Take me home
Country roads
To the place
I belong
West Virginia
Mountain mama
Take me home
Country roads...

Wednesday I didn't sleep. Thursday and Friday night I caught about 5 hours apiece. It is now Monday afternoon and I am still awake, but still alive and snug at home. Problem is, I don't want to be home. Pictures and remembered words and too many things to even mention fill my bleary brain so that everything here looks strange and unfamiliar. I want to be anywhere, but nowhere would be better. Travel is a very real attempt to illustrate that searching, longing, God-pleading loneliness that wells up within us from time to time. Travel is the pretty but doomed expression of the need to find the missing shred of our souls that, if found, would allow us to be noble like all those haunting images of heroes and saints we wish we could imitate. And yet beauty and comfort abound. I will, though my stay was very short, never forget the people and the impressions of a world I had no knowledge of. Inspired, determined, thoughtful, and supremely happy. This is a pattern, a sickness men have suffered the whole course of history, and I too will play my part. My time below the equator could not have been better, thanks to a wonderful friend, endless hospitality, ancient vistas, and chickens.

About to leave the 'Navel of the Universe' and wind our way back to the coast for hurried goodbyes and sad partings. Ah, if only I could stay...

I have been keeping a writing book near at hand, something like a journal of this trip, but not really; more like a collection of thoughts as they speed by, with no attempt to record everything that has happened. There are so many details. Everything is completely new, creating a sort of numbness for the time being; if I wrote it all down, every day that has passed could fill the space of a short story. But internet time is very limeted, so I will have to recount most of it later. I will only tease you for now by saying that I have played with human skulls, walked in 1000-year-old ruins, been pulled over by the police in an illegal taxi, drunk much Peruvian whisky, visited a snail farmer, and tore up a Salsa dance floor to a live band from Cuba.

More later...

In Cañente...

I think I just caught me a Palindrome
At least I like to say it
But backward or forward it rings the same
This fire blew out when it lit
But the darkness and cold are no great trial
And if I make it through the night
Pain is a dear and loyal companion
From sunset to dawn's first light
So let's open a can of searing needles
Let's swallow them in a gulp
Or cough this old heart up through my throat
And pound it to bloody pulp
For I am free from anger or shame
Laughing at all opposition
No smirk nor jibe
Can change or hide
The absurdity of my position

Well, I'm off to Peru tomorrow. Work to play and Fall to Spring in a matter of hours. The last of the Gentleman in Peru will find me around 11pm on Friday and we will probably crash at the house of a friend of his...Mr. Knob Creek and Mr. Lucky Strike should be instrumental in insuring a pleasant journey to dreamland.

I really wonder sometimes if I actually know how to love...

I have never in my life had such copious amounts of coffee, cigarettes and alcohol in such a short period of time...Whew!

After spending a life (what I have lived of it) looking for 'peace and quiet', withdrawing into myself, frightened of people and most social situations, even the most tame, I have come to really savor the chance encounters and occasional moments of connection and friendship with others. Funny how quickly we form strong walls around our little worlds, and how efficient those walls are at keeping us from seeing anything beyond what is inside. I feel as if I have a new brother and sister. It's easy to talk and be good friends with a lot of different types of people, but sometimes you get to know someone and the communication is so effortless and instant that within minutes you find yourself treating them like a favorite sibling. From the beach to In-N-Out, a blues jam at Zoey's, and a butt-cold mountaintop with endless beer, music and cigarettes, to morning tea and falling asleep at the wheel, I couldn't have had a better time. Such fabulous conversation on everything (from goofy and lame to deadly serious), but mostly on growing up in a large catholic family, taking care of beloved younger siblings and banding together with them against great mental and emotional strife. The similarities between my family and last night's friends'---all the remembered comments, the reactions, the way we suffered, the triumphs, and angry, desperate love---could hardly have been more identical. I am surprised at how much relief and comfort comes from just knowing there are others who know exactly what you experienced---even what you thought back then when you went through it all---without you needing to explain a thing. In the end, family really does mean the most. God bless them both.

Went to Main St. last night for a few brews with the Slovakian and Dirty...maybe we were in the wrong places, but man, the Ventura crowd is old! ^_^ A good time nonetheless. Tonight I will be taking a couple of cool kids to Zoey's Coffee Loft. I'm having a blast, but this is rather weird, as I have spent most of the last month going directly home with early bedtimes and solitary weekends...

Had a great time with Equivocal the other night; music, pizza, whiskey, and some long over-due catching up. These things never last long enough, but it was still awesome. At certain times in life some people can quite suddenly become your best friends; whether you spend a lot of time with them, discover the understanding of a mutual mind, or simply admire them, life is enriched and you begin to think that things are exactly the way they should be...but Time will not hold still, and all things are eventually thrust asunder. It's rather thought-provoking to note just how much and how quickly we all change...on the outside we remain pretty recognizable, but deep in the soul, life has wrought a subtle, constant change that can take some real looking to become apparent, even in yourself. Maybe this is more true for us due to the kind of people we have been friends with, and the kind of more-or-less intellectual life we have been living, especially with relation to our time at The College. Any who have struggled through the curriculum, argued loudly on the patio or crouched in the heavy silence of the darkened chapel know that they cannot escape. The door of wonder has been braced open, never to be shut while the mind and soul are still sound. This is not meant to be a lamentation however: we are truly privileged individuals who share in a real degree of enlightenment; and for this we ought to be thankful. The myriad changes we endure are the necessary consequences of a mind that seeks Truth above all else; one that subjects personal preference and comfort for that which is higher. Still, the human heart deeply desires belonging, that kind of love which is claimed as one's own by right, so that we can be secure even in our weakened and blame-worthy state. And this leads to a deep disturbance at change: for it would seem that the shreds of security and love we have finally drawn to ourselves are destroyed by the lack of a static world. At this point of course is where we try to remember that rest in Christ is the only sense of belonging that can be ultimately realized, because that is what we were created for---to be with Him. The only way that love is truly unconditional and unchanging is when it comes from God. It is very difficult to rely on this knowledge alone while still living, however---despite prayer and rational argument, we all know the pangs of feeling alone, isolated, misunderstood---we are by nature meant to be among other men, interacting, living, loving: in fact, as St. Thomas says, we will 'see' God and comprehend His love according to the Charity we have shown to others. One question remains then: while on earth, since we are all weak, composite creatures, living in a material world where we are forced to behave with enough practical activity to survive; burdened with a darkened mind, contrary will, and violent passions, in what way can we properly seek roots, grounding, comfort, the love of others?

As of right now I cannot put words to the parts of this question I think I can answer...when my thoughts have formed into something more coherent I will take up the thread again.

I am sitting around reading blogs this morning because Mr. Rioux is recovering from a minor operation and John Minkel is in Georgia for a wedding, so I am more or less *running* the maintenance office. The apologetic-stream-of-consciousness post of Portia's was hilarious! You are sooooooooo cool, Portia! Hello to you and LH. (I mean to come and visit you soon...well, after my Thanksgiving trip to Peru)
It is cloudy today and I am in an unreasonably good mood...all the recent early bedtimes and Mass before work has been really, really wonderful. Been reading a lot, writing and drawing even more---(I will try to post some drawings in the near future) just living a little.

I spent this morning at the Ferrier's, singing, smoking, drinking coffee; and later, after a short bookstore stop, ended up at the Underground, a great new(ish) coffee house in Ventura. Sitting there drawing and sipping yet more coffee I couldn't help thinking of Neoteronous and this past summer of far too few excellent conversations...I really miss him.
As open mic night got under way I listened to the loud and contorted cries of a struggling poet---The title was 'Judgment Day', and most of the lines were spent describing the Catholic Church as an innocent, angry, 20-year-old girl who ran away from all of us and whored herself out and was never heard from again except for vague rumors of her getting high in alleys. The rest of the lines were cursing the business world and 'Corporate America'. I was deeply sad when she finished. I was gripped with the desire to run on stage and yell at everyone there for such shameless indulgence in pointless angst, such despicable delighting in vulgar confusion. I wanted to tell them that poetry should be beautiful and inspiring, not filled with hatred. If I had had any of my own poetry with me, I might have really done it, and got up there and read them something that might actually stir up some love, or at least a semblance of order in their souls...but I had nothing to offer. Perhaps next time, though...it seems that just as in our churches, publications, and groups of friends we ought to be championing truth and beauty and real virtue, so in the places we haunt, which are so often filled with wandering souls, much good can and should be done. I did speak with her briefly afterward, but it only small-talk---she was very distracted.
Despite the hefty thoughts however, it was a great place to work and chill, and it may very well become a frequent stop of mine...