The Week of Santa Fe

This has been a week of testing in a strange assortment of ways. The details and events of the week are really not what I want to focus on in writing about it. The main idea is more the lessons that have come of it. To go back to my introductory post, where I talked about the ideas of this being a bit of a spiritual quest, this week threw out a few interesting curves to emphasize that.

Detailing the week basically involves an itinerary that developed from last Sunday until this Sunday. We'd get up anywhere between 9am and noon and have coffee. After motivating ourselves to get out of the house we'd go run our necessary errands; swapping out gear at REI, paring down cell plans, cameras, food, the ever popular dental appointments for both Todd and I. Usually these things would wrap up by sundown and we'd return home for a movie. Essentially this was the week.

There were a few trips down to Albuquerque, and we strolled around the neighborhood once or twice, and by the end of the week our errands were winding down, but through out the week we were always thinking of how and when we were going to really set off. This was the subject of our late night talks, our drives around town, and the reason we were on the internet so much this past week. We had no idea how we were going to leave or when other than soon.

This is where things were interesting in the week, it was a lesson in patience. It was also a lesson in keeping faith that as long as you plan for something to happen realistically, things will work out somehow, it just may have nothing to do with what you planned at all. The patience angle was something I constantly had to remind myself of.

Starting from Denver at the end of March I left my job and apartment on the grand leap of "let's do it". There's a feeling that comes with that which over those four days of trekking slowly grew and took hold again in me. Suddenly stopping in Santa Fe, as planned, was a hard skid and I was ready to keep on going. Todd was in a different mindset, the one I had just come from, of saying goodbye, wrapping things up, so we were coming from slightly different places while talking about how we were going to leave at the end of the week.

By Thursday, neither one of us had a solid idea of how we were going to leave New Mexico. We talked about taking a bus to Tucumcari to walk some of Route 66. We also talked of bussing to Amarillo, TX because it was only $2 more but didn't seem quite as interesting. There were talks of trains to La Junta, CO, walking out of Santa Fe to just see what happens, and through out all of it Oklahoma was having a very weird draw neither one of us could explain. Thursday morning, for shits and giggles, Todd checked the ride share section of Craigslist and found a veggie bus leaving out of Taos on Monday heading to Vermont with everyone of our desired stops along the way. They asked for $25-$100 depending on how far the rider would go, so we settled on $50 to Nashville figuring it at half way.

After that, through out the apartment, periodically one would hear Todd or I spontaneously singing "Bus, bus, the veggie bus" to the tune of The Magic Bus. Everything also seemed to click together after that. Just before that we had settled on leaving Saturday morning, but the shift to Monday proved not too big of a deal, and gave Todd more time to spend with Shalain, as well as have Easter with her and her folks who were in town for her Good Friday birthday. We still have no idea what Oklahoma is all about though, if anything.

This is a bit more of the detailing of what happened this past weekend. I didn't actually want to drone on saying what did happen and how. What I've been fascinated with over this week, which intensified over the weekend, was this feeling I've been having of sitting back and watching things line up for me. There were a few hurdles this week. Saturday is fairly descriptive of this.

Saturday morning we went to an REI sale to see if we could get anything we already had cheaper and then return that original thing to the store to try to bolster our already waning finances. Todd ended up spending more than he anticipated on things that he did actually need. Later that afternoon he got an email from a guy in Albuquerque saying he wanted to buy his camera Todd had had on sale for a few months now and had lost hope on selling. That money covered and surpassed what he spent on the unanticipated supplies he got that morning.

It was arranged that we'd drive the camera down to him that night and he'd cover the cost of gas. About ten minutes out of town the car completely died. Some sort of fluid was gushing out from under the hood and smoke was coming out the back. We managed to get it back to the long term parking spot at their apartment then took Shalain's car down. The whole way we spent trying to interpret what that break down meant. This is the mindset we are in.

We tried to explore that draw to Oklahoma as well. The original idea of getting to Nashville was petering out after some news about the arrangements there. Neither of us knows anyone in Oklahoma, and neither of us had previously ever even had any interest in the state. Todd had even avoided it last year thinking there was no reason to be there. Where is this draw to it coming from?

I think of these things often in gaming terms. As previously mentioned, I'm an avid D&D gamer. Sadly I have no shame in admitting this publicly. Never-the-less, roleplaying games make for good analogies in the way I interpret the workings of these fate, God, karmic driven things that we're trying to focus in on now. Since no one outside of the gaming world understands how RPGs work I'll give a brief descriptor.

Role playing games are best described by my friend Tony. It is collaborative story telling. Each player at the table has a character that they play, much like an actor assumes a role, but there's no getting up and fighting, dressing in costumes, and no, we don't do weird things with cats (not sure where that one comes from). Then there's one guy who plays every other character in the story he tells. He designs the world these characters live in, he decides how these ancillary characters behave, react, and interact with the characters playing. He is the analogous God figure of the story, and he has a story that he wants the characters to play out and explore.

This is how I see "God" and the layout of the world. The reason for existing is, in my eyes, for the enjoyment of exploring what's been created. The fun of life is in living it and either finding creative ways out of bad hands you've been dealt, or finding more ingenuitive ways to elaborate on the things you already have. In a game, the story teller has points he wants you to get to that advance his story for you. The characters all have freewill subject to what's dealt them to stear them to these plot points in the story. Through hearing that story you can get a sense of what places are important and you can fight going there or not. One way or another, though, unless you really fight against that storyteller, you will find yourself learning what needs to be learned to advance the story. It may take longer than anticipated, the story teller could get frustrated with your efforts to resist and make things a little extra difficult for you, but he'll take care of you along the way so that the story doesn't just end.

This is my dreamy view of the world, and I take it all with a grain of salt, but in the recesses of my mind, this is how I think of things. This was how I was thinking of things this whole week as things unfolded, collapsed, then worked out again in a different unanticipated way. Like I was telling my sister last night, I feel a bit like I'm riding through life write now on a motorcycle with a side car. I'm both driving and in the side car. The me driving is the one who reacts to obsticals in the road, is entrenched in the drama of the road and has to react to it. The me in the side car is the one who just sits back and trusts the driver while the wind blows in my hair. The side car side of me could grab the handle bars and try to assert control, but shouldn't.

We'll see what happens tomorrow.

Click here for Todd's version.