get cold, listen outside

and a what wide world it weally is.

Have you ever been camping? Or, at least sat on a fertile spot of ground surrounded by trees or a river, maybe even sand, and built a fire from the sticks up? It's ok to use matches or a lighter, fine. I don't even mind a bit of igniter fluid to start the thing - because once it finally flooms into flame, that's when something really happens: a frantic little twist of wide-awake, like your eyes open up clean and clear as you're sitting very close to your newly-made, very real fire. It licks upwards, and you're staring back at it with two orange spots on your eyeballs - Placerville.

I drove into town about 4 1/2 days ago. The first couple of days I spent getting my feet heavy and walking around the dirty-busy streets of this little place. It doesn't take long to see every body that makes up the downtown and social places of Placerville - but in that time you've barely gotten to scratch the surface of this place. Even the weeds behind that one obscure beige house on Clay street are interesting; something, some secret thing buried beneath those yellow grasses, and then Dad sitting here behind me watching some basic AMC flick with Robert Deniro.

After those two days, this inevitable 'slowdown' muscles up such a flippant anxiety in my soul, I can't even tell you - worst is, its incurable except by patience; time and a couple loose conversations promise to rise you up and away from the muckymuck of strange uncertainty that you're tossed blindly into by digging your heels into Placerville for any length of time. Except I've gotten it down to a science: get READY for it. College makes your mind busy, and foreignness (no matter how long you live in Santa Cruz) keeps your thoughts occupied with curiosity. So, coming back to a place from where most of your creative drive finds its roots and history, no matter how wide your worldview becomes, the familiar routines will sneeeak back into your mind like worms.

Except then something's different, you're different. Try as they might, those worms just can't slither past your logic that has shown you new answers and asked new questions - and as gradual as it might be, you will pick out those worms one by one and nicely bury them back into the dirt they poked out from. Two whole days, and your mind is clean again. Clean and healthy, and ready to be filled with a new way to live old truths that are instead stuck inbetween, truths stuck in a timeless reality that will never change up or down, but be level and real for always.

When the fire first feels the air with its red and yellow fingers, and you are forced to slightly retreat in that little moment of power, that's when Placerville becomes real again. And your eyes shine, your fingers tingle with this new thing of warm wind that you've suddenly found. That's the Placerville I know and love and feel the promise of even right now.
Tomorrow I drive back to my gusty city by the beach, and the same timelessness will follow me. Half of it comes from being done with something I've spent every ounce of my being working on completing for the last x years of my life. And the fingers of a new flame, any flame, are warmth enough to let me sleep happy tonight.

As for tomorrow, I won't abandon adventure for comfort.

Sorry laziness-

and now stride I, armed with my bat and an arrow,

a steed of a wagon and little dinero!