dr_lizardo

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began,
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet
And whither then? I cannot say.

-From J.R.R Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring



Notes from the Road, or rather from home but about the road and other things


Me ears feel kind of weird right now. Something that affects you when you're out driving long distances, particularly through mountainous country is all the pressure changes, as well as the noise. I worry about trucking damaging my hearing over the long term, and I generally drive with a little wadded up ball of tissue in at least one hear to protect myself from high-frequency wind noise and/or the whine of the turbo.

I have a bit of a cold right now, and my old tendency to get nosebleeds is acting up a bit. Whatever. Right now I have conflicting desires to go out and wander around, and to be on here doing up a report of my personal goings on.



My trainer John has taught me a new word, wherewithal. Or rather he has given me some clearer insight into the role it plays in human affairs. John is a man of vast wherewithal but as I've said before he's about halfway killed himself by working too much. He makes his own shoulders the bearers of all the needs of his family. He has refused help from others because of his insistence on maintaining his vision of his own responsibility for providing for the needs of those he supports.

But irrespective of that, his use of the term wherewithal has opened my eyes to how it characterizes a lot of the people I've come across on this site who do remarkable things and live remarkable lives. Lots of people have interesting ideas but it is the people with wherewithal who make themselves into artists or other personalities of note; wherewithal is that which characterizes people who can make ideas into things that are real.

For most of my llife I have sat on my bed and whined, but I think maybe this past year, Like when I was riding my motorcycle through all weathers to go to truckin school and work full time, I started to get myself just a wee bit of wherewithal. Though I can see that I've plenty more upward progress to make in that regard.



I'm a little disappointed that that girl Lucretia of the House of Lukaya in richmond didn't respond to my email, but other somewhat interesting things occurred in richmond. I was wandering around the capitol area and I found this outdoor cafe that had an old sculptural studio off one side that had belonged to an important local sculptor of the 19th century, who had done a bunch of busts of RE Lee and other notables. I was in the little shop of his that is now a little museum, shooting some pics of his work. When I came out I found that I had been locked into the cafe courtyard, as the cafe had closed at 3pm and noone had thought to look in the litte museum to see if anyone was there. Fortunately the wall was climbable at one side and I was able to scramble out.



After that I wandered though the hollywood cemetery, which is a rather picturesque tourist attraction. I am slightly vexed with myself at my morbid fascination with old graveyards at times. Anyway, as I was wandering through I saw a stray cat who crouched low to the ground and was watching me intently. I decided to try talking to him. Harry potter can talk to snakes, but I can talk to cats. People find it a little eerie or creepy or whatever the word is, that I can tense up my vocal cords and mew more or less exactly like a cat. Anyway, I cautiously made an indirect approach to this llittle fellow, and he was real tense, but when I talked to him he perked right up and started to come towards me. It took him a few minutes to work up the courage to come up to me, he had to talk a lot and roll around on the ground a lot, but when he got up to me he was rubbing up against me and standing up and putting his paws on my leg, and getting me rather dirty and I was watching him quite intently for any signs of fleas. I fucking hate fleas and would be awfully embarrassed if I brought them into John's truck. He got scared away by two bicyclists who came by after a few minutes. He reminded me of Erica and he really seemed to be a furtive litte spirit, of someone who had been buried there, and had returned to flit about the trees and stones, a spirit trembling with fear but craving the love of the other beings here in the world with it.

A few days before I headed out on my epic training mission I was at Barnes and Noble looking for a book on early mammals, which I find exceedingly cool. Didn't find one but settled for a book about he Cassini mIssion to saturn and all the photographs it had sent back. It was a beautiful book and I enjoyed it for a while but I started to get this feeling of vastness and loneliness, reading about this vast cold lonely and beautiful world and the smaller worlds that surround it. Death is like that, you lose any ability to feel separate from the vast, cold loneliness of the universe and of time. At one point I was driving though western colorado heading for denver and I was looking at the vast mountains I was passing by and I was thinking about the vast differences in the scale of things that can be of concern to us. Thinking of my cats at home, whether the would feel lonely, and feeling bad at taking myself away from them, filling their short stint on earth with loneliness. But they do have each other and other people near where I live and I guess they're adjusting. I shall have to go back over this last paragraph and add in some "big", enourmous, huge and other words to that effect to offset my overuse of the term vast.

Anyhoo, just hafta see where this trucking thing goes. Stretch my legs when I've got down time, try to do some drawing. Get a laptop for staying in touch with people, but try not to be as dependent on it as I an wonted to me, distracting myself from the effort of trying to make great things of my own origination.

It for now.