the road

It seems no one blogs anymore. Of all the blogs I used to follow, no one has posted a thing in five weeks. Is it because there is no longer any time in our lives, or is something else?

I too have felt hardly a stirring to post an essay as of late. For me, it is that, in a sense, there is nothing much to say. With events in the world seemingly accelerating to a point of maximum chaos, there is no longer any context to say anything meaningful. What seems meaningful one day is completely obsolete with the new information that has arisen 24 hours later.

Like many of you, I am taking this holiday season to retreat to familial comforts. Here perhaps we can find some continuity and some meaning. We have our rituals and patterns of relating that make sense to us. We will arise to the same surroundings and people tomorrow that we saw yesterday. Perhaps this is particularly comforting to travelers like myself.

I have been away from steady work for over four months now. Yes, time flies. I am grateful for this time, the last month in particular, wherein I have been able to catch up on deep healing sleep and regular home-cooking. My family has been very generous with their wayward member in these matters.

My travel plans are on hold at the moment. One reason is that I have run out of savings. Here in the states,  between hostels and eating, it is easy to spend $50 a day on the road. Hence, the money I had did not go nearly so far as it might have elsewhere. I spent time in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, San Diego and Portland, before arriving here in my family environs in northern California. In each successive stop, my efforts at finding work have grown more serious. I am more than ready to work at this point. So between my economics, and the fact that it's off-season to farm, I'm back in the world of fluorescent lights and background checks. I feel it is likely my application at a local big box retailer here will come through.

When I packed up from Santa Fe, I was actually headed for Nicaragua, with summer work clothes and tickets in hand. Following intuition, the road leading me here has been an interesting set of clockwise spins. It turns out my mother is undergoing some pretty serious medical treatment, so it is very good that I am here. And this is the bigger reason I will postpone getting out of the political nightmare this nation has become. Money doesn't matter much really, nor do any personal plans for this or that.

Dharma matters.