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
