Inching forward each day, finding my way into my home. My home that I missed most Thursday and Fridays for the past several years. Oh, yes and the worked weekends that were tossed in for good measure. I still have stacks of papers, books, art supplies, writing books, books written in, boxes of photographs, clothes that have seen their best before date and some that will no longer see the inside of a nurses station. The scheduled, hurry up and get it done, side of me - only for a second or two - wants to roll up my sleeves and dive in. Get rid of it all…..or some of it…….or……. Overwhelmed I start taking things of the top of the nearest pile. This morning I chose from the top of the pile on my dining room table a small coil notebook that hadn’t been opened for years. The title and date at the top of the first page: Road to El Paso April/06. I recall that trip with fond memories. It was my first trip back to Lubbock, Texas since returning to Canada in the fall of 1999. My good friend from my Lubbock days, David Lusk and I were taking a road trip to El Paso, Texas. The little water colour picture is one I sketched while on that road trip using watercolour pencils, completing it when we stopped for the night. Here is my writing from April of 2006:
I still could not see the land! This time it was not the granite, tree laden cliffs that were obscuring the land and sky but highway cones, detour signs and telephone poles. Thin spikes jutting up against the sides of highways and railroad tracks; the occasional dusty windblown house of unknown residence surrounded by bushes grown up against its sides. The sky, today not startling blue outlined by a rimmed white horizon, but by gray stretching side to side. The only relief being the different shades in puffs and streaks of smaller drifts wondering where to go and what to do. Only the soil was red. Red soil that stretched ahead and around what seemed a bleak and unforgiving tunnel. Road noise reminded us that we rolled along, supported by black rubber tires to worn gray asphalt, matching the interior of this rental, Silver Grand Am. Car and land covered by nature’s gray damp blanket. Road tar was the aroma on this leg of the trip not the smell of freshly turned red spring soil. I am longing for green, blue, yellow, orange. Hot sun or cool night breeze. Deep dark sky, stars punched out of the velvet fabric in patterns of myths. Swaths of galaxies. Ah, a hint of blue breaks in the skies ahead. Closing quickly, it may only have been a mirage born of the dream I am caught in.
There is one other thing I that I’ve not yet spoken of: Rock! Rock music! Fitting in this strange place. And, looking up, I see that roadsides bordering fields are showing green hints and hues promising that this gray, wide tunnel will open to the grandeur of the West Texas plains. And now a plowed red field preparing the tiny seedlings resting to be later born into cotton? No. The sign we just passed said: Peanuts!
I do hope you enjoy this little bit of West Texas. I know that, while writing this out, editing a wee bit here and there ~ especially when I couldn’t read my writing or understand a sentence ~ put me back on that Road to El Paso.
“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”
~ Martin Buber
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