Like a pilgrimage of self, and like many before have embarked on -- and not entirely an American tradition -- I spent several days headed west to the deserts of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona to seek refuge. I traveled with my dog, Alma, who was unsurprisingly a perfect travel companion, before the demands of life became too great, when I can no longer pick up and leave when the feeling calls. My friends chose to stay and work, so I went anyway.

Old Tucson saguaros / El Paso parking lot

The steady dynamism of the desert and its life reminded that there is no single way of seeing things, even though sometimes it feels like it. There is no dogmatic, this-is-how-my-life-is-supposed-to-be, or this-is-how-it-is, or this-is-how-I-ought-to-be. At least none that have served me well. The feeling that cannot be explained through words is a window into the ultimate unknown, which we all are kin to. I followed the highways along the borders through these three states, particularly in Texas, from which I could see the Chihuahuan desert. The trip back home felt like a loop, a blink. Far from the arrival of familiarity and almost without destination. 2,500 miles.

I cried to my favorite love songs and can't remember any dreams or thoughts outside the tunnel of my solitary journey. We certainly all have boundaries or borders -- designations of this or that -- some are imposed, maybe of political or physical nature, like the lines on a map between one place and another, and some can be self-inflicted. Mine... imaginary. Having come to accept them, to know them, is to understand that I am their creator. Yes, it is simple, and even an obvious reality for some. But this liberation I have long been hungry for. A shift in perception. I'm grateful.

solitude, screams deafening

the ghost of empty sound reminiscent of the afterthought of a pull of a finger

while I was still very young and

innocent to what the world can do to twist a person into bits all over the sidewalk

in a place I've been just once or twice

which marred a man who gave me the blueprint of these eyes, and the hiccups of these hands

but not the memory of drinks blurred to swings or fists

or of overlooked remains to be scooped up

placed by greed and by spite

or left behind from a man maybe marred by the abuse of his father

and the man that fathered him

scattered across that pavement

then blue screens bounce off of frames of my father's eyes

chatter, cold, not really there

dad, teach me how to drive

I begged, close the distance

maybe distance could get me there faster

away sooner

to independence from you

then you strung a white flag with hollow threaded fabric made of disengagement and disillusion

it was folded, put away for 7 years

but now hangs down the hallway from me

heavy and awkward in my home

now just days til that cloth is lost forever to the place where my grandfather's remains left his own fabric of defeat and malice

anger whispers let go

childhood longs for soothing

and closure's proximity is sickening

American West Road Trip

Pavement

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