In particular, the stretch between Amarillo and Santa Fe is very familiar. Once, I almost died on that segment, or suffered, or could have looked at the mangled wreckage of a collector car and said "can you believe I escaped that unscathed?" (Snowstorm, mismatched tires, '69 cherry red Mustang ragtop of fellow St. John's student spinning, spinning, spinning in wild eastward-plunging circles across black ice sheeted high bridge over Texas Canyon-- by some miracle, the spinning car stayed in the right lane, and while spinning was passed by a few semis in the left lane, horns blaring, and spun satellite-like steady and straight 5 or 6 times all the way around, 12π radians, about, until pointed east again-- but I said "okay, so when we get to Tucumcari, let me out, I'll just take Trailways," which I did indeed do-- a truly weird bus ride from Tucumcari to Baltimore, most of which I remember only as unpleasant smells and filthy restrooms at stops along the way and fitful sleep and awful dreams, and me heartbroken on a mission to try to salvage the long distance relationship with the woman in Annapolis, a relationship that would indeed refuse to be salvaged, but which almost landed me in a very toxic situation, but more about that later and this is a long, unwinding, spinning Interstate 40 of a parenthetical).
Alice Coltrane came through with another dislodging piece of music for part of the trip, actually headed into Amarillo from the east. The bug splats (may all sentient beings) add something poignant, in my opinion. Note also the slow, stately whirl of the windmills.
The disorienting (get it?) process continued, as I rose and rose westward toward my old home. Maybe not disorienting, but re-occidenting.
The correspondence with the new woman continued rampantly, also. We quickly moved from flirtation and erotica to multivalent, funny, entertaining, revealing conversations about who we are. At one point, we were talking about my tendency to rip myself a new one, via an extremely harsh internal critic. She wrote:
"I seek to coax out what truly motivates their abrasiveness/cruelty/what have you. And validate it, create space for it, love them anyway until they've no choice but to shake off their grudges toward me or until I clearly register their stuff is about them, not about me."
I sat up and took notice that here was another area where we could compare notes-- skillful means that keep the heart open, in the face of cold winds. How to live with soul. A deeply valued necessity for me in anyone with whom I am becoming intimate. Kindness, humility, tenderness, compassion, humor, sensuality, intellect, curiosity, cultural and political savvy, a range covering the most profane to the most sacred, beauty, grace, a way with words-- what the fuck had I gotten myself into?
The night of July 16th, in Amarillo, we had decided I would choose some of her pictures and explain why I liked them or what I thought the story was. She had already done something similar with a few photos of me, earlier in the day. For me, the process changed from being playful to being profoundly heart opening. Choosing a set of pictures meant, of course, poring over a great many, a process which I could have engaged in for hours. By the time I was done, it was long after midnight and she was not online, since it was 2 in the morning where she was. I sent her each photograph I had carefully chosen of her, with my annotations as to why I chose each, and intuitions of what was going on for her when the picture was taken.
It started to sink in that I loved this person. That I wasn't just crushing, or flirting. That I was opening to her whole story, that I wanted as much of her story as she would tell. That I wanted the always shining best and highest good for her. That I wanted to meet her wherever the two of us could connect the best. And I realized that the connection had become infused, for me, with the same sense of the sacred that had been infusing my entire trip. The emerging interaction moved in mystery.
In the interest of the strictest confidentiality, I'll not disclose any situational details. I'll only mention in passing that life circumstances make it so that the two of us are not able to be in the same space with each other in any ordinary way.
It is what it is.
In fact, probably, in honor of the flat out spectacular is-ness of it, I doubt I'll write much more about it for a while. It ended for a while, almost a week, after I had returned to Hades-- ended for completely understandable reasons. I tried to respect the empty, safe space between us, respecting and honoring her and her situation without reservations of any kind, continued loving her and thought about letting go and what that would be like. But then it returned, slowly at first and then, yet again, in a conflagration. It continues. Enough said.
This is, after all, a series of posts about the road trip-- and it would not have been possible, of course, to talk about New Jersey back to Phoenix in any way without telling this central story that was running so powerfully, on the next highway over, unfolding in the bloody center of my heart.
Santa Fe welcomed me warmly. I felt, for the first time in years, a pull back to the town. Many visits over the past decade, I have not wanted to move back there. This time was the first time where I was feeling nostalgia and a sense that I could live there again. I have no idea why this was the case.
I do know I am done with Hades-- but Hades is not done with me. The PhD feels like core life purpose stuff, compelling me to finish. The good news is that I am now registered for my dissertation credits and, by the end of the semester, will have completed all of the lab work I need to do. Then, a year and half of analyzing data and writing the dissertation and trying to get the chapters published, but with much more flexibility in both time and space and probably only needing continuing enrollment credits as I wrap up field work.
In spite of the continued elements of a passage through the underworld, when I got to Santa Fe, the light and air and big sky offered what felt like Percy's spring break above ground. I was wearing love like clothes, turning into skin. There was also a lot of letting go happening, without my even having to try.
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