on the road: asheville

So it was blue skies and seventy driving down the bypass Thursday outta Easton on my way south to the mountains and the big skies and most importantly the open road. I stood in the parking lot of the employment office beaming, arranging my luggage and putting a little blessing on Georgie my car and then standing in the parking lot the drug kids up the corner form me standing outside of their “classes” on a smoke break; me in namaste prayer position saying whatever form of the words that day that came out natural as they did: abandoning myself and my life to whatever the road and my soul folding outwards in front of me was supposed to look like for the rest of the day and the days to come.....

I got in the car and the music was right and the sunshine too and on the bypass just like the girls in the old Aerosmith video who first prompted me on how I wanted to live changed my work clothes while driving down the road, though I stopped short of tossing them out the window.

Inside the bubble of that prayer I understood: even though I am still on the shore and not even to 66W all that happens from here on out is magic because I have opened myself to it and therefor so will it be so....Ahhh, road trip magic: It is as it is. Magic of reality in moment and flexible harmony. So after the bridge I get off the phone and the radio goes off and it is til the other side of the Potomac, Virginia, before I finally turn the music on again because up til them I am beaming in silence and watching the charge charge charging of my mind and mentalness go go go~~as if all the past months are curving up the sides of me fast and whole in big clean chunks all the persons and personas and places and things rushing past some gate that they know I am eager to have them ext right through... I drive til the orange lights of the sky go on against the folded hills of the land down there and stop in Front Royal expecting to camp but the closer I get to the National Forest my head is pounding and more, my stomach tying, too, and I have to go through the whole conversation with myself to talk myself down and mostly get to a place where I can trust: not only is camping not what I want to do right this second, it also feels totally wrong. So I follow the local road back to 66 and soon enough I am in the Shanandoah and the drive is right and the night is right and then later the gold hand pulls the curtain inside me just a touch enough so that I know to follow it and I get off the exit in Staunton, VA, find a brokedown room with a big comfy bed for the $45 I’d budgeted to spend and of course Sex in the City just starting when i get settled in.

And the next day it is blue vibrant and I am quiet and whole and just go go go and the country in Virginia is so good I want cowboy boots. And the girl in the drive thru coffee klatch has shaved punk rock hair and a septum ring and she is so shiny and youngfaced and looks right at me and says You’re so cute! And I say so are you and this is fine and this is right and immediately we are talking about the hardcore band that she is in serendipity nod to me--for in my latest weeks of self-discovery and Real Work as I go in to the teenage graveyard and re-inspect the buried treasures behind my grove of little alters I find that not all of that was meant to be buried and thrown away...

Now I am mountainous--the magnolia breeze and wild roses in through the window then Credence is on the radio Born on the Bayou and I am dancing and driving and beaming and playing hiway games with the other drivers and I am the heartbeat: primal earthy flow in me that dirty primal feeling of roots that I associate with the South that whole sense of to be whole is not to be right or wrong not to be light or dark, just delicate human angel aware of and content with both. And I am dancing and let me tell you the smell of the sweet is so pure I am sure it is just the smell that moment of dark death when the alchemy of birth most finally is able to steal its waking chance...

Then I am to Asheville and me and Kel we hug a long time in the drive way, and soon enough we are again on the road.

And Atlanta and all the tattoos & mohawk hipster yo’d out kids the music and the messages, the reminders and the peace, catching up with my ol girl Michelle and all else....for only me and me to know...

And even though I came to do it alone what I learned so far is that I really needed to just be around my tribe this weekend and more this morning in Kel’s kitchen making pancakes after a late late night laughing and with the joy. Then Kel’s in the shower and I got Paul Simon’s preemptive singing School Yard on the phono in the other room haunting me and reminding me that the poet shaman has always existed and the poet shaman has always got the power. And then of course in the bliss of this moment of getting Me~~well of course this is when Katie calls.....

And now we are back from thrift store pillaging and it is time for to continue on the road.....