UnrulyMom.Com

I want to dance…I want to write…I need to dance…I need to write. I know! I’ll do the dance/write/dance ritual. Perhaps that will bring forth the words I’ve been meaning to write.

I can’t think of a non-cliche way to start a blog post about road trips. Do I talk about how my family used to drive around in our big blue van, and I fell in love with the rubber-to-the-road endless airplane runway sound, and the dreamy haze of entire towns whisking by windows on either side? Do I mention the long-distance trips to visit friends across the country…road trips within road trips…about taking my young children on the road across country and seeing them begin to understand the vastness of the country, much less the world in which they live…the feelings of invincibility after my newly-single self traveled across the entire west/northwest/southwest in a gigantic loop that began in Texas, peaked in Portland, swooped through Los Angeles, and drifted through sleepy southwestern deserts with two young children in tow…over lonely railroad crossings blinking mutely in the middle of the night as I pass through yet another 1 stoplight city in the middle of a vast nameless field on either side of some forgotten highway?

This particular journey began with this Radiolab broadcast – most notably, “Goo and  You.” Most MOST notably, this closing quote:

“It’s not just what of me carries forward into the future, it’s like – what of my future self is in me right now.”

Give yourself 14 straight hours of travel time, with no one else in the car or, really, on the highway, but you, to ponder that. As you drive through parched Texas/Eastern New Mexico flatland by day, and only approach the mountains as invisible barriers to your destination at night…then wake up to find yourself surrounded by them and the thin, nipping air that accompanies them. It was one hell of a way to kick off a road trip. Perfectly timed, and not timed at all.

Like conversations about giving too much and not giving at all, and about art and the art of paying attention. In my silences, I replayed these thoughts in this context. I have observed that all things transpire in context with the things that transpire adjacent, with a little help from throwback memories. I am interested in how things interplay to form a new thing out of the combined things and a dash of timing. Like two books you read at the same time that have nothing to do with each other, but somehow end up syncing up. Like seeing the same car at multiple gas stations along the journey, and never interacting. The lives of the people in both cars intersect at that moment, then continue on in meaningful meaninglessness. Unintentional intention.

In the car, I play road games with the navigation system. First, I use both Google Maps on my phone, and the navigation system in the car. I sync them up as much as I can, and make decisions as I go. It keeps me awake, and leaves me open to adventure, or curtailment thereof…depending on my mood and/or level of energy. As I travel, I focus only on the next leg of the journey – only recalculating the total time of the journey and ETA when I embark on a new leg.

This keeps me alert.

Also, math.

(Not meth, you weirdo. Math.)

Some road notes:

this charming man

tears of a clown
baby it’s you by the Beatles
Shanghai shuffle by fletcher Anderson
give it to you by Blackalicious

I believe in me by trenchmouth

radian by air

boil by the handsome family oil by the handsome familyI’ll buy the family

wagon wheel restaurant Red Bud inn and everything’s fucked by dirty 3

Christianity is not a religion it’s a relationship with God

153 to 7o there’s like a 20 square-mile wind farm. I don’t even know how fucking huge is is, but it’s beautiful.

so beautiful

it’s so beautiful I burst into tears and had to pull over.

(…to be continued…)