midway

At times, especially around the fourth hour of driving, I sense myself in limbo and longing to get out the car for any reason imaginable. There really is no room to nap since the car is packed with Annie beside me. The drive took Pam four days with another driver, it will take me six days alone with Annie.

I awoke after eight hours of sleep feeling tired. In some sense it is the prospect of two more days driving. Yet I remain concerned since I fell asleep at the wheel yesterday shocked aware by the rumble strips along side the highway.

My dreams have been fantastic, entertaining, informative and best, affirmative of what lays ahead . . . if and when I get there. If all goes well, and I pray so, I will overnight in New York State this evening before the last drive to Pam.

I awoke with a profound sense that the love I experience is from the interlocutor and available for all. Immense, kind, patient, forgiving. Possible for me to acknowledge the experience during this epic transit of America alone with Annie. Humbling, these stops when we become people not just rude aggressors competing for space on the highway. Lending a new sense of: “What you see is what you get.” Add, there were several instances of unusual kindness yesterday reminding me that I too was once young and impatient. Aggressive and in a hurry, but now I realize the grave will be soon enough.

I will long remember these days for the closeness between Annie and myself. And this, new to me, discovery of the nature of love. Experiential. Not theoretical. Not chapter and verse but if you want love you must be loving and abandon all fear.

130706 EDT Johnson City, New York 06:14

When I refer to ‘morning’ I mean the first minutes after midnight. Up since around 03:00 I am now finished with my usual practice of collecting quotes. Relevant only for the affirmations I usually receive on Wikiquotes, first and foremost.

I awakened with a sincere sense of gratitude for our safe, so far, passage across America:: two thousand two hundred miles.

My thanksgiving is for not only our safety but our companionship between Annie and I, then Pam for her continual affirmations and empathy for the experience of exhaustion and frustration with fellow travelers. The few who seem hell bent for election to disposes any in their way on the road at break-neck speed. Of and for those few I have learned to forgive having been once, not that long ago, similarly rude. I ain’t no saint merely wanting to see love possible instead of vengeance.

BE HERE NOW means exactly that, live: fully in each and every moment. And I have. Sometimes exhausted falling into occasional wonder; just what in the name of all good am I doing? With each eaten mile behind me fully conscious of those who I left behind; never to be forgotten. An entirely other level of gratitude experienced this morning.

Then more so when renewed with consciousness of Pam and our life ahead.

Should I become a traffic statistic remember I am having and have had the best years and days of my life. No longer a wage slave I have time to be patient.

Be well.

130705 EDT Zanesville, Ohio 0541 midway

© 2013 by Jack Spratt—All Rights Reserved