks – it could really go either way. Grab my sneaks and back to finding my damn hostel. I want the ten dollar deposit for my key back even if I didn’t sleep there.

Later I’d remember a parade with dragons and dancing and a voodoo shop that offered incense and shrunken heads and in a veiled corner in the back, dark relics and woven wicker and yarn pin dolls to offer to tourists wanting a strange keepsake. And being photobombed by a woolly Wookie. Yeah that happened. I’m wearing the black voodoo t-shirt I opted for, my sole purchase aside from the Technicolor NOLA sticker I snagged for the van.  Not in the market for hexing today.

For now I’m wandering endlessly, how did anyone ever get around without Google Maps? Fall in stride with two black gentlemen, maybe in their fifties and walking in no particular hurry, the morning sun warming the pavement and my bare shoulders and hands.

I ask them if they know where Madame Isabelle’s House is. Neither do.

“Want some breakfast child?” One says in that way that older southron folk address everyone as child whose anywhere from ten years to fifty years younger than themselves.

I’d long since burned off that po’boy and I wasn’t in any hurry to wander in the wrong direction anyways. We walk about ten more minutes and turn into a gap between dilapidated brick shops in pinks and greens. A small covered pavilion on a broken concrete lot with a sunlit yard, and mismatched picnic tables.

There’s one table against the building beside the pavilion, with two tall thermoses and a camp press style coffee pot, sugar in a dented, white Styrofoam cup to the left. Breakfast. One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned on this trip is that coffee is the great uniter of the people -and usually bad coffee to boot.

In the Black Hills with Frank and Lilah, brought together by the bitter rain and steaming mugs spiked with Schnapps. With Benjamin to warm our hands in South Lake Tahoe forest whilst the winter chill crept up upon the last fire and yellow days of fall. Here with this man Mr. Darby Jr., and friends and breakfast in the form of black coffee with sugar and the grounds settling at the bottom.

Now Mr. Darby and I get to talking, after he’s made his rounds of course, the man seems to know everyone. ‘Hello’s,’ and ‘How’s the knee Tony?’ Or ‘Say hi to the wife and kids for me.’ Every single one met with a great smile.

He talked about his father Mr. Darby Sr. and just how good a father he was and how well he took care of his children. An honorable man, he said, by all accounts. We talked a little about what I was doing round’ these parts but more so about just people in general. Bless you Mr. Darby, for breakfast and the goodness of your heart and the great worth of your stories. Now I must be getting home.

Okay now the stupid key. Walking near these underpasses and risers tagged with graffiti some beautiful, most rubbish, more rubbish in the gutters on the streets, wild flowers and southern blossoms I have no name for grow in small patches of grass stark against the greyscale highway.

Flag someone down on their smartphone, asked them nicely but forcibly to google the address, note the cross streets and finally return the damn key. Peace out suburbia, take me back to Bourbon St. for just one more glimpse.

8 a.m. and the bars are merely turning their clientele over from the last standing night walkers, eyes glazed and dilated, stale smoke clinging to ruffled dresses, to a fresh round of morning mischief makers, myself included, early birds catching the buzzzz. Workers on the sidewalks with hoses literally wash the filth into the gutters to make way for a fresh round of “Sunday Funday” destruction and projectile vomiting. Seriously, disgusting.

I’ve got another long haul today though, so I settle for one Bud Lite at a very, very interesting little bar. The barkeeps nipple rings hang out over his near shredded wife beater, hair in liberty spiked blue. Chatted with two transgender girls who were just getting off shift dancing at the club down the street. Everyone was ever so friendly, but then I met this kid in a kilt, a rainbow feathered boa and combat boots.

Now talking to this guy was a trip. Anyone could tell he was on something but he told me within forty-five seconds that he was still flying on ecstasy and dancing in his mind, the thoughts sometimes transferring to a quick twitch or arm roll to an imaginary bass in his drawn out mind. Maybe thirty years old or so, I bought him a beer to hear a little more of his story and we walked somewhere in the general direction of the lot I parked in.

I’d come so far but had yet to stumble across this particular brand of human. So much… entitlement, yet he seems to have so little to offer. I can’t pinpoint the feeling at first because I’ve known only shades of bliss the last six weeks but I put my finger on it as he rambles on. Disgust.

“Man, the kickbacks down here are freakin’ great.” He brags. “Some rich old fag gave me 140 bucks when I told him I was traveling and homeless. This other bitch bought me new clothes after I told her about my daughter and my girl back home.”

Home was some small town in Minnesota. Where he left his woman and little girl to pursue….whatever the hell it was he was doing here. Couch surfing and banking on kickbacks, term I’d never heard before for free favors from the upper class. He was so proud of his pan handling.

I needed to hear this. Not every lost soul is a Mr. Darby, but I’ve been lucky enough in my travels to come across only the kindest sort of folk. My mind jumps to Catcher in the Rye and good ol’ Holden Caulfield. “Phonies,” he would say. This guy is definitely a phony, enough so that I’ve already forgotten his name.

This world is not so black and white, for only Sith Lords deal in absolutes, and mine hands are not so clean, but I’d not wash away the grit for a clean slate nor for wealth nor immortality. Life is messy. I’m in so deep and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Lift my foot to the driver’s side runners and hop up into the cab. Say goodbye to one last star on my map. An outline in blue from Minnesota to the Redwoods, down the coast, through the desert to the bayou and finally north again. I’ll have a lifetime to reflect, but right now I’m still immersed, swimming furiously against the undertow calling me back to a where my heart lay, sand dusted and beating slowly in the west where the waves pulse unceasingly against Venice Beach.

Now Mothers, tell your children. Not to do as I have done. Spend your lives, in sin and misery. In the House of the Rising Sun.

Up and at em’ and on the road at an early hour. I’ve got some long stretches of the country to cross today.

An old friend lives in Las Cruces New Mexico, which falls directly across my line of travel. I moved to Wisconsin when I started sixth grade, so keeping in touch with someone from my times tables and kickball days in Pittsburgh feels like a gift.

I shoot her a late text because I’ve lost all sense of time, dates and realities out here on the road. Real people who don’t live in vans have lives, but she gets back to me when I’m about thirty miles past her town. Whip a U-turn because when will I be in New Mexico ever again?

We played soccer in grade school and raised a little hell. Shooting bb-guns off the deck and beating the crap out of each other with Hulk Hands (okay fine I usually got my ass kicked.) Flash forward as I pull up to New Mexico State University, where she assistant coaches for the girls’ soccer team. Good to see ya Jessie.

Head out for sushi because I’m obsessed, completely obsessed. I talk about my writing and my travels. Jess talks about soccer and school, whilst giving up on the chopsticks and making her sushi finger food.

One of the most positive and ambitious people I’ve ever known, never without a smile. I can’t believe we get to catch up like this; on the opposite side of the country from where we both began our lives, in what feels like a different life. We’re both so easy going though, it’s like no real time has passed. Good luck Jess, until we meet again.

Back on the road before dusk and I try to log some long, hard won hours on this endless highway. Not much to be said nor felt at this hour. Too tired to write or think or sing, only keep the pedal level against the worn soles of my sneakers and chase my own headlights awhile longer.

Fighting off sleep with the last dregs of a Monster and loud music. Nahko, Greenday, ACDC, something with a little grit. I’m lightyears away when I see lights up ahead. It takes me fifty yards nearer to read the printed lettering above the highway pass. Border Patrol.

No surprise here when they open up and check my giant white rapey van that I’m driving alone, at midnight near the Mexican border. Searching for possible kilos of that China white and or los drugas ilegales. I stand behind the van and shoot the shit with the patrol while they do a quick once over. Dust off their hands and send me on my way.

What fun. Red eye some last hours, pull over around four a.m. Hop in the back of the van which I parked in a suburbia cul-de-sac reminiscent of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and pass the hell out.

Wake early and drive. Gotta blow this Popsicle stand real fast. Takes me the better part of the day to get to Dallas. Traffic is hell and people drive like maniacs. Get nearer to the city and coast endless loops and reroutes and my God I’m sick of this drive. Texas delivering frustration so far in spades.

Ten years later… pull up to Angela’s apartment and launch into instant crisis management mode. Somehow her car got towed and she’s only got an hour and a half to get it out of impound. Ready? Break!

We embark on a mad dash in the van across town, cashier’s check, approve this and that, on hold for-ev-er, funds transfer aaaaaand we’re too late they’re closed. Poor Ang, we shall compensate with libations.

Her boyfriend Jay works at this cool restaurant and we sit out on the patio and start into it immediately. She’s the ribbing sort, jokes and eff you’s, and all sarcasm. Love her to death.

Jay brings us a heavenly, chocolatey cupcake surprise gifted from the Gods on Pegasus’ wings straight from Mount Olympus’ kitchens to our taste buds to cheer us up after the car fiasco. Carry on and on, home and restart tomorrow. It’s been a long day. Sleep well, even when Jay plays drunken guitar outside on the patio after he returns home from work at four in the morning. The sound is mostly soothing despite the occasional dissonant or slipped, tipsy chord.

Wake rested on the couch, Angela off to work early so I’ve got the apartment to myself for the day. Familiar Starbucks drill as I ride into town and snag some internet.

I’ve done this ritual so many times now, so many places. Familiar as my own reflection is this routine. Though my reflection now hardly resembles that freshly untethered girl who left Shangri La for the California coast weeks ago. A darker skinned girl with longer, sun bleached hair stares back, wilder and more visceral than the original; that outline which much resembled the rippling reflection of a thought or a hope unfulfilled. Now turned nearly whole.

Walk the walk, write the talk and type it out. Flashback to the visitor center parking lot with faint internet connection in the redwoods, typing away in Delilah’s cab. Or South Lake Tahoe, when I’d come down from the mountain pass to refill my water jugs and scribble notes – sipping on an iced chai, one shot of espresso. Or in the jam-packed Starbucks on Hollywood Boulevard, salt and sweat from the dry heat sticking to my cooling skin in the busy little shop, baristas bustling to tackle the morning coffee rush hour.

Finish my scribblings and head back to the apartment to play my six string. I’ve been so invested in the writing and the living as of late that I’ve nearly forgotten the music. Jay is home and he spray paints planets and the vibrant colors of the universe on particle boards on the patio, smoking cigarettes all the while as I sing in the background, honing my own craft. Vocal cords reveling within the lyrics, rolling them around on my tongue, strumming soft chords and picking notes with my fingers.

Angela gets home and Jay goes back to work. Take on the car fiasco round two and we manage to get it back this time. Hoorah and celebrations and a few more libations. We decide to go to some sort of bluegrass/country fest and get our Texas on.

Except, it’s awful. We get there, grab some random Mexican food, and join the audience on the soft grass in front of the mainstage. The band seems gun-shy, like this is their first middle school talent show. Everyone sits quietly and no one dares dance, even when the band occasionally drifts from their melancholy, sad country songs to something with just a little bit of pep.

We watch the sky darken awhile instead, and what a beauty it is, stars ablaze in a nightshade blue. When neither of us can take the somber scene any longer, stand up, dust off our jeans and head on out.

Rally at Jay’s work instead. These Texas accents though, yeesh. I try not to giggle every time someone (namely Jay) says ‘Lil darling.’

Head home and party on Wayne. Great to see you guys, seriously. 😉 Texas is kind of stupid but you two aren’t so thanks for having me! I’m spinning and all smiles as we wear the night thin and finally abandon our Miller Lite tallboys for our beds. Drift off to sleep, wake briefly when Jay shakes my arm gently round’ four a.m., home from work again and inspired enough to play me his latest composition. Tipsy lilt against his drawl but the guitar tune is sweet and haunting and beautiful and I tell him so, in my zombie, autopilot sleep mode as I drift back into my dreamscape of oceans and mountains and woods and a girl with wings.

Up early and time I was headed onto my last real stop on this crazy train. New Orleans. My parents lived there for a spell and said it was wild. Wild has always been my calling card.
I’ve only got one night to spend there, as I’m running out of rocket fuel in my wayward traveler’s boots. But, it’s Saturday, and the day has only just begun.

“There is no, Arizona! No painted deserts, no Sedona. If there was, a Grand Canyon, she could fill it up with the lies he told her.” -Jamie O’Neil

Windows down as I barrel into the desert heat singing yet another pointedly cheesy shout out song about my next destination. I cut the actual Grand Canyon out of my travel plans, but Scottsdale, A.Z will be close enough.

Out of California, across the border and yet another drastic landscape change into Arizona. I see my honest to goodness first live cactus through my dusty windshield. There I go being melodramatic about a cactus, but I’ve never been in this part of the country before. The borders between our states could divide fifty individual planets for how drastically the vegetation and the creatures and the skies change with every one traversed.

Burn through the last couple of hours to Derek’s place. I’m twenty minutes away, checking my GPS for the exit aaaaaand, KABOOM!!!

You’ve got to be kidding me. This is a joke. Except for the real life part where I just blew another tire in the desert. Freaking Fabulous. Nevada all over again, oi with the poodles already.

At least this time I know for sure it’s completely blown as it shreds up under itself, shot like a deflated rubber duck, while the raw metal of the wheels grates against the concrete as I scrape down an exit and into a strip mall parking lot.

Guy pulls up behind me, rolls down his window.

“Hey, you know you’ve got a blown tire?” He asks.

I curb my initial response, suppress a sigh and mentally roll my eyes.

“Yes sir, thank you, I had noticed.” I quipped.

“There’s a discount tire store right behind you.” He replied and drove off.

Well I’ll be damned; I really must have a guardian angel, in spite of my smart mouth.

An hour and a half and 450 dollars later and I am back on the road. My grandmother forgot to mention when she gifted me the van that the tires were ten years old… Ancient rubber + hot desert highways = Ani going boom in the desert twice. Four shiny new discount treads for Delilah. No more roadside disasters. Knock on wood.

Finally pull up to Derek’s little suburb and am greeted with hugs, a cold beer then steak and Alfredo dinner, in that order. Now that’s a homecoming. His girlfriend Lydia is totally rad. We’re outside on Derek’s back patio, lounging by the pool. Laughter, drinks, and catching up on a lifetimes worth of stories as the sun sinks behind us and carry on well after it has set in full and gone to play on the other side of the world.

Lydia checks out first for the night, Derek and I are incorrigible, but man this is great. Finally wear ourselves out and call her a night. There’s a Pittsburgh Steeler game tomorrow and that’s a big deal in this household.

Neither Arizona zip codes nor Wisconsin fire numbers will ever sway the two of us from our boys in black and gold.

Not only do I get my own queen size bed with the softest comforter in the entire universe and a cave-like encroachment of giant plush pillows, but I get my own room. Not a tin box parked against the curb, not a dark blue curtain dividing the bunk beds and sleeping girls in the hostel or a solid tent and earthen floor, an honest to goodness bedroom.

It’s too unfamiliar for me just yet, as I fall asleep on the couch under a soft knit blanket, watching T.V, another novel contraption. I’m as a time traveler from before the lines and wires and waves that connect our world. Flung into the future and awestruck by the foreign land. Okay Ani McFly it’s a television not a hover board.

Wake to kitchen noises and wondrous smells assailing my nostrils.

“Good morning kid!” Derek says over the sizzling coming from the kitchen. Him and Lydia whip up an omelet concoction worthy of kings and feast like kings we do. After weeks of sandwiches and bar food it’s all almost too much. Says the girl wolfing down seconds.

The game is on early and off to a good start. Day beers and cheers and sideline replays and then we’ve won! Cause for celebration and sushi it is. You may have noticed a predominant theme running here. Munch munch munch.

If I haven’t made my affinity for raw fish apparent yet I love the stuff, but Derek and Lydia show me how it’s done. We take on about half the menu, variety bento box, specialty fire rolls, seared ahi tuna, whitefish hand rolls and things I will neither try to pronounce here nor try ever again. Something about the little fish eggs that burst with gel like goo against your tongue, and whole baby octopi, it’s just where I draw the line.

Stuff ourselves silly and back to the homestead. Dance and jam party in the living room. I play my strings and belt em’ out and everyone joins in. This is family. I needed this, after so many weeks on my own with only the interesting yet sometimes solemn company of strangers.

Settle down and throw on a movie. Derek and I are snoring within half an hour and it’s eight o’clock. We’ve really outdone ourselves today. Lydia turns out the lights and tucks me in on the couch once more. See you in the morning friends.

Rise and shine and Derek has an early half day at the office. No worries uncle, Lydia and I have plans. She has lived in Arizona all of her life and is the most excellent tour guide. And a hiking we will go!

We drive out into the desert and I feel like I’m in an old western.

“And somebody poisoned the water hole! There’s a snake in my boot.”

Okay maybe I just feel like I’m in Toy Story Two since I’ve never really watched a western.

Mostly because of the cactuses. Outside of the tiny planter pots in grade school teacher windowsills, I’d never seen one up close. Big, oblong, misshapen ones remind me of the waving wind men of primary colors that blow their arms round wildly in front of car dealerships and mattress warehouses. Okay I’ll shut up about the cacti.

Pull up to the trail-head parking lot, hills rising amongst us in reds and sandstone beiges. The dry heat and rocks yield only to prickly desert flowers and resilient, dark and ancient looking trees with twisted branches with not a whisper of flower or fruit.

I feel fantastic. Weeks of walking and hiking in the open air and my breath no longer hitches when I charge headlong up a mountain.

“This is Squaw Peak,” Lydia says between strides. The state renamed it Piestewa Peak, when the nation moved to stop offending the Native Americans, but Lydia has known it to be Squaw Peak all of her life so shall it be to me. I don’t think we’ve mortally offended anyone, but if so please feel free to call me out.

I feel that familiar twinge in my left knee, reminding me that I will regret my reckless gallivanting in the morning and Lydia’s breathing is becoming heavier as well. Turn round’ and back down the winding pass.

And then somehow we’re back at the sushi bar minus Derek and feasting again. We earned it on the mountainside. So we tell ourselves. Back home, Derek’s done, carry on in words, music, love and infinite smiles. I was going to leave tomorrow, but what’s one more day in paradise?

Last day and another morning hike with Lydia. Pinnacle Peak this time. Light Nike’s on hot dusty rocks crunching lightly beneath worn rubber, step light, step light. Then the sun and the air and the thrill of the moment take me under-wing and up and up as I take off at a run. A jog not sprint mind you, I’m no Steve Prefontaine.

I carry on this way for fifty yards or so, charged with electricity and raw energy. So this is what healthy people feel like. I’d forsaken my usual fried buffalo chicken bacon sandwich for much lighter fare since I’ve been on the road and the great outdoors and lack of Culver’s double bacon butter-burgers has done me good.

Slow down and catch my breath, take stock of the moment. Inhale, exhale, reap vitamins and warmth from the sun and probably skin cancer if I don’t start putting sun screen on. I love this tan though…

Back down and back home, snack a little and rest. Then off to the fair with Lydia’s grown kids, Zach and Brianna. Chocolate covered funnel cakes, pizza and three whiplash carnival rides later, always a winning combination, and I’ve grown tired in my bones. As tired as old man time, slumbering beneath the earth til’ this world’s end when he wakes to put us mortals to rest. And also mildly nauseous as any good fair experience will induce.

Ride home with my fuzzy blue seahorse carnie plunder and am sleeping soundly in the back of the car the instant the wheels begin to turn.

“He promised her a new and better life, out in Arizona. Underneath the blue never ending skies.”

This life is new and better and I’ll never stop chasing it. Across the desert, towards to the gentle Atlantic, hidden in the depths of the Wisconsin Northwoods and back again to the might of the Pacific crashing endlessly against the western coast.

I finally sleep in the bed, the softest bed in this world and say goodnight to the stars in another place that feels like home. Thank you guys so much, I will always remember this.

It is getting late in the year now, though I’ve been following the sun and am still fixated in the light, autumn is chasing summer off in the east and I too must soon yield to the seasons and return home. For whatever that means.

Texas is a big state though, lotsa driving, so I squash the somber thought, pack my bags, hugs and remove my neighborhood parking ordinance violation from under Delilah’s wiper blades and head into the sunrise again.

My friend Angela lives in Dallas now, so I’ll midway there and then finally to New Orleans. But aside from her I’m not itching to get to the outlaw frontier. Our childrens’ conservatively biased textbooks hail from there, along with the gun fanatics and border vigilantes. As Spongebob would say shortly before Sandy Cheeks karate-s his holey ass, “Stupid old Texas.” But I can’t live in my pineapple forever, let’s do this thing. Bye for now.