The Wanderer

I went out riding, Down that old eight lane, I passed by a thousand signs, Looking for my own name.

I hit the wall running along the Arkansas River on a hot Saturday morning in Sand Springs, Oklahoma.

Not literally. Metaphorically.

Although I did end up with a blister on my right foot. It hurt less than my heart.

Even though this and the other BLOG may paint me as an everything zen kind of a Dad, I am not. Especially in my own eyes. I can be uptight. That's the point. Wired for sound is how my Dad classified it. When my own Boy(s) mirror the same type of behavior I tell them this: slow down.

Like many though, I have the hardest time following my own advice.

Do what I say, not what I do, is an especially epic fuck me when I return back to what once was my home.

There's a great episode of Northern Exposure (one of my all-time favorite TV shows) in the sixth season where Marilyn comes to Manonash for a potlatch. Joel (who was leaving the show in real life thus being written out of the series) had went upriver to Manonash a few episodes earlier for a house call and never returned. Marilyn had been Joel's secretary for the length of the series and had seen first hand what an uptight, typical New Yorker he could be. She on the other hand hardly spoke, in a very calm, zen, native american sort of a way. Upon arrival to Manonash Marilyn silently notices the changes that have occured in Joel, from him manner of dress to his ability to adapt to a remote and primitive lifestyle (something that drove him nuts before. Him being the main fish in this fish out of water series.) Meanwhile, Joel feels it necessary to convince or prove to Marilyn that he really is a changed man and in the process reverts back to his old behaviors, which includes talking incessantly to Marilyn who is the queen of silence and calm. As his old behaviors snowball—to comic effect—Marilyn feels he has not changed. Toward the end of the show she sees the progress Joel is making through a wooden bowl he carved with painstaking detail and patience. Something he would not have wanted or been able to do before. In the end, Marilyn realizes that he has actually changed and offers him a gift of babiches she made with goose feathers 'to help him go lightly through life.'

I told you that for this. Sand Springs is my Marilyn.

Running, on that hot Saturday morning, I realized that no matter how far, or fast, I ran, I could never outrun the past.

Until I BLOG again...I went with nothing, But the thought you'd be there too, Looking for you.

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