Like a Scattered Pack of Cards

I've got to tell you the truth. I'm just here, sort of blasted and annihilated; scorched and borne here by the inertia of the week. When you do things bam-bam-bam, you always get clotheslined yourself-bam-somewhere along the way. I'm looking down at my lap, at my student planner, bewildered by all the crap I wrote down. I kind of liked it better when I didn't write in that thing. Of course, I never got things done. Every now and then, you forget how to be human. And it's the strangest feeling trying to remember. I guess that's why we have the Word to show us who created us. Teach us how to love.

Agoraphobia

It's strange to drive so far and still be amongst the English-speaking. I'm here in Oklahoma now, after passing through New Mexico and a cow-flatulent part of Texas.

It's beautiful in the Midwest, where the road takes you through clear, roaming plains--flat and lacking California's innumerable, obstructive hills and trees. The highway stretches beneath the car for miles ahead and behind, while the grassy land on either side rushes out and away in every which direction. Wherever it doesn't merge with a distant mountain, it unites seamlessly with the sky.

As for the sky, "beautiful" and "breath-taking" are rough and inadequate. God flung wide the expanse here, and in the wake of creation, a mighty calm bearing all the heavy weight of the heavens remained. Dark cumulus behemoths laden with rain collide, and golden-pink arches, streaks, and contrails sprawl above. Deep down, sinners like me experience something like a faint panic as we race, as insignificant specks, under the vast jet blue. Places like these reveal us, rendering us with nowhere to hide, just as God's presence pushed Isaiah past the point of despondency, causing him to cry out, "Woe is me! For I am undone." Places like these remind us of our true identity. For me, it reminds me that I'm still scared of life, but I need not be.

I need to go now. The sun is really up, and I guess I've got to be in Memphis, or what Robin Williams calls "club medicated."

The Dusty Road

It's on an average Sunday that I get up and drive out of my life in a minivan. It takes at least five hours to alternately pack two small bags that contain my clothes and my computer, and read old books like Harry Potter to stave off time. The sun is baking merrily outside, but I'm not feeling it on the inside. For a while, I'm not living. I'm just moving my legs and arms and breathing. The leaves I brush past aren't living things to me, and beyond the sunshine, I can tell no sun.

I pass Zzyzx Road somewhere along the middle of a bleak, dusty, trodden freeway. I wonder where all those lonely roads trail off to? I happily blot out the day that the Lord hath made with my music player all the way until the little thing breaks. It's not till I'm in the bathroom later in the day that I remember for the umpteenth time that I'm not being laden with problems--I'm being blessed because I'm of the dust. It's hard to love your family, especially when you're a particularly volatile mix by gene, and you're crammed into less than 100 cubic feet of moving metal. But we're getting by, and I pray that I'm learning something. My bible is locked in the trunk, conveniently tucked away from its master. So I'm going to peer into the unfathomable Englishe of the King James Version of E-Sword tonight. I'm in Flagstaff tonight, and I expect to be in Alberquerque tomorrow.