June 16, 2011 - A long time has passed since I wrote. Oddly, time without my car, left in Arlington, Virginia while I slipped back into patterns of life that pay the bills and keep my house in Anchorage. Divorced from the road, an uneasy and volatile relationship at times, but reconciled now. Car in my hands, Kerrville and Minnesota in my rear view mirror, I head home again. Always heading home. As in past years, Kerrville was a reconnection to great friends and the meeting of new ones and then it was Austin for a night and then a lunch before landing on Interstate 35 and heading North to see family and for a music event for my Uncle Gene at my Cousin Jeff's - with all my Mom's family there (Bette, Barbara and Tom, Audrey, Cousins Kelly and John), Jeff's daughters Bri and Emily, John's son Matt and friends Trina, Jill and Pete as well. It was a good evening. The previous evening was at Cousin Anna's and her husband Gary and lunch with Uncle Pete, visit with Cousin Barbara - Minnesota, my other home.
We are bound by the myths and magic that grow up around us, with us. I heard no few stories of my past in this past two days. One story still makes the rounds unchanged after all these years... I had been doing one of my many cross-country trips in my twenties (or was it my late teens?) and had stopped to visit Uncle Gene and Aunt Bette. To protect my stuff I had parked my car in their garage in Minneapolis (Nordeast, as they say) and, after an evening of stories and dinner, ran out in a rain storm to unlock the garage padlock and set out on the road for somewhere that I don't recall - all I knew was that it was East... I pulled the car out (the trusty brown Toyota), put the key on the top of the car while I re-padlocked the garage. I bid farewell to the city of my summers in youth and headed East to Wisconsin. It was in Madison when I realized I had forgotten to take the key to the garage off of my car... Hundreds of miles later, I pulled over and, in a desperate panic, reached up on top of my car... and found the key. Stunned, I called Gene and Bette and let them know I had the key. The next day I dropped it in the mail and the story became a bit of family lore, a bit of magic... There are others to tell and, one day they'll come out too.
I left after the show last night - family mostly still there as I extended my goodbye for an hour before climbing into my car and setting out West to Fargo. I couldn't stay. A sadness, or a contemplation had its grip on me. A moment. A passage of time. Compelled to feel the road beneath me, where everything becomes timeless, where thought is therapy, where pasts and futures merge in a slow lane of thought, I set out. And so, with a full moon guiding me, then behind me, I drove into a fog in Fargo and the night.