One-way Trip to Angelo... And Back.

My car is my home; the road is my companion. Until that blown tire. Now my car feels like a dead-weight mortgage and the tow truck driver my new bestie.

When I could not find the spare tire anywhere in, on, or under the car I called our insurance company and asked them to send a tow truck. An hour later, Michael - my new best friend - arrived, picked up the Z and I, and drove us to the nearest town of Cisco. Cisco has three car repair shops and Michael and I visited all three before I found a used tire in the the right size.

I then found the spare tire.

It was hidden in the side of the car... very hard to see. It was deflated to save space, so it wouldn't have done me any good anyway. The canned air next to it was old and rusted with a label that was peeling off.

I later found a new can of tire-inflating air in a different hiding spot. But that was days later, after I dropped my USB thumb drive behind the passenger seat and went digging for it.

Back on the road, I took a different route from Abilene to San Angelo, through Balinger and cotton country. This section of two-lane highway feels like America. Good ole boys in duely* ranch trucks generously move to the shoulder, allowing faster drivers to cruise around them. It is customary to give a little wave through your back windshield. A small gesture of thanks left-over from cowboy code.

A strange phenomenon happened as I sped along these country roads at twilight. God started talking to me. How did I know it was really Him speaking? He signed his name, of course. Plain as midday sun, readable as black and white letters, he said: "If you're going to swear, use your own name." ~God.

Good one, God. I get it. Touche. And then, a few miles farther, he spoke to me again. This time the message was less jovial and more inspirational. He said: "Don't worry about the future; I've already been there." ~God.

Wow. Just like John Connor. Unlike John Connor, though, God has a marketing budget and his media booking agent, apparently, is The Baptist Church.

I guess that's all God had to say to me that day. The awkward silence at the end of conversation was replaced by my other new best friend, Sirius XMU satellite radio. Here's a sampling of some of my favorites:

Santigold: "Shove It"

The Rapture: "No Sex for Ben"

The Thermals: "Now We Can See"

Neko Case: "This Tornado Loves You"

*The term "duely" refers to pick-up trucks with a set of duel rear tires.

I am; Spirited Away

It's been raining. I haven't seen cumulus clouds since our trip to Jordan in October. As a passenger of Braxton's Buick Rendezvous on the drive from Dallas to San Angelo, Texas I can watch the patches of clouds and light. Boring Texas has never been so beautiful. Reality truly is the current perspective.

I remember my first drive to San Angelo, June 30th, 1997. Compared to the rain forest-like summers in northern Wisconsin, I found this part of the country to be lacking in color and character. Who would live here? I asked myself. Bryan Douglas Fore, Jr. had not yet entered my reality. Eight hours later a twiggy Ralf Macchio look-alike in a bright yellow shirt and scuffed blue Doc Martins altered my existence forever.

Here I am again, nearly a full 12 years later, on the same road. Wind mill farms have now replaced some of the cattle ranches and pastures. I have changed as well. I spy an old wind mill in the foreground of a field of the new, slick, alien-like power producing variety. I can relate. It's my 3rd day back in Texas after leaving Kuwait "for good" and I feel that a pair of wind mills really get me.

Two wind mills. Two eras. Two realities... I've been thinking about Chihiro in Miyazaki's Spirited Away. I relate most to Chihiro. "Moving to a new place is an adventure," says her mother in the car on the way to their new home.

The adventure starts when the family takes a detour and Chihiro reluctantly follows her family into a strange city of gluttony and decadence inhabited by spirits after the lamps are lit at night. Her parents become trapped and to stay she has to get a job at the bathhouse working for Ubaba. She's awkward and in the way. The characters she encounters are odd; like the Radish Spirit who fills up the entire elevator and the stingy toads supervising the bathhouse and running the kitchen. She doesn't understand their world and misses home, but by the end of the story she's tamed the jealous rage of a lonely spirit, won the hearts of some unlikely allies, made friends, inspired change and outgrown her fears. She reunites with her family and they return to their car parked at the edge of the real world to find it covered in dust, but otherwise un-aged.

Outside of that city no one would comprehend her adventure if she were to tell them the story.

I can relate. My reality has glitch, an animated short spliced into the feature film. I was there. I saw it and it was real. It was real and now it is obsolete; like an old rusted wind mill in a field of new, slick, alien-like power producing ones.

It's Complicated

The first question asked and easiest questions to answer started as a bump in the road and have escalated to a tire-sized pot-hole on Converstion Street.

"So, where do you live?"

"Uhhhh... I'm sort of between domiciles at the moment."

"Really. So, what do you do?"

"You mean as a job? Well... I don't really have one of those either. No, no... Both are by choice. The Big Bad Economy has claimed me its victim. Yet."

I feel like a divorcee who recently left her rebound boyfriend for the ex-husband only to realize that the plan to win him back isn't going to work, but wants to try to keep it together for the kids. The only accurate response in either situation is: "It's complicated."