Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2004-08-05 - 8:11 a.m.

Road Trips and Universal Energy

I just spent a while amusing myself reading Sister Betty's Road Trip Journals. Why? I wandered into the site through a link on Funnytheworld, and was enchanted by the buffali, and just kind of fell into the Road Trips. I'm a sucker for a good Road Trip.

I want a Road Trip.

I've always wanted to drive cross-country, but I've always been firmly stuck in the land of Oh-I-Can't and Maybe-Someday. I'm broke! I'm employed! I have children! I have a beater car! Like that.

It's true. These things are true. I am broke, and employed (no, those two things are not contradictory.) I have two children who are just possibly, vaguely possibly, still within the age window where I might wrestle them into a car with Mom for an extended trip (if I bring a case of batteries for Walkmen) but they won't be for long. I haven't got a car that I trust to get me to San Francisco and back, never mind the open road thing. It's true, it's true.

But this morning I am also feeling vaguely hippy-dippy new age in-touch-with-the-universe, and thinking that maybe the reason that I never have been on my road trip is that I keep living in the reasons why I can't. So maybe it's time to try something different, and say, "I'm not doing it this year because I don't have the resources, but I am starting to prepare for it." Or starting to prepare to prepare. Whatever.

I can't afford a reliable car, but I can afford a map of the US. And I already HAVE the stickpins and string. Hey - I'm on my way, can you feel it?

I haven't got the money, but I HAVE got an empty mayonnaise jar to put the money IN. I have a small check coming from a poem - I could start with that, it's found money.

I don't know what I will be driving in three years. Or one year, really. Life has a way of changing without warning you. All things are possible. Windfalls have arrived before. Some days it's difficult to believe that good and unusual things can happen; some days it's hard to see any open road ahead. For right now, I have to close my eyes to see that sort of thing. With my eyes open, it's all roadblocks and detours and construction and stop signs. But I'm going to put that map on the wall, just to show that I believe.

�

previous - next

�