Has it really been over a month since my last journal entry? Wow, time flies.
Well, the month of September saw it's usual tradition of being a month of shifting. My prediction came true(along with a few of my intuitive friends)that things would smooth out on this karmic ride for me this September. This entire month has been part of the "Coast 2 Coast 2011" trip which was taken after the van was in an accident and that dream had been satisfied. The trip started off with me departing Denver via Frontier Airlines en route to Chicago.
Chicago?! Why would you go back there??? I felt pulled to go back and help my parents with their final moments in Illinois and escort them to the wild west. I spent a few days catching up with them in Joliet before blasting off up to Wonder Lake to spend a few days with my grandparents. While in Joliet I also spent some time with my friend Scott(who also did an oil change for me!). I was to drive my step-dads Ford Focus out west for him but not before heading to guess where...yes..the EAST coast!
I drove straight through some crap states(Indiana and Ohio) on to New York where I spent labor day admiring Niagara Falls from both the US and Canadian sides. By the next night I was in Tewksbury, Massachusetts visiting my friend Maureen. The next day I checked out Walden Pond where one of my favorite people lived in the early 1800's, Henry David Thoreau. The next few days Maureen and I took a rode trip up to New Hampshire and Maine. Arriving in Maine saw another state checked off my list bringing me to 47 states visited and another National Park in Acadia.
After nearly a week in New England hanging with Maureen I blasted off for New York City on no other day than the 10th anniversary of September 11th. I parked in lower Manhattan in order to walk the city and get around via the subway. While there I visited the Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Statue of Liberty, Battery Park, Wall Street, Broadway, Times Square, Central Park and the 9/11 Memorial site where the Twin Towers once stood. NYC has always seemed larger than life and visiting it was larger than life too. I had a good time but I do not care to re-visit for any particular reason, though I wouldn't oppose going back if I had further reason to do so.
After spending the night of September 11th in America's armpit; New Jersey, I decided to head down to Philadelphia and check out the vibe there(along with the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall)and outside of having to go through airport style security at the LIBERTY Bell and INDEPENDENCE Hall Philly took the cake for my favorite east coast city. I then headed into my favorite part of the east coast half of the Coast 2 Coast trip, meeting my friend Trish.
Trish and I met on AOL Instant Messenger chatroom back in 2001 when I was 14 and she was 17. We had also talked on the phone from time to time back then and had been there for one another through some of our first romantic relationships, etc. We did lose touch for a few years during the middle of the 2000's decade but shortly after I went to Ohio in 2008 I realized that I wasn't too far off from Pittsburgh and decided to locate her on MySpace and send her a message. Before you know it we were on AOL Instant Messenger talking like nothing had changed and spending time catching up on everything in between. In late August 2011, not even a month before finally meeting Trish I wrote in my blog entry "Dancing In September" how I planned to make it out to Pennsylvania to see her before the end of 2012, little did I know 3 weeks later I'd be sitting in her house and after knowing each other for 10 years only via the internet and telephone I decided that no better time than the present. We had a good time like always and laughed at things that most people would consider us weird for(like looking at pictures of sex offenders on the registry site and trying to guess what crime they committed and how crazy some of them looked, even guessing what kind of car(or van)they were driving!)so were a little twisted but when it all comes down to it we were laughing together in tears and that is what counts! Pennsylvania also surprised me with it's above and beyond good energy. I expected the scenery and energy to match that of Illinois, Indiana or Ohio and as a child I never really enjoyed PA, but this time I did and I can see why she would stay there. I wanted to spend more time with her and can't wait to see her next time but I knew it was time to go back to the mid-west seeing as to how my parents were about ready to leave.
I rolled back into Illinois where I spent the next few days assisting my parents however possible in getting ready for "the big move". But there was one thing I knew when I left Illinois at the beginning of the year that wasn't finished and I had to address it before leaving this time, it was time to see my father whom I had chosen not to see for the last 9 years.
9 years of hatred, resentment and no contact. One phone call in 2009 to tell me my grandma was dying where we battled it out for a few hours rehashing the past. His often poor decisions as a father fused with my refusal to forgive and stop hating divided us for 9 years. He missed out on his son growing up in many ways and I missed out on a chance to patch things up earlier but if there is something I have learned this year it's that everything has it's own time and things happen when they need to. My father lost his job with the state of Illinois and his pension due to his drinking problem and he finally has been able to say he has a problem, at least partially but I still consider it progress. He is currently staying with a childhood friend in the suburbs of Chicago without a job and no direction..that's until I showed up at the doorstep.
As I sat at the kitchen table over some good Chicago pizza and homemade ravioli's made by his "dego friend" I realized that we had some things to catch up on but at the same time I observed that there was no more anger towards him for his decisions he made when I was a child. I no longer feared him, I no longer hated him, I just saw the old man with arrested development that had made many bad choices and I noticed that they started to show up on his face since the last time I saw him, I saw a boy that had not lived a life of his own, we shared stories of his childhood, of my travels, of the girls we've loved, the tears we've cried and where we are going from here. We talked like two long lost friends who've never really known each other but the thing that stuck out the most was how I told him I had a vision of him moving to Georgia and being happy, he was always happier when we would vacation to the southeast. He then reminded me about Eureka Springs, Arkansas which was a cool little town in the Ozark Mountains that he always loved and I remembered him always wanting to move there. His friend/roommate Guido had shown some of his intuitive abilities that we discussed over dinner and also informed me that he had prayed to God and my grandparents(on my dad's side)that something come along for him because he needs a spark to relight his life and two weeks later I showed up. I knew part of my purpose there was to offer him assistance along with letting go of the final stages of hurt and being unforgiven. I kept asking him if he ever considered moving to the southeast or anywhere else and he told me "When I got out of the Army in the 70's I wanted to travel just like you're doing now, I wanted to leave Illinois but then I started thinking with the wrong head, the one in my pants and started having children so I got stuck in Illinois." so when he mentioned Eureka Springs I knew that was the place for him and I suggested it to him and at that moment I knew what to do for my father.
I departed his house the following morning at 630AM right before the sun came up. It was the same feeling I had when he would drop me off at my mothers or when she would pick me up as a kid, only this time I was the one driving off, I was the one in the drivers seat. I wasn't even off his block before I was in tears. Tears of happiness, relief, joy, sadness that I had let so much time go by and a huge lesson had been learned and I believe it was learned by both of us. Since I left Illinois I have spoke with him on the phone once and a few emails so it wasn't to my surprise when he emailed me a week after I saw him saying "Zac, I'm renting a car and going down to Eureka Springs, Arkansas to revisit for a few days and see if I want to move there." which I knew he was going to do and after getting this email I knew that if he went down there to visit he'd only be back up to Illinois to get the few material things he owns and his car before returning back to Arkansas(one thing I got from my dad, material simplicity), I give it about a month until I hear the words "Zac, I'm living in Arkansas now." and I await those words because I know he will be much happier there.
The next day my folks and I left Joliet, Illinois and though I had made my peace with no longer living there earlier this year it was different watching my folks go, especially my mom. I was pleased to escort them out of there and felt it my responsibility to make sure the dark energies that took so much from them on that property and in that town didn't get their last shot in. As soon as I arrived in the house the first night I let the darkness know that it wasn't taking anything from any of us and it was not welcome in our lives or what was left of their home, it was the first time I felt like I was holding the leash of darkness instead of me being on it's leash and my hands did not shake, I had no fear.
We went up to Wonder Lake to say goodbye to my grandparents one last time and then headed off towards San Jose(where I write this from now). The ride through Iowa and Nebraska was very uneventful and we ended up in a hotel somewhere in mid-Nebraska for the night. By the next night we were in Colorado where they headed off to Granby to see my moms old boss in the rockies, I went to Denver to see Ken and Mike AND also Maureen(who I had stayed with in Massachusetts a few weeks before)who was visiting Denver. I loaded my stuff up into the car that I had left at Ken and Mike's in August after the van accident and spent a few days having some fun going bowling and chilling out at the apartment and then it was off to Granby for me.
My folks and I went to the Rocky Mountain National Park together the next day and though this was my third time in the park(once on my own in 2008 and once with Scott in 2009)I was pleased to bring my parents to the "Gateway of the West" and give them a proper introduction to the beauty the west has to offer by showing them one of our best and most beautiful places out here in the west in Colorado, the rockies. Though I was sick and vomiting numerous times in the national park I was happy to see their reaction and the beautiful peace they had found in the rocky mountains and I couldn't have asked for a better state than Colorado to get them started on their western adventures.
We left Granby a few days later and I headed on the 70 to Aspen, they took 80 towards Wyoming. After a forgettable stop in Aspen I met up with them in Salt Lake City during sunset over the Great Salt Lake. That night we stayed at a Motel 6 in Wendover, Utah only feet from the Nevada border. They had a tire blow out on the way to the hotel and the next day we noticed that the trailer being overloaded had done damage so they unhooked it at a gas station and gave the owner $50 to hold it for a few weeks. We took the Explorer and Focus and continued on through a part of Nevada that none of us had been to. By the time we hit Reno we were tired of Nevada and it's smutty negative vibes. Reno itself was a town with people living in the 80's still and all of the other towns were pits. By dusk we were at Lake Tahoe and able to see the sunset over the lake. We all loved the energy and it was strangely another place that none of us had ever been. We rolled through Sacramento and into San Jose to stop at a friends vacant house where we have been for the past few days. None of us are too fond of San Jose but we are thankful to have a place to stop and all three of us are working on the next step which brings me to the conclusion of the "Coast 2 Coast" tour and the beginning of the next phase.
The end of the Coast 2 Coast tour also in many ways brings the end of an era. I now find myself at home in southeast California and I love the fact that my second favorite place is right next door, Arizona. There are three things I love in environment and that is desert, mountains and ocean and in southern California I can have all three within a 3 hour drive of each other. Want to be in Colorado or Montana? No problem, here I come Big Bear! Want to be in Arizona or New Mexico? It's off to Joshua Tree or Lucerne Valley! Looking for some water? Well, as Katy Perry once sang "You can travel the world but nothing comes close to the golden coast", a drive down or up Highway 1 will suffice. I am currently looking to attract an income by driving, particularly RV delivery. I have no interest in getting a house in the 'burbs, an apartment in the city or anything like that. I am still very much a vagabond(probably more than ever)but I'm not always on the backroads anymore. I'm finding my way on this spiritual adventure on how to choose my battles, when to swallow my pride and take the front roads but always staying loyal to the roads that make a person, the roads that challenge them, lift them and unveil their true character and nature..the back roads.
As my philosophy of being "On The Backroads" evolves into a new meaning so does my style of vagabonding. As I grow older and hopefully wiser and expand my soul I learn more and more what I am here to do. 4 years ago this adventure started with some long hair, a tye dye shirt, rebellious wanderlust and the willingness to challenge a system that started to collapse the following year and it now see's it's end.
I will never forget what I learned on these back roads...the places I fell in love with and the places I loathed, the friends I made, the canyons I crossed, the mountains I climbed, the forests I lost myself in, the girls I loved, I times that I lost, the experience and soulful knowledge I gained, the growing up I did(even when I didn't want to), the times I had. I will never forget these experiences and lessons and I plan to use every bit of the things I gained(otherwise whats the point of learning and ascending?)but I also see that the "Journey of Self Discovery" as a young man is now going into it's next stages, the long haired "hippie/gypsy" is no longer how I define myself as much as it's just a part of who I am now, in many ways I now define it. I have learned that sometimes taking the front roads is part of what the back roads wanderer must do in his/her best interest.
So as I shed a tear and smile deep inside for choosing these past few years to be "On The Backroads" I see that adaptation is part of growth and evolution and when the van died, I knew that the Coast 2 Coast journey where I escorted my parents to the West would be the last time I would "Go West, young man" with the same energy that I received from doing it the last 3 times. The adventure is never over, the vagabond that I am will always be there because no matter where I go, there I am and though I will always be on the backroads in this life I have to acknowledge that the first journey of self discovery and all of it's power is over. I mourn it with gratitude and a deep thanks as I ascend another soul deeper. I am thankful this year that I have been supported by the Universe and in my decision to see this karmic experience through to the end, I am thankful to my loved ones for their support, love and help and have been thankful to be able to assist some of them in return but the truth of the matter is I'm just getting started and I'm EXCITED to move on to the next phase of my life.
It was the backroads that brought me home to the west, to the people and places I love and home within my soul and it is that reason alone that I will always remain forever young...and on the backroads..
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference." - Robert Frost
Written: San Jose, California 2011
