R.I.P Earl

Matters came abruptly clear driving home from work today. I saw my life in terms of a game; for me, it’s a game of tag. Kansas City is Home Base as determined by my family. But I’m not the kind of kid who hangs out on home base. I gotta run out there and rustle around, and duck and dodge. That is how I live and learn.

Everybody plays the game of their choosing. I have some friends playing very alluring, grown up versions of House or Pretty Pretty Princess. Others are playing Doctor. Still others, Chutes and Ladders.

{[Hey, you. Reader. What’s your game? Leave it in  comment!]}

As for me…well, I can sum up my time in Kansas City up by confessing a truth. My closest adviser has been a dead pigeon in the middle of the Broadway Bridge.

I imagine he died while laughing at a joke another pigeon told as they hung out on the arches.

He landed right on the grate between traffic. So every day as I drove to and from work, there he was. Often times the morning traffic would force me to stop somewhere with him in line of sight. His name, I decided, had been Earl. I watched him pile up snow drifts, lose feathers to strong wind, but he held frozen and true.

Then he thawed, and very slowly went away. On my drive home today I noticed there was only a very small bundle of feathers. caught in the grates. Earl has moved on, and so must I.

I have the maps for the Long Trail. A few weeks ago I was peering at them, trying to divine what they had in store for me. Then I decided to implement some of the Progoff journaling techniques I recently learned from the amazing Faye Schwelitz. I dialogued with the trail. Turns out, nature is very blunt about things. It promised me miles; no promise of illumination. So I opened myself up to recalibrate.

It just so happened that next morning my closest Wandering Soul, Anne, rolled in to town. We rode mountain bikes and got dirty, talked deep and light, showered in a fountain, and directed the most clueless taxi driver ever through the streets of down town.

She reminded me I had a standing invitation to Colorado.

The day after Anne left, Mother nudged me in that gentle way she does, encouraging me to consider my options in a pragmatic way. Just the thought of my father screams “Fiscal responsibility.” So, these matters being weighed, I am moving to the Dillon, Colorado area in early July. Maybe see if the tourism industry might suit my personality.

Oops, I think I should have penned that the other way around, but that’s really the way I see it, so I’m letting it stand.

Now I’m just rambling.