Post Vacation Post

Yeah, I am back.
I have been for a few days.
Not avoiding you, heavens no...
Just catching up, trying to get used to waking up before I am ready to do things I would rather not.
Taking more than a week off creates it's own challenges.



But, hey, the time off was great.
You got to see some absolutely lame pictures sent from my phone.
Some better pictures didn't make it through the the cellphone-camera-interwebulator.
KVC took pictures with an actual camera, I will post up a link if they make it to her flik'r account.


We drove to the desert.
It rained.

Yeah, it rained, in the desert.
Which was kind of cool.
I watched tumbleweeds turn green. It turns out that tumbleweeds are actually plants and not giant balls of sticks, escaped from cowboy movie sets.
There was sun, too.
And turkey, wine, pie, conversation, reunions and all of that sort of thing.


Quiet, too.
I had forgotten how nice it is to drive for a long distance.
Eventually, after enough miles, there is a quiet that comes with driving.
There isn't anything to talk about, after a while.
There really isn't much too look at, once the sun sets.
There is barely anything to do, outside of the small movements required to keep a vehicle travelling at a high rate of speed between a couple of lines painted on the asphalt.
That combines in a moment of quiet, for me. Thinking sort of pauses, being comes to the fore. Driving, just driving.


And we were in the south-west, which has it's own manner of quiet.
It really is a landscape that is waiting for you to die, and might kill you when you're not looking.
It is lovely and unforgiving.
Harsh, abrasive and beautiful because of it.

You can see the remnants of the dreams of others, littering the south-west.
Abandoned homes, businesses, lives are scattered all about.
Worn, vandalized and empty.
The shells left behind seem to mark the midpoints between the current oasis' of life, commerce and optimism.
Probably some long line of commentary I could pull from that, but I won't.


There is some quiet left in me.
I am trying to hold onto it.