ON THE ROAD - PART 5

NOVEMBER 2, 2013 – KENTUCKY LAKES – PRIZER POINT – SITE 21

Midway between Nashville and Paducah, our Gypsy Caravan found a wonderful oasis—out looking the tranquil waters of Lake Barkley. Glorious fall colors celebrated the evening and swathed the camp with a magical sense of being lifted up in the arms of some wonderful and restful dream... dusky light played with trees and danced atop unruffled waters which reflected all the calmness and glory of the colors of the vegetation surrounding it. It was drizzling when we got there, and the place felt so quiet—a certain nostalgic aura emanating from soft rain. But soon, the sky cleared off and it stop drizzling and all of a sudden I heard the most joyful and extraordinary sound ever—the laughter of children at play.

 

I went out looking for that laughter, and found it, and joined it—joint the children in their happy dance atop the huge trampoline—dreams in the air, hearts aglow; united in laughter and purity and true joy.

 

Wasn't Jesus ever so perfectly accurate and so profound in his words when he said "truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it?” Truly amazing indeed!

 

 

    

 

Later, we cozied up in the lovely and perfect warmth of our Gypsy Caravan, got our books out, got my magazines and candles... warmed up my sleeping quarters with the warmest and softest winter llama blanket, got my brown fuzzy bear pillow; got my pink tool box-makeup case ready for the following morning and put on my comfy PJ's.  

 

I felt like a child in my happiness and foolishness and innocence.

 

We dined on burritos, cinnamon raising toasts and hot cocoa.

 

Wonderful lovely night watching episodes over episodes of "Jericho" in our iPod and writing my memoirs.

It was a wonderful and magical thing being lullaby to sleep by the wild songs of coyotes.

 

 

ON THE ROAD - PART 4

DAY 4 – NOVEMBER 2, 2013

 

Early morning. I'm not exactly sure where we are—Missouri? St. Louis? But that's not surprising. It is still very windy and cold. Gray is the color of the sky—lifeless and uninspiring, but all of a sudden, an unexpected ray of sun brakes in; resilient yellow light illuminates the dullness... like a sweet miracle. The morning has been showered with a new brightness. It is so strong, this light against the gloominess of the morning, that it assures me we're in the road of hope, and progress, and joy for sure. It's just a matter of time. And trust.

 

BENTON, IL WHITTINTON, EXIT 77 –

 

We came down onto a charming little rest area nested on the mouth of some river. All the magical colors of autumn seem to have fallen down over the park; like a spilled glass of paint all over it, or like a magical umbrella of goldenrods, crimson and toasted red wrapping it. We wanted to set up camp there and have some lunch, but the nippy weather turned me down. The warmth which my heart had been seeking for some time now has been evading us—or so it seems. We will have to keep driving further South.

 

METROPOLIS – IL –

We droved for about a mile looking for a place to eat; looking for that Chinese Buffet announced on the billboards by the road, but we couldn't find it. And with the few choices for eatery in this little town, we decided to leave.

 

On our way out of Metropolis, we passed some type of a park—an enchanted island of trees and shrubs and grasses the color of oranges and cinnamon sticks and toasted nuts... how lovely, and how despondent at the same time it looked to me; all wrapped up in soft autumnal shadows and gloomy light. The softness of the afternoon light; the dimness in which the park seemed to rested; all mingled up and confabulated to confer the appearance of peace and sadness of a cemetery... a resting place for the dead as well as the living.

 

Just when we were leaving this beautiful and poignant scene, something got my attention... In the midst of all that dullness-like veil of melancholy—a group of young man playing some sorts of sport... my eyes, and I guess my heart too, caught a fast glimpse of one of the young man... in his black and white sport suit; slim and dark-haired and so alive and carefree and beautiful among the rest; beautifully defying his surroundings; yet, conforming to it... to the lovely sad atmosphere of the park.

 

Strange, and powerful feelings, almost mystical, stirred in me, and I thought of my own youth, and of those long forgotten days when, no matter how gloomy, or dark the sky may had been, it was always so transparent and blue, and pure to me... and I felt that zest for life, and that irrefutable passion for just 'being' that, I guess, pertains only to the young, and for a fragment of time everything was lovely again, and youthful and wonderful—love on the tip of my lips. His image stayed with me for a long time.

 

PADUCAH, KY –

We were starving by the time we left Metropolis. We decided to soothed our hunger with the big bag of rice crackers with nuts nested among the jumble-humble hodgepodge of things in the back seat... but where was it? We did find the bag after a while, but unfortunately we pulled it out among the many things kept in the back seat with the opening on the wrong side and made a huge mess everywhere. My husband grumbled something I didn't care to understand. I thought of that accident the day before involving that big truck back on Paducah, KY and the huge mess it made all over the road, and thought about the ludicrous disarray in our truck made by just a bag of crackers.  Why do people make such a fuss of so little?

 

We finally stopped at a Panera Bread Co. and warmed up our hunger to hazelnut coffee, chicken and wild rice soup and French bread. When I went to use their toilet I found out that it was out of toilet paper... I asked the lady waiting outside if she could please hand me some paper towel. Twice I asked for help without any avail. Was she deaf? Or did she not hear me? Or did she not noticed my hand waiving at her under the toilet door?  Was it my accent, perhaps? My Penelope Cruz accent, which always tricks me and reveals me somewhat unfamiliar, or different? And how small can some souls be? And why should that matter to me anyway? Beauty, is a light in the heart. I should keep mine alive. I should not let others put it off.  I was thankful for the lady who later came to my rescue.

 

PRINCETON – TN –

 

Rain... rain came without a given notice, without a chance to let us get our raining boots out, or put on our raining coats—not even in our imagination. The sky turned dark and as ominous as an unforgiving sea... with soothing, lovely rain. I love rain. And so we droved on under soft gray rain... me laughing... laughing hard listening to my husband's stories and road deliriums... of how our truck and Gypsy Caravan felt heavier than when we first started our cross country trip back at the house in the roses... and that perhaps, maybe someone had hidden a cadaver in the Gypsy Caravan while we slept the night before, and so on... a certain indication that we need to hurry up and get home. The road is definitely starting to do some strange things to our minds.

 

 

 

ON THE ROAD - PART 3

DAY 3 – November 1, 2013 - NEBRASKA

 

After breakfast in McDonalds and a Pumpkin Spice latte, in route to Lincoln, NE. The scenery has somewhat changed here on the favorable. Clumps of bright autumnal vegetation saturated both sides of the road—yellows so bright, so deep and gloriously brilliant against such openness, of fields and fields that seemingly, to my naked eye, surfaced as some sophisticated, yet wild thing of a fashionably young woman of yesterday; collecting hips of skirts the color of butter and ripe lemons, and then proceeding on a happy sprint down... down to the end of the horizon where fields and sky conformed and mingled as one.

 

Van Dorn Park—trees and trees a forest of dark tree trunks with bushy heads the color of the sunset...and it was cloudy and the gray all over you looked, except for those glorious trees. I'm hearing that from here on we're heading Southeast. I'm excited.

 

MISSOURI – KANSAS CITY: Dearborn, Exit 30 – An hour or so stuck in a one-lane traffic jumble; due to an accident involving a huge truck that somehow had veered off the road and made a mess for miles.

 

We stopped at the nearest rest area in Platte County with the intention of preparing our lunch; like the gypsies of yesterday—stopping wherever they would, or could, but a cold wind blew us off from there mighty quickly, I should say, and we end up eating at Taco Bell.

 

I've been sleeping in and out of the stupor of the road for hours. When awake, I often find myself analyzing the world as it passes by us in a frenzy of sky and trees and fields... wanting to interpreter everything I see, give meaning to meaningless things; things that should not be thought of or need not be interpreted. Like the carousel of my childhood when I would see the world passing by me as in a dream and I so desperately wanted to grab hold of it and keep it there; within the hollow of my two small hands.

 

It doesn't do you any good to be a thinker. It hurt to think too much sometimes. But I am a natural thinker; writing what I see and feel, it does help ease the mind.

 

I read for hours too. And like the Triana of Ann Rice, in her "Violin", sometimes I cannot tell whether I'm reading, or living in the world of the dead or just dreaming. What a complicated mind—Ann Rice. Obscure mind more than a complicated one, I should say. And how brilliant! I'm not enjoying this book as I should—the first one I've ever read of the Ann Rice collection. And I'm not enjoying it not because of all the morbidity in it, but rather because of the amount of data and thoughts, which to me don't make sense in a clear and true profound way.

 

ST LOUIS – DES MOINES, WICHITA – city after city of buzzing crazy sounds made by humans. I don't enjoy the big cities. I wish we'll soon reach the frank openness of the gentle country side again.
 

 

ON THE ROAD - PART 2

DAY 2 – October 31, 2013 - WYOMING

 

Cold. I hardly remember being this cold in a long time. Sinclair, Wyoming—a God-forgotten town out in the enormity of a forgotten nowhere. Dried grassy openness the color of death and the only living thing in it—the angry tumbleweeds sloping down the great vastness; darting by in front of you like some type of mad creature—suicidal souls in rage with themselves or in a secret combat against you. Like lonely lost soul looking where to smash their cluttered tired heads.

 

The pass over the Snowy Range of the Medicine Bow Mountains: Rawlins, Laramie, Cheyenne, Rawlins; white light showering the tall mountains under a blanket of snow; the light a tinted veil of an overcast glow, gray and dull, and yet so brilliant and magnificent and clear as I had never seen. And for some reason I thought of those long ago images of my childhood of the Nativity night and the Christ Baby in the humble hay baby bed under such deep cobalt starry night in Jerusalem... and I would spend hours looking at these images; trying to find a meaning to it; a significance that perhaps it wasn't meant to be, or understood... finding a purpose to my own life—so young; and yet so old...

 

We drove guided by strong winds and snow for many miles. Wind blew the clumps of snow perilous ganging from dried vegetation, and spread it around in thin trembling ghostlike forms.... thin sheets of ice floated in the wintry air like specters holding hands; dancing to some mysterious music only heard by them... daredevils—they danced and crossed the road in front of you... laughing. How peculiar and, sinister, this phenomenon cause by ice and frigid air seem to be... it left me wonder about it.

 

ON THE ROAD - PART 1

Day 1 – October 30, 2013 – THE HOUSE IN THE ROSES

The last minutes in the garden... a silent valediction to everything that's been good to me, and precious and glorious; a gratitude of the heart; a most profound feeling of appreciation and thankfulness. And how silent and lonesome the garden had looked, devoid of all my statues and fountains and birdbaths; so lacking in sweetness and the charm provided by all my little darling friends... a riot of mellowness and humbleness, and burgundy vegetation mingling ever so unassumingly with the last of the summer roses—those lovely, extraordinary jewels of the end of a season; like that last sublime breath of the dying.

And on that bush—three perfect Bonica roses singing under the nippiness of the morning, and the chilliness of the autumnal air, with all the melancholy and enchantment of an unforgettable and ever changing October. The three perfect little roses—the three little loves of my womb?   Sweetly protected in my bosom forevermore. And for some unexplained reason, I thought of them, of my babies, on that long ago season of all winters when we first arrived here, more than twenty years ago...

How naive I then was, and how young and innocent at heart; incomplete, fragmented and so devoid of true devotion and nearly all the luster of a sanctified heart... how precious the gifts of age is, for only time can bring those changes to one's heart. Although it is now always like that.

And now it was time to leave. Leaves swirled about me as I stood there, under a shower of spreading yellows and toasted reds and deep oranges, content to stare and feel the crispiness and freshness and the purity of autumn against such amazing sky...

And the garden itself—how much it had grown in all these passed years. It grew. My heart's garden had grown too. So lovely, and so nurturing and gloriously content in the things that most humans cannot see, or can even begin to understand.

 

 

 

 

 

Hours later on that long road South I woke up to the realization that we were gone. Really gone and faraway from everything that we hold so dear to our hearts. A most sudden change in weather made me trembled, even inside the car. Rough winds rocked the sad vegetation of the Western cities, and a lowliness to a sky absent of any glory brought to mind places I have never seen, or never been to. Right at twilight Green River, WY, appeared on my left side out of the cold thin air like a blurry vision. Some ghost town that is—silently enveloped, as it was, by a ghostly-like white veil of thin snow. The lights of little houses down low on the road clumped together resembling tired fireflies in an island of igloos. How pathetically sad everything looked. Or was it just my heart?

Magical October

“There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir,

We must rise and follow her;

When from every hill of flame,

She calls and calls each vagabond by name”

William Bliss Carman

 

Little gypsy soul

At a flea market I always head for the junk jewelry table first.

Love it!

"Jewelry and pins have been worn throughout history as symbols of power, sending messages. Interestingly enough, it was mostly men who wore the jewelry in various times, and obviously crowns were part of signals that were being sent throughout history by people of rank" (Madeleine Albright)
 

 

"Whether I'm making a recipe or a piece of jewelry or a white-rose-and-jasmine tea or the perfume, I like to think of myself as a happy little sorceress, and if I could just have a little general store with all that stuff and give people a sense of my taste, that would be lovely". Padma Lakshmi

I like jewelry. Big rings, weird necklaces. Old books, long flowy skirts, clean wild hair and open skies... I like the smell of rain, I like mornings and sunshiny days.  My heart is a bohemian wandering the earth.  Cielo~