Intermittent

With the fuse lit and metaphoric language as a crutch, the journey is well under way. With timezones askew, downward creep has started, unease is seeping in, through those cracks.

A voice says:

When someone's got a different view on life, the question is not: 

Why would a person want to be that way? 

When someone's got a different view on life, the question is:

Why wouldn't a person want to be that way?!

Every single thing in the  immediate environment has been deliberately chosen. Like the coffee table book... so many layers. Almost every frame on the wall is filled with images from known entities. The treeline is too flat, the sky is too blue. And the night sky glows just before darkness falls. 

Maybe hate would have been easier...it never disappoints.

 

Waiting in line, one of them visiting from a windy city asked, “What’s it like?”

He smiled, trying to see who was asking and gave the response, “It’s love/hate, of course.”

Damn that love/hate relationship.

Most people don’t appear to ‘get it’ when it comes to understanding about the love and the hate, how well they go together. And not many people seem willing to readily believe the ‘extra’ that comes right before the ordinary. But it's okay, really. Extraordinarily okay.

The first gas station they pulled into, there was a woman not quite shy of thirty with a generously-inked body, bare shoulders, and a blond mane with the wildfire-engine-red streak blazing through her hair... nice hips upon which she wore a curved dagger that must have been made from familiar hands. She could have been a boat-person, and she could have very well made her wares. "Some of the men even lament about how capable and confident the women are." No mercy for those who can't stand on their own; no mercy for those who can't run (or at least keep moving). Her daughter, maybe four years old, had a similarly feral-hairdo, both in style and color. Well, looks like that lioness had slowed just enough to drop a cub. I could sense nothing but confidence.

Within the first twenty-four hours, there has been so much to absorb that confirmation has been requested on at least two occasions.

“Is this really how it is?”

Yes.

The borrowed wheels for the ride in were mistakenly set so that all four were rolling strong. When they got to the top of the hill, to the place that took almost a decade to  put together, the place that had been left for the year on the water…when they got to the top of the hill, they were met with smiles, both old and new. 

In the hardware store, one of the fellows working there knew almost immediately, almost.

“Adhesive for a sole that's come loose? Aisle 28.”

“Thanks. I’m so used to people not knowing where anything is. And I'm also used to the clerks not really understanding what I’d like to do…not due to the language barrier. Not always easy to get used to.”

“That’s funny. Last time I was in the sunshine state, I was fixing my grand-daughter’s wagon and needed to stop by a hardware store. A young teenage lady was stocking the shelves when I asked her where the naval jelly was, she got upset and said, ‘Sir, we do NOT sell those kinds of things here, we are not that kind of a place’.”

“That’s pretty funny. I can kind of relate.”

He was on a roll.

“Well, you know, we had whiskey barrels on sale when a new clerk was working at the register. We’d taken the stoppers out because kids had been taking them…well, our new clerk, her face turned six shades of red when a fellow buying one of the kegs asked for a plug for his bunghole.”

I was laughing too, but hadn't quite cracked. 

“You know, it's like George Carlin said, they are just words.”

 Just words...seeping in through the cracks.

“Thanks.” Thinking that it had been rolling like this from the beginning, the last twenty-four hours.

“Welcome back. Aisle 28…enjoy your visit.”

This place is the 'no place' the Utopia of sorts. 

Very few seem to live the nine-to-five. 

Very few seem to run on normal cycles. 
Not quite Singapore, 
But still mad as hatters here.

The 'guests' up at the top of the hill are off grid, grow their own, live on an island, and only need two jobs a year. The latest gig just happens to be very close, this time. But this post isn't about how that overlaps, we're not there yet. This transmission was begun only maybe twenty-four hours since we've reached the port.

All out of her garden. "You really want to take a picture of the...okay."

Her garden. She is just someone we met, someone who happened to be on her way to lunch, to sit outside. Guess it's kind of like saying, "It's just sushi."

Despite the irritability and confusion that comes with the new timezones, it's all there...in the patterns. And the patterns are real. And so are the people. 

Quilted with wood

The 'hosts' at the top of the hill are a couple of months back to their normal after spending nearly a year sailing a barge through some place in Europe. Why not? 


Yeah, why not? 


So nice to be around people who don't think in boxes and where unconventional thinking is not only okay, it is the way people live and breathe. Not too many people are 'waiting for retirement' to start living; they are simply too busy living. 


Like the guy in the park with desert in his blood. He spoke about frame drums, said something about how, "No, they don't really go well with the African drums you usually find in the hippie drum circles because, well, you can't hear them." We talked for a while. Frame drumming had probably served him well while he'd traveled a good part of the world amassing a collection of rare seeds. 

Why wouldn't a person follow their passion?

Simply too much to absorb and sort. 

Just trying to keep it under control.

Elsewhere and a day behind... the first few always seem to be the hardest.