I digressed.

The lack of posting over these last several weeks is, well, a somewhat complicated story.  A story that is, as of today completely open ended. 

Just like our lives.

I have one more week of crazy (at least by my standards) and then I should be free from the madness of what has been these last four weeks.  Since July I've logged well over 10,000 highway miles, which puts me back into super trucker status.  And like anyone in the business of trucking these days, also translates into thosands of miles of uncertainty.

During the lull of the next few days, I'll be waiting for the results of the latest fun and games---all these test results.  These bits of data will come back, just in time for the professionals who interpret such  things to do more of what they've been doing--- and that is to shrug.

I've been living on I-90 between Seattle and here, with just as many trips down to Spokane to fill in the blanks.  I've touched Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Utah. It's a nice horizon to revisit via road trip and if you're up for such things, it comes complete with plenty of "me time". 

I've met farmers over coffee at 2 am near Shragg.  Also shared coffee with a mother at a Conoco who'd finally got her kids to sleep only to need to stop for fuel. She whispered that she was between Boston and BC and that she'd never seen such a moon set and that it must have been amazing with a Jeep like mine.

I've met Gold Miners and Gold Diggers, fuel station jockeys, and Indians with Jewelry to Spare.  Tasted hot and cold, weighed Spanish verses Mexican pedigrees, and been lulled to sleep via guitars strum by poets and hummed along with fellow writers and their lovers.

I've spoken with my new and old friends of moon time and sublime, and when I've left out, I've done so in gratitude.  Clicking open a Mountain Dew, leaving a sketch on the kitchen counter of a Colorado, prairie anchored single-wide trailer, or on the nightstand in the extra bedroom, but always accompanied with a promise to make my way back.

I've committed to Phuck Beauty along with they who reside in Austin or NJ or on my next round through in the flesh. I sometimes think my friends speculate that if I live to catch my breath, it will be my last.  But truly, I've recounted in prayer what the future does and does not say, and for all of us, its still an open, blank stare, slate.

This is the truest grace of a blessing unrequested.

The docs say they don't want to alarm me and then they seem like they sure as hell are doing their damn best to do just that. These experts don't mean to sound scary when they tell me about their prognosis, and yet, as they finish all that talking, they look up to see if their pronouncements had effect. Then they finish it all off with they don't really know. 

None of it seems to fit with my own denial and translation of serious.  My view of God, His hand in my life is a full house and it trumps tests, labs, imaging and the rest. If I've survived all of this to date, why should He put me on shore leave, or an early termination list now?

The skeptics would say faith is for simple people who have no faith in science and for those who live in a fantasy land. An uneducated place, devoid of reality, where they don't want to hear any outcome that doesn't jive with their reality. They laugh at anything that isn't measured in concrete, realism, or predictable outcomes. 

But what of mystery?  Science has answered many questions---usually with new ones.

I'd say reality would insist my life should have ended two decades ago, and maybe even a decade before that.  So I see that there is more to science than averages, and that there is more to faith than fear.   

The medical establishment does not handle well what I've spent most of my life surrounded by---the dance that is uncertainty, or the miraculous 2nd act.  We all face mortality, it's just some of us face it without the distraction or the bliss of false escapism.  I am, unlike many of my friends, living very much aware of mortality.  Even if it doesn't look like it. 

A few nights back I took my parents over Pass Creek Pass, which most of the year is not open.  Within miles of the Canadian Border, near the Purcell and Selkirk Rockies, it's a goat trail, bordering wilderness area and inhabited by Grizzlies and Caribou, and the nearest help is a helicopter ride away.  My mother, clutching the oh sh*t bar had been over the trail before, 50 years ago back when she still trusted my father's judgement. She surmised it had been worse then, but barely. 

The retired LA Cop and his wife, traveling behind us, seemed amazed that such a route lay in the realm of GPS. It would have served as a great Subaru or Ford Commercial---until the rock slide and the massive boulders partially blocking the toe side of the cliff, with a 500 foot drop off the other side ruined the scenic route awe and became more of a question of where was I taking them.  Especially with darkness settling in. My mom, hanging out the toe side, gave me an inch to spare as we inched past the boulders.

I've learned that an inch is enough to accomplish anything.

Safety says all it takes is one boulder, one fallen tree, or one minute of distraction to tumble off that mountain.  But, the sight of those pinks and reds of a fading sky, the unbroken folds of forest framing mountain peaks justifies the risks. I refuse to live in fear of fear. 

Still at times, I am envious that many people I know are so intentionally unaware of how, for most of us, as the Christian author Bruce Miller writes, we are already living the later, if not last chapters of our lives.  If we all lived like we were dying, I'd think there would be far less importance given to performance reviews and far more importance granted to puppy licks and toddler races, the sight of your mom 4x4ing at 70 or the wisdom afforded by a campfire confession.

That I've managed to land in a health situation that has everyone scratching their heads is typical of my life to date. I am not really sure, even after all this testing, just how serious "it" is--- but really does it matter?  I am convinced that severity is irrelevant.  In reading between the lines and how all the different clinics are treating me, I'd say seriousness based on probabilities is like panning for gold in a played out field. 

The chances of a lucky strike are hardly worth the effort---and then you hit it big.

But, I've also learned, with repetitive brain trauma, it's always "serious". We have to keep that in mind, don't we? 

And if people are told they are living a life between life and death stuff, that sort of puts a fairly large WTF element into the entire relief of the landscape, yes?  I write this not to be disrespectful to the medical establishment but rather as an acknowledgement that if I, or they, can't predict something, why spend an ounce of energy trying to do the impossible---which is list out all the ways I could die?

This latest adventure in fear factoring sounds eerily like previous admonitions.  The medications become more intense, and now each pill involves disclosures.

I am not sure I am up for any more meds.  I'm not reckless, but the side effects and their long range impairment I'm not sure equal the benefits. I know more than anyone that the pain I juggle is real.  But I know the other nervous system responses I can trigger, both good and bad, through a purpose driven life, are equally valid.  So it seems I have the option to juggle, weighing different versions of unhealthy, possibly risking living a life filled with passion verses one more modeled to benefit the drug companies. To exist safely cocooned, while defined as proactive, is often a sacrifice that isn't adequately measured.

I don't know if these solemn talks with the various docs, explaining what I already know, and which the doctors are finally accepting---if this dialogue is for them and for their stages of acceptance or if it's for mine. Maybe it's just another mile marker in both of our respective learning curves. We can pour through medical journals, always unable to find anything that matches or is similar to my body's responses to this or that med, or we can just ditch the meds. We can recite lists of side-effects of medications, without a match, or we can turn toward a more holistic approach. We can try therapies, medications, but yet, if we always seem to land where we started or worse, its time that we ultimately abandon them.
I am at a place where I feel that to honor this beautiful ambiguity, I need to choose something tangible: the bliss of experience. What I've written above feels like artificial stimulation. But what of other options?

In July I willingly took the top off the Jeep.  Then in mid August the doors followed--- not out of recklessness but to take my mind off how crappy I've felt for months now.  These last several weeks, I've distracted my senses through waterfalls and waking up to a rising mist forsaking a lake. I've halted journeys to marvel at sunsets and sunrise, and bowed to the way the tides communicate far more than just the divine.

I've been drenched, hailed on, burnt, windburned, and frostbiten.

My father shakes his head.  My friends, neighbors, classmates, offer speculation that this is typical.  And maybe it is.  But topless road tripping has allowed me to feel this physical discomfort with a side of bliss. In companionship to what I've already become accustomed to, maybe this makes the side effects of the meds more tolerable.  Regardless, it reminds me I've got nothing to feel angry about.

To go fetal, in transit, and feel every tightening nerve, to wonder how much more of the wind or hail you can take, and knowing that 250 miles still beckons, is to arrive thoughtfully more alive eight hours later. I've not had this recently; the luxury of physically knowing the extremes of discomfort that came from outside myself. I needed the reminder. 

To wonder at the miracle of nerves, their tattletale protests screaming under bone chilling inversions and assaults, makes the daily inconveniences seem manageable if not just random acts of brutality.

In these last collcetions of miles well driven, I've been so blessed to have forgotten about the health stuff. I've shifted my mental energy and dealt with more pressing situations.  When my chill music froze solid, shorted out under ice and my nip's did the frostbite happy dance, the immediacy of each breath became irreplaceable. Snoqaulmie pass was in the high 30's when I rolled across, a sensory assault that helped me remember that I can't remember being so cold, at least not since my days of trucking through N. Dakota in January back in the 90's.

Maybe, in light of this, I should just re title this blog: "It Happened on the Way to What Was I Thinking."

But then again, some of the best revelations do come, exactly from a moment of distraction and thoughtlessness.  And courtesy of a willing Jeep.

As a footnote let me add this, the perfect song for this kind of trek.