I woke up with the giant redwoods with their ancient columns and patterns long warn and filed away by the elements. Walking among their vaulted halls and cathedrals with endless skylights.

I feel at home in the fairytales of these great beanstalks. I wonder where they’d take me if I were to climb further. I’ve missed these magical and sweet things.

The city sells me pretty things, sexy things, shallow things, loud things, always new and always so used things but rarely does it send me sweet things, warm smiles, open people. everything is coveted and locked up in the city and most of the treasures aren’t worth the locka that keep them. Indeed it is better to live open, full, with warm smiles and a sweet charm than locked, worn, hidden, hurt and outwardly cold or empty. It’s hard to picture God in the city, hard to hear him.

In all the glorious opportinity to engorge ourselves on city sins, I think men are driven out to pray forgiveness and find joy again. I knew joy before I moved to the city, brought her with me and she knew better than to stay.

Now I’m at the feet of God “Come on in. We have much to share.” We welcome eachother, I the prodigal son and he, the warmth and grace ever proud and forgiving voice in my head. Even if it is just myself to self, there is something to the grace and majesty of forgiveness.

I’m back out here with Dog and net, lost in my mind. He and I will catch butterflies and chase joy. He’ll point her out, resting briefly on some branch and I’ll be careful not to stir dust from her dress nor snatch magic from her wings, just buy enough time for an intriging introduction.

Brushing off the dust of so many forgotten things, rediscovered running around covered in dirt. Strange and wonderful.

I’m skipping town tomorrow; a boy and his dog chasing adventure, making up the story as we go along. He’ll bark at me about politics and do a horrible job of pointlessly pointing outside my field of view.  While he navigates, I’ll fantasize about the court testimony I’d give if I let him drive. The inevitable questions and shock when I seriously account for my faith in the dog’s ability to do a better job driving than your average 19 year old with a cell phone. These wonderfully elaborate scenarios will fill my head  if my thrill factor runs low.

A long drive at dawn awaits. Trooper is a morning mammal, vocal and chatty with the sunrise like my father. I want neither conversation nor sound in the morning, beyond the pouring of my favorite beverage, the emptying of my bladder or the sound of water carelessly passed from faucet to drain and its soothing echoes of waterfalls and white noise. I live for the silent conversations between sun and myself. I prefer the body language and posturing of trees with a few favored commentators chirping in the distance.

Not enough space in the car for emotional baggage. Besisdes it cramps our style and looks much better carelessly strewn across the freeway. Let those troubles add a little excitement and obstacles  to some other lucky winner. I’m a big fan of recycling and cheap thrills anyhow. I tried to give them away but no one wanted second hand emotional baggage, especially the weather worn and scratched leather satchels that I’ve been lugging around. The faded colors and tattered shirts of boyish ideals and gifts from  might as well be nobodies, the ridiculous photo collections that only caused trouble when flown or posted boldly like pirate flags hoisted high with sails coming in to port.  They can now all be found in some rats nest and trash heap.  The collection of phone numbers of flakers and others as wayward  hard to pin as myself, now are firmly planted in random yellow pages at rest stops for some lucky mother truckers. I have only a few Sharpees big enough for the landscapes and volumes of personal information I wish to paint and share with the world. Trooper prefers the fumes of dry erase markers but is the laziest vandal but most excellent scout and watch dog.

Two bachelors on the open road. Howling at the beautiful faces and licking the windows at the bushy tails along the way. Two young boys with a mind for mischief and adventure without inhibitions of any sort and limited only by the creativity of our imaginations. We might even be caught and cited for the occasional euphimistic  gesture, expectedly so when delivered to the wonderful women of the highway patrol. Perhaps we’ll reserve our romantic invitations

I left one seat open, as if to preserve the option for  a bikini clad hitch hiker, freshly released from a mental institution on her own cognizance after being unsuccessfully treated for  some wonderful premium-blend of chronic nymphomania, recurring memory loss, and relentless soft spot for young men with dogs and over-active imaginations. You know, the kind of emotional and physical addictions we all look for in a mate. Together we’d all wonder about more politically correct terms for debauchery and various ways to spin the story as if to justify what is  best left for too much alcohol in the darkest of places. We’ll contemplate destiny, love and settle for science, biology, evolution and psychological addictions. We’ll all find some philosophy to fit our sexcapades and misadventures only tell of the virtues and promise to pursue multiple avenues of black market pharmaceutical treatments we’ve heard so much about. Trooper will make inappropriate references to preferences of smooth, not chunky, peanut butter that will fill the car with silence until we start a road game.

After those fail we will retreat to mother nature and wander to a Native American Indian reservation (that’s our word damn it!) in search of hollistic  medicine, desert plants and fireworks. The resulting structure fires will surely earn us a little heat and in a week’s time we will need to come back and lay low at home,  hung over and recovering.

Will write more on the open road- please donate funds for potential bail money via PayPal to mcgillnicholas@gmail.com

-Nicholas

P.S.

Trooper wants me to mention to forward all inappropriate images and correspondence for his personal viewing pleasure to trooper@mcgilltech.com He can’t read but he loves to look.