6/19- The Back & Forth

These next days meld into a fog for nothing really happened. It seemed as soon as we arrived in Hillsdale we were likewise heading back to Delta. Waking at Bob's there wasn't much to be done. Honestly I don't recall what happened through out the afternoon that day, all I know is that at some point Bob drove us back out to that rec area with the softball fields, volley ball courts, and bowling alley/bar by early evening. We may have stayed at Bob's, we may have returned to Todd's mom's place. As I said its a bit of a fog. On the whole it doesn't really matter, I just remember being shuffled around with nothing really to do. I did, however, like returning to my tree by the volley ball courts to read my book.

I spent most of the daylit evening there reading my book and writing. In all the shuffle I'd become somewhat of a recluse. My focus was beginning to slip badly on what the hell it was I was doing as Todd ran about enjoying his old high schooling ways. This was steadily becoming an engrossing theme for me as I tried reminding myself that we had just spent a month revisiting all of my old friends back east. Its not that I don't enjoy the people, on the contrary I haven't met anyone I haven't found to be engaging out of all these folks, but I do have wandering feet and I'm not happy unless I feel like I'm heading somewhere. After two and a half weeks I was starting to feel our departure date was getting increasingly farther away rather than closer and there are more things I'm excited to explore beyond here.

We slept in a field that night and returned to his Mom's the next morning. Actually saying we slept in a field is a bit misleading. We ended up staying up the entire night in a field talking about just these things of what it is we're doing and neither of us could sleep because of it until about 5am. A little before 7am it began to rain, hence the return to mother's, and we napped out a bit more over there. I was up by the afternoon, however, and decided to head over to the library a few blocks away for some more time to myself. When I returned a few hours later I discovered Shelly was about 15 minutes away from returning us to Delta again.

All of this may seem very choppy and broken up, chaotic. I don't think it was as haphazard as I describe it now, but sinking into this reclusive mindset I did set myself continually on the fringes of decision making which lead to many of these abrupt shifts by my perspective. Frustration was setting in amid the confusion of what exactly it was we were still doing here bouncing from one area to the other, and all of it had to do with my procrastination with refocusing myself that I was pushing out on everything happening around me. A common ailment that's completely understandable and unforgivable.

We now were back at Shelly's. We settled right back in to our little nests there and had another excerisize in reclining. I spent most of my time with Shelly for the next few days primarily watching movies and completely de-braining. Todd tucked himself away to catch up on posts and doing much of the processing that I should have been doing but by then had worked my head up into a terrible tangle whose greatest tell tale symptom is laziness and procrastination. I didn't know it at the time but my thinking was falling to bits.

In this time I heard from my other Delta hosts. Loreli's folks, Dave and Lindsay, called me Thursday arranging for me to stay with them, though it was then I discovered that they were actually in Toledo and not Delta. Loreli's grandmother, however, is in Delta along with one of her brothers and sister, Steven and Cyndal. I talked to Loreli online Wednesday night and told her I'd likely spend Thursday with them, then Thursday came and I completely didn't follow through on that. Clues that my brain was lost. Friday I got a very disappointed email from her giving me the lecture I needed to snap myself back into reality again. It was time for me to stop playing tag along passenger and start asserting some responsibility to those who were expecting me. We rearranged for me to arrive Saturday morning, stay the night, then get a ride to Toledo and stay with Dave and Lindsay.

Friday the 19th was the last night we were there and Todd and I decided to go for a walk to hash some things out. It started out as a brief stroll to the corner and back, but ended up exploring the night life of Delta at the Village Tavern. A roiling thunderstorm broke out across the night as well while we were sipping beers in the little pub and clear thought seemed to reclaim me for the night. We had a good chat, not really about anything, but just a good reconnection. My brain seemed to work for a minute once again.

Click here for Todd's perspective.