I'm Back

…I honestly meant to stop, but I’m a bit obsessive. I see the place I mean to be and I have trouble resting until I get there. But I honestly meant to stop.

Going through Kansas, I thought: It will be nice to stop.
I thought: I’m almost obeying the speed laws.
I thought: Oil wells in Kansas, isn’t that strange?
I thought: I hate the High Prairie.

I thought: I’ll get a nice motel, I’ll watch a movie on my laptop. I’ll sleep like a mummy, like a baby, like an angel.

And Missouri, with it’s anti-abortion signs and it’s off-ramp porn stores, it was too contradictory, too schizophrenic a place for me to imagine staying.

But at St. Louis, I still meant it. I thought: yes, sometime after the city, I’ll see a hotel, it will strike me, and I’ll stop.

Highway 64. Interstate 57. It’s raining. It’s night. There’s fog. I think about God. No, not really. I think about how people envision God. How they wanted the garden and he gave them Missouri. How they wanted rain and he gave them the flood. This God. These people of this world.

I think about the idea that like any of the abused they begin to tell themselves a story in which it was their fault—death, disease, pain, violence, the weather. I thought about how like most of the abused the people that envisioned that God, they told stories to help themselves deal with the nature of the world.

They told themselves they’d made a choice. As if there was a choice. As if one doesn’t have to go into the world. As if a child could always be a child. They told themselves that they’d made a bad choice and everything would suffer it for always.

They pretended it was ever in their control.
That story was for comfort.
It didn’t have to be chaos, they said.

You wanted unconditional love and he gave you a world of barter; you wanted forgiveness and he gave you a worship deal; you wanted peace and he gave you restlessness.

And the Father you envision, when he makes himself right, when he sees himself clear, he will say, Forgive me.

And that child that you are, which is a child of half light, a child like your father, not full of power, not full of grace, a child of limit and uncertainty, what will you say, how will you answer?


…And then I’m in Kentucky for a moment, and I have not stopped. And the New Year, it’s swept across the country; they’ve popped their corks; they’ve shot their guns; they’ve kissed each other.

And I have not stopped.

I mean to. I’m driving through the fog and the rain thinking about God, and maybe about you, depending on who you are. Or aren’t.

And I’m thinking, I’ve got to stop. I’m tired. It feels like my sockets are giving birth to my eyes.

My lungs hurt. My heart. The doctor said rest.

And I think: I’m not moving much. Just my feet. Just my hands. This is rest.

And I think: I’ve got to stop.

…Even into Tennessee I believe in my hotel. My laptop and a movie. I believe.

But in truth, by Knoxville, I’m already blogging. I’m telling myself what I’ll write. It will start, I honestly meant to stop, but I’m a bit obsessive.

…And now in the late afternoon, the early evening, I’m in Georgia. I’d write home instead of Georgia, but where is home?

These trips, they split one. And this traveling is never done.

And the new year started. The way we mark time. How lost we’d feel if time just was. If we didn’t know it by minutes and days and years.

There’s a big tv on my floor. Movies in my bag. Pictures of my son to load onto my computer. The sun going down; it’s not cold here. It’s not warm.

And I will sleep. Like a mummy, like a baby.