I feel like I physically can't go anywhere without an iPhone, without an agenda, without a carefully prepared plan that involves all the right decisions and gear and cameras and A PLAN! What can we learn from this? How can we justify it? Can I write about it / Instagram it / Facebook it / record it?
Since when do I have to justify everything?
Who EXACTLY am I trying to satiate? ME? Last time I checked, my expectations are LOW!
I read this morning about the first interstate highway and how it forever changed how we experience life...and maybe this was the start. The start of satisfying everyone's want to go faster, do more, squeeze it all in, not really care about the reason WHY, but just that we've been there and done that and now what?
...But it was not necessarily good for American
literature. When John Steinbeck took a cross-country trip with his dog and
wrote Travels with Charley (1962), he only traveled on the interstate
for one section, on I-90 between Erie, Pennsylvania, and Chicago, Illinois. He
wrote: "These great roads are wonderful for moving goods but not for
inspection of a countryside. You are bound to the wheel and your eyes to the
car ahead and to the rear-view mirror for the car behind and [...] at the same
time you must read all the signs for fear you may miss some instructions or
orders. No roadside stands selling squash juice, no antique stores, no farm
products or factory outlets. When we get these thruways across the whole
country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to
California without seeing a single thing."
..................................................
This morning I sat with IV in the rocker as soon as he woke.
We just SAT. And rocked.
And I held on to that moment, those few minutes in silence, rocking, nose in his hair.
He could tell it was good.
"Mama, can we just stay here for a bit. And rock?" he asked me.
Of course.
Maybe I just need to stay a bit more. And rock.
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