Well, there's a lot going on in my head lately. Lots of things to do, lots of things to take care of, lots of people that I need to call and communicate with, lots of fracking dishes, lots of days wasted without writing this week.

Road trips are always good for stirring things up.

I drove back to Lubbock by myself last weekend. 6 long hours there, fun times spent hanging out with my parents, my sisters, my psuedo brother-in-law. Six long hours home.

Before I left Austin, I stopped at Half Price Books and bought two books-on-tape (one fiction novel by Erica Jong called Inventing Memory, one version of Letters to a Young Poet, even though I've already read this translation four times.) Audio books put Brad to sleep, but I personally love them, so I took the opportunity to indulge. Sure, my mind wanders and I miss key plot developments and story details. Sure, one woman acting out 14 different characters can get a little old. I always get lost in the storytelling, though. So lost, in fact, that at one point on Highway 153 (a highway I've driven no less than 28 times) I looked around and thought, "Where am I, Kansas?" and turned my car around twice before I figured out that, oh, that's right, I was headed the right way all along.

Weird things happen in your head when you're staring at gravel and yellow stripes whizzing by for hours at a time. For one thing, I've noticed how I tend to designate the drivers around me as either my friend or my nemesis.

You know how sometimes you're driving along on a two-lane highway, not too far from the speed limit, just minding your own business, and then suddenly in the rearview mirror a really big SUV speeds right up to your bumper and breathes down your neck and kicks you in the shins and calls you names and makes no move to pass until you either go 95 mph or get the hell out of their way? Nemesis.

Other times, you're driving along that two-lane highway, just minding your own business, and come up behind someone going 67. Just when you're checking out the oncoming traffic and planning your passing maneuver, the driver graciously pulls onto the shoulder without you even nagging. That person is your Friend. You should give a friendly wave when you pull up ahead of them; it's the right thing to do.

There are always those drivers that are more like your best friend from childhood that you grew up with but secretly don't care much for now that you're both running for secretary of student council. You're driving along. They pass you. They slooooooowwwww down until they're going one mph slower than you are. You have no choice but to pass them and hope they get the point. They become seemingly infuriated, pass you again just to show you who's boss, and then they slow down. You dance like this for hours at a time. You can't get rid of them unless you burn rubber. You're stuck with them for now, until one of you makes a move and leaves the other behind for good.

These are the things I think about on the road.

I think about other things too, like bills and writing and phone calls I'll make when I find service and whether my car will make it to 130,000 miles and if the people who describe West Texas as a vast, dusty desert have ever actually been to West Texas and if they realize that there is actual wild grass and yucca plants and spotty green shrubs and cows and life out there - there are trees, even. It's windy, sure, but it's also calm. It's hot and dusty, yes, but it's not dead.

Oh, Lubbock. West Texas. You're just misunderstood, that's all.

And I am tired. Good night.

Lucy loves you |