To IMs and All Friends Scattered (a love letter)

Note #1: This blog has to do with a big change in my life, namely, that today is our last day as IM staff members for me and seventeen of my friends. If this is the first you’re hearing about it, I invite you to call or email for a more in-depth conversation.

Note #2: If you’re uncomfortable with heartfelt, non-ironic admissions of love, sometimes incorporating cheesy LOTR references, you are free not to read this blog. You are also free to read my entry on cynicism.

My dear IM’s (and all friends scattered),

The end of this season of our lives and the start of a new one has prompted me to write a letter to you.

I am not mourning to see the fundraising portion of the IM program end, nor am I lamenting the insecurities and turmoil that change has brought. What I will miss, however—what no words will console—is the joy of working alongside you day by day. I don’t know what to do with the thought that, no matter how many of us stay, we are still in some way a company dispersed.

It’s the same feeling I get when Lucy has to leave her adventures with Aslan and go home. It’s Frodo’s fearful realization that the Fellowship must disband, though they have only just begun their journey.

The Fellowship of the Ring is my favorite book of the trilogy, and I think it’s because this ragtag group of friends is still together, facing dangers that, although real, are not quite so weighty or dark as those to come. The tunnels of Moria are not as bleak as those in Shelob’s lair. Frodo still feels the thrill of a new adventure, the companionship of men stronger and wiser than he.

Much like Frodo, I prefer the scent of good tilled earth and the taste of ale to the weight of a sword in my hand. How easy it would be to stay at Rivendell, or even the slightly-eerie Lothlorien. These havens along the road offer a solace that may be the greatest danger to the fulfillment of our quest.

How easy it would be to blame EHC for the shifting that is happening among our little group right now. Yet, this is not the first time I have had to let a friend go, not the first time I have watched as one I loved set sail on a new adventure, while I remained ashore.

Did college not end? Have I somehow kept within arm’s reach every single friend I’ve made through the years?

No, I have seen many go. And most were not stolen by an enemy, but sent by a Friend, just as I have often been sent.

For those of us who are believers, we must live with a suitcase always at the ready. We live as if on a military base, and though we make our requests known, we recognize that we can be called away at a moment not of our choosing.

Working with missionaries, whose positions are often transient, has shown a spotlight on some of my biggest fears. Fears of loneliness and isolation. The fear of being left.

A year ago, already processing through this, I wrote a song. Here’s some of what it said:

There’s a man with eyes of fire

And I am not His equal

There’s a storm in your desire

I could never stand up to

And of all love’s hard confessions

Here’s the one I was loathe to make

Even when I give all

I cannot be all to you

Would that I could hold an umbrella

That could guard you from the storm

Manufacture fiercest weaponry

Keep you safe in every war

But I recognize

That look in your eyes

When you must give yourself away

So I lay down my arms

And speed you on your way

Every season I grow more certain that distance and separation is a consequence of the fall, one we as humans were not built to endure. I see in Revelation 21 that God, too, is longing for a day when He can say, “Behold the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

I love that this is the climax to our story—a reuniting. Not just worship, although there will be worship. Not just holiness, although we will wear robes of white. But God’s greatest dream is to dwell with us. After all that’s happened, after every war and every sorrow, He’s saying, “I just want to be with you.”

It would be a lie to pretend that there’s no reason to mourn, that the end of a season doesn’t hurt. To hold back tears is to deny ourselves an opportunity to join with God’s longing. The longing to destroy death, which is separation. The longing to be together.

God has shown us the way forward, and it is in the cross. If we lose our lives for His sake, we will ultimately find them. He Himself has testified that there are some things which neither moth nor rust can destroy, and I think that applies as much collectively as individually. What we do together, inasmuch as we do it unto God, even though we are weak, God will keep.

And He knows our need for true friendship. In my experience, He is more in the habit of joining than separating. He loves to lure us into the disarming joy of communion, a sudden unlocking of doors we weren’t anticipating. That has happened over and over again from the days I was young. I am blessed with the best of friends.

So this is a note to all the friends God has given me through the years, and especially to the IMs. You have been a shoulder to cry on, an arm to lean on, a voice that comforts, and eyes that understand. You have been prayer that doesn't give up. There is nothing like those moments when I think that I'm alone, and then I turn my head and find that you're with me. Together we have tasted God's kindness.

The road is long and arduous. Every day will be another death, so that we may experience His resurrection. To follow God is to deny ourselves. And then—blink—and it’s over. Chasing Him means a narrow path. Along the way we will often link arms, but only One will hold our hand. There’s a level of intimacy that only One can attain.

So further up and further in, friends. May all our streams lead to the same ocean. Fearlessly, let us follow in the seasons of His wild will.

Becoming a City Slicker, Dawg

When I visit Chicago, a constant track plays through my head. It’s my voice, only a little gruffer, and it sounds like this:

That’s right, suckas, I belong here. I’m a city man just like all of you. See this swagger? I ain’t messin’ ‘round, boys. I may look like I shop at Gap, but this shirt is actually from Goodwill. And it’s concealing a giant tattoo. Of a dragon. Coiled around a switchblade. Yo.

I prepare for a trip to Chicago as if rehearsing lines for a school play—an apt metaphor, since I’m no more convincing in my role than the preppy theater kids you knew in high school.

On a recent trip, I exited the plane at Midway, the more ghetto of the two Chicago airports, right around midnight. I was to take the orange line train from Midway to a downtown transfer, taking the blue line to Logan Square. Explaining this to friends back home, I made it sound as if I were Frodo entering Mordor, only a taller, manlier version—with less foot hair.

To be fair, the situation actually was a bit sketchy. 2012 has been one of the worst years for shootings in Chicago in a long while. And although Logan Square isn’t the worst neighborhood in Chicago, it also isn’t, well… Colorado Springs.

I belong here, fools, I thought as I made my way down a long, dark tunnel to the orange line. I was raised in a dumpster and breast fed on city smog.

I purchased a train pass and tried to feed it into the turnstile. (You know those rotating tri-bar thingies you have to push through to board a rollercoaster? They have a name!) I kept changing the orientation of the card, people passing expertly through other turnstiles as I stood there fiddling. My plight was so obvious that finally a big black lady (there’s black people in Chicago!) came up to me, turned my card vertical instead of horizontal, and fed it through.

“Thanks,” I said.

No prob. I’m still cool. I drink my frappuccinos without whipped cream, dawg! I eat my yogurt with a fork! So dang cool.

My carry-on suddenly caught in the teeth of the turnstile, jamming. I worked at it frantically, jiggling the turnstile, which was now locked. I could feel the eyes of every gangster in Chicago on me, because, as you know, they all hang out at the Midway airport. (Conducting research this morning, I asked my mom what you would call a person in the inner city who was up to no good. She pondered the question and said, “A scoundrel… Or some word that starts with a ‘V.’”)

Finally, I worked the handle loose and lofted my suitcase over.

C-O-O-L, cooool.

Before going to Chicago, my cousin Chris warned me that there have been a lot of flash mobs this year.

"Awesome!" I said, imagining spontaneous musicals surrounding me like I've seen on youtube. "I've actually always wanted to be a part of a flash mob."

He stared at me as if thinking, You can't really be this dumb. Oh yes, Chris, I can.

He said, "Flash mobs are where people suddenly gang up on you, assault you, and steal your money."

Oh. Right... Are you sure there's no singing involved?

The next day, I took the blue line to a greenhouse just outside of Chicago. I was a pro now, no more fumbling with the train pass, no more carry-on. The train was packed with potential muggers and hoodlums, but I had enough street smarts to shift my backpack in front of me.

Ha! Thought I was an easy target, did you? Well guess what? I was raised in the hood. And although I look like I’ve never heard of “Fiddy Cent,” (as the gangbangers say) I actually listen to rap music every day! On my boombox, in fact. Yes, fools, I am what the local thugs refer to as a “dangerous specimen.” My street name is Cosprings.

After being at the greenhouse for half an hour, I felt my back pocket, and my wallet was gone. I’d been stolen from! (Later, a friend would mock my use of the phrase “stolen from.” Not “pick pocketed?” Or even “robbed?”)

Had I put my wallet in my backpack? No. Was my wallet in a different pocket? No, I distinctly remembered having it in my back pocket when I was on the train. There could only be one conclusion: some worthlah thug had ganked me some shady biznat (thank you, urbandictionary.com).

I berated myself for my earlier decision to move my backpack to the front. If only I had kept it in the back, it would have protected my wallet. How could I have been so stupid? I began to doubt whether I could ever show my face in the city again. I was an object of ridicule, unfit to ride the blue line…

“Josh?” I heard a voice call behind me. “Josh Skaggs?”

I turned and saw two young ladies, one of them holding my wallet.

“Did you lose this?”

“Yes!” I hurried over. “Where did you find it?”

“We found it on the twirly slide.”

Of course! The greenhouse happened to have a nice twirly slide, which I would have been a fool to pass up. (And a fool not to, apparently.) Not only had I taken advantage of this attraction, but I had done so upside down.

I received my wallet with a head bowed in shame and beaming red cheeks.

Three days later, returning to Midway and good ol’ Colorado Springs, I had recovered enough from my shame to resume the inner monologue, mentally talking smack as I walked the streets.

I ain’t lookin’ for trouble, but if trouble should find me, be warned—I got a piece, and I know how to use it. I could pump yo chest fulla lead, homeboy! Thas right. J Wack in the hizzouse!

My carry-on snagged on a crack in the sidewalk, and I almost dropped the ice cream cone I had been licking.

One-Eyed Prophet

One-Eyed Prophet

This is a continuation of the past two weeks’ posts on cynicism, which you can read here and here, but not here.

“I met a man who’s looking for perfection

Said he’s never met a girl who’s good enough

His eyes are getting old, like they’d love to love again

Such a lonely man.”

-Jon Foreman, “A Mirror is Harder to Hold”

We’ve established that cynicism has some flaws, but is there any alternative?

Like a guy who’s afraid of his ex-girlfriend, I jump into the arms of her opposite. “Why hello there, sentimentality!”

If pessimism fails me, then the answer must be optimism.

Flannery—God rest her blessed soul—addresses this issue in her (Insightful! Life-changing!) essay, “The Church and the Fiction Writer”:

We lost our innocence in the Fall, and our return to it is through the Redemption, which was brought about by Christ’s death and by our slow participation in it. Sentimentality is a skipping of this process in its concrete reality and an early arrival at a mock state of innocence.

If I indulge in sentimentality, I skip death and thus never find resurrection. Cynicism mocks the disease, while sentiment covers it with a Band-Aid, a kiss on the head, and an “all better.” Neither offers a cure.

So what now? Like the college grad I am, I’m tempted to say we need a “richer understanding,” a compromise—in other words, “Can’t we just mix the two and call it even?”

A good slap to the face from GK Chesterton stops me from being such a pansy.

“What we need is not the cold acceptance of this world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent.” He then asks if there is someone who can “hate [the world] enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing?... Is he enough of a Pagan to die for the world and enough of a Christian to die to it?”

Love and hate the world? This is a greater demand than I expected!

So often, I can only uphold love by blinding myself to the truth. Here I am doing my darndest to love, when I’m suddenly confronted by an obstacle in the form of a rude or selfish or arrogant person, someone I just can’t handle right now. Instead of asking God to grow my love, to make it better than it is, I avoid the situation altogether by one of two detours.

I can choose cynicism, putting up defenses against this unlovable person, shutting the door so quietly that they will never realized they’re outside. Or I can choose sentimentality, pretending they “aren’t so bad” and glossing over their more distasteful qualities—a path that ultimately leads back to cynicism because I’m really not so good at pretending.

At the foundation, cynicism and sentimentality are both malfunctioning love, a sign that my love is a lot weaker than I thought.

A parable that has consistently encouraged me in the past months is that of the wheat and the tares. Basically, a farmer plants seeds in his field, only to find later that weeds are growing up among the harvest. His servants’ response is similar to my own: “Should we get rid of the weeds?” They’ve seen the problem, and now they have a diagnosis.

The farmer’s answer is unexpected, at least to me: “No, lest as we gather up the tares, the wheat be pulled up with it.”

This is true wisdom. I consider myself perceptive to notice the weeds among the wheat, not knowing that as I reach to eradicate evil I am also uprooting good along with it. When I turn my eye against the ills of this world, I always end up destroying more than I intend. I’m a bumbling surgeon, unable to remove a tumor without cutting the heart.

Earlier this year I finished writing a song called “One-Eyed Prophet.” Like so many things I’ve written, I didn’t realize when I wrote it how much I would need it later. It tells the story of a prophet who is “always honest but never tells the truth.” Here’s the last stanza:

You’ll admit that you don’t know a cure

But you sure love playing doctor

You love the part where we take off our shirts

And uncover all our sores

Oh, what a great relief to see we’re all the same

But lately I’ve been wondering why

There’s no healing in your house

This song was inspired by a cynic I observed, but in the end I found it is actually about me. I’m the one-eyed prophet. I’m the one who is able to see the problem but lacks a cure.

The very end of the song offers a plea: “Your justice and mercy never kissed, so turn your good eye to the things you’ve missed.”

Each of us is constantly vacillating between two goods, justice and mercy. Only one man has ever held both equally, not in a dirty brown hue of compromise, but each in full strength.

Jesus is startlingly blunt about the wickedness man perpetrates. But then he turns around and lavishes love on those wicked people. He sees the most clearly, and He loves best. His love is not accomplished by a smearing of the facts. No, it’s stronger than that. He looks us in the face, and He loves.

His mercy and truth meet; His righteousness and peace kiss.

Somehow, I must do the same.

I’ve been a cynic, a man who’s so afraid of getting hurt that he locks himself in his own house. Now it’s time to try something different, something that requires more bravery than I possess, and more love. I go out as a lamb among wolves, and sometimes as a wolf myself. I think I may have only one eye, but I’m training it to look at God.

How I Stopped Hating People

This is a continuation of last week’s post, “How I started hating people.” If you didn’t read it, you will struggle to comprehend the meaning of this post, life, the universe, etc. Remedy that here.

When we last left our hero (Since this is my blog, that's me. Yay, me!) I was alone with my thoughts, overcome with the certainty that the root evil in all people overwhelms any potential good.

Then, while I was running headlong toward cynicism, two encounters brought me to a sudden halt. They were unexpected, and I’m grateful for them.

Encounter 1

The day after evacuating my house, I got a call from the enemy, my adversary—the CBS national news. The newscaster’s opening comments did little to abate my derision. Undershooting my age by four years, she gushed at the story of this 20 year old boy (the aww cute factor of “boy” set my teeth on edge) who had single-handedly saved his home. She wanted an interview for the following morning’s national news channel.

Without a moment’s hesitation I declined. It’s embarrassing, but I savored this opportunity to “stick it to the man.” I swirled it in my mouth like expensive wine (or expensive coffee, for you teetotalers). Never have the words “no thanks” made me feel so powerful.

Unexpectedly, the newscaster’s response was humane, compassionate even. “I completely understand,” she said. “If you don’t feel comfortable talking about your experience, it’s okay. What you’ve been through was horrific, and I don’t want to make you do anything you’re uncomfortable with.”

So there it was. I acted out of cynicism, and my enemy’s compassion trumped it. Convinced that newscasters were inhumane, I responded with callousness and was put to shame when my villain proved more human than my heroic self.

Encounter 2

The fourth of July, a week after evacuating, I went with a couple friends to Mount Saint Francis, a parish near my house with beautiful groves of trees and rock. We went there to escape, to find a measure of peace in the midst of a trial, and after an hour walking the labyrinth and meditating on God we all felt better.

As we were driving toward the exit, someone hollered at us. I spotted a middle-aged woman stamping toward my car and rolled down the window.

“Do you have reason to be here?” she asked gruffly.

“We were just walking the labyrinth,” I said.

“No,” she said. “You are not allowed to be here.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling my newfound sense of peace, the one that had poked its head into view like a timid animal, retreat back into darker territory. How quickly my blockades returned! But they were not quite quick enough, and I could feel old wounds split with new injuries.

Cynicism, my new ally, rushed to defend me. Not even among nuns and monks will you find kindness.

“This is not okay,” the woman continued. Her eyes were angry, and she spurted more accusations in a frenzied tone, ending with, “Do you know how close the fire came to this place?”

“Yes,” I said, “I live right up that way.” I pointed toward the charred mountain.

The change in her countenance was immediate. Lines on her brow softened to accommodate concern, and her voice took on a motherly tone.

“Is your home okay?”

“Yes,” I said. “Some smoke damage, but it’s still standing.”

“Oh, thank God. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get angry with you. It’s just that we’ve had—” She decided against excuse and again apologized, her tone softly pleading. “I’m sorry. I’m glad you came here. Stay as long as you need to find peace. Come back again. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” I said quietly. Those open wounds, so vulnerable to an unexpected sting, were also vulnerable to unexpected healing, and I tried not to start crying. On a day when I was beginning to wonder if goodness was a sham, this woman’s kindness and humility brought new hope.

We left St Francis, quiet.

And what now? Maybe cynicism isn’t as trustworthy a counselor as I thought. Maybe all those lurking shadows are not as substantive as I believed. But am I to believe that everyone is a secret Mother Theresa, waiting for an opportunity to shine? Is every Darth Vader a father figure in disguise?

This morning, a 24 year old—a man my age—went into a movie theater an hour north of my house and shot over fifty people, killing twelve.

Is this man just misunderstood? Should I ignore the heinous crimes he committed, insisting that deep down he’s “a good guy caught in a bad situation?”

What is the cure for cynicism? If every person is ultimately depraved apart from God, as I believe to be true, then how can I justify an optimistic worldview?

I’ll investigate these questions, and more, in a concluding post coming in a few days.

(I honestly only meant to write one post on this subject, but I don’t want to cheapen the complexity of it by arriving at an easy conclusion. If you’re still reading and not bored, please bear with me for one more post. Not to toot my own horn, but I think it’s the best of the three—like the first Matrix. Or a girl who’s prettier than her two sisters.)

How I Started Hating People

“Cynicism is the sickness of my culture
We undress each other with an evil eye…
Don't stand alone and cast your stones at her
Unless you think you're innocent yourself”

“Cynicism,” Josh Garrels

Two weeks ago, a forest fire nearly burned down my home.

In the ensuing week, evacuated from my neighborhood with no information about the condition my house, I watched the news. This was not easy. I already find newscasters to be distasteful, but they proved unbearable when I relied on them for life-changing news. My stomach turned as I sifted through the misinformation of a woman with barely concealed glee in her eyes and unconcealed mousse in her hair, giving her an appearance not unlike David Bowie from Labyrinth.

I became convinced the newscasters were deliberately withholding information, heightening uncertainty to boost viewership. They were heartless faux-people who operated solely to enhance ratings.

An undercurrent of derision began flowing every time I turned on the TV, and I justified it because of my plight.

The problem was, it wasn’t only newscasters. As I drove from the fire zone, my evacuation was impeded by dozens of people who parked their cars, often in the road, to take pictures and video footage of the nearby flames. And then there were the dozens of people who weren’t really affected by the fire, but still posted theatrical updates on Facebook to garner the awe or sympathy of friends.

People started emitting a subtle smell, a selfishness I fancied that I, among all people, was perceptive enough to detect. I began to wonder if even some of my friends were not exempt, if they were in fact being kind to me only so they could boast later about how selfless they had been to a real life evacuee.

Inevitably, the piercing eye I turned to others found a mirror (because the measure you use in judging others will be measured back to you), and a host of demons surfaced. My distinctive brands of depravity hooked themselves to loudspeakers only I could hear, stood under spotlights only I could see, and who among all those wicked people out there could offer comfort in my affliction?

Goodness seemed to me a scab, one that bled with the slightest scratching. Or perhaps a bad makeup job, smearing if touched.

The ailment I was experiencing is probably known to most people, and is usually neatly packed into the word, “cynicism.” The term suffices, but people rarely mention the strong element of fear inherent in the cynic’s way of thinking. If you can’t trust goodness in others or yourself, the world becomes a lonely and fearful place.

In an interview with TED, Andrew Bird tells about “a person who’s been so successful at defending themselves from heartbreak that they’re left to do the deed themselves.”

The cynic is adept at defending against heartbreak. He can spot potential danger at a mile’s distance. She can taste a drop of poison in a barrel of wine. Man’s true motives—the evil everyone else was too blind to see—are deciphered and then exposed, cut off before they have a chance to harm.

But when the cynic has been successful, when he alone has ousted every grand deception, he turns to find that he is now a solitary figure in a bleak land, and the sword he used to cut now turns against himself.

So it was that as I fled my house, condemning newscasters and everyone and myself, that I found myself alone among friends, and no one to defend me from my own evil eye.

To be continued next week…

Habit of Being, an Introduction

As you might guess from the title and URL of my blog, I love Flannery O'Connor. I named my first car after one of her peacocks (Colonel Eggbert). I fantasize about meeting her in heaven. Also, God.

If you, like most people who are acquainted with Flan Flan, only know her through her most famous story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find," you may wonder what's so great about this woman who wrote Southern Grotesque fiction and died of Lupus in the sixties. Let me help you.

Beginning tonight, I will intermittently make blog entries which present my favorite moments from Habit of Being, a 600 pg collection of Flannery's letters. I'll arrange them by subject so you can know up front whether or not you'll be interested. Consider this entry a sampler plate of O'Connor quotes. Maybe, like me, you'll find yourself steadily falling in love with this woman from Georgia who raised peacocks and wrote stories about men who steal wooden legs from girls. Who knows?

I am doing fairly well these days, though I am practically bald-headed on top and have a watermelon face. I think that this is going to be permanent… I stay strictly out of the sun and strictly do not take any exercise. No great hardship.

1-25-53

I have just got back from 2 days in NYC. There is one advantage in it because although you see several people you wish you didn’t know, you see thousands you’re glad you don’t know.

11-5-49

I have got my last draft off to the publisher and now am raising ducks like a respectable citizen. I have twenty-one. However, if the Lord is willing, I am shortly going to eat all twenty-one of them and start another novel.

10-18-51

I had to go have my picture taken for the purposes of Harcourt, Brace. They were all bad. (The pictures.) The one I sent looked as if I had just bitten my grandmother and that this was one of my few pleasures, but all the rest were worse. We liked your Christmas card very much and recognized yer assorted children.

Early 1952

Miss B. is still violently interested in finding herself a husband and still asks personal questions without any preparation and at the most inconvenient times. I do wish somebody would marry the child and shut her up. I am touched by her but you know what a long way a little goes.

5-23-52

I am taking painting again but none of my paintings go over very big in this house although mamma puts them up and is loth to take them down again. Sister used to teach painting classes in her youth and she says she doesn’t like this modern art because it’s not “smoothed down.” My mamma says it’s not modern art (insulted), it’s very true to nature and there’s no use spending five hours on a painting you can do in two. This refers to the fact that I have been painting with a palette knife because I don’t like to wash brushes.

Summer 1953

Mr. P. is taking a correspondence course in Catholicism. He is not going to be a Catholic or anything—he just likes to get things free in the mail.

August 1953

I would like to create the impression over the television that I’m a hillbilly Thomist, but I will probably not be able to think of anything to say to Mr. Harvey Breit but “Huh?” and “Ah dunno.” When I come back I’ll probably have to spend three months day and night in the chicken pen to counteract these evil influences… I wish somebody really intelligent would write me sometime but I seem to attract the lunatic fringe mainly. I will be real glad when this television thing is over with. I keep having a mental picture of my glacial glare being sent out over the nation onto millions of children who are waiting impatiently for The Batman to come on.

5-18-55

I don’t deserve much credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.

6-10-55

The latest came from a Mr. Semple of Cincinnati who has not read anything of mine but doesn’t really see how I can say a good man is hard to find. He is an industrial engineer, likes to play bridge, is the active type, 31 years old, single etc. etc. I wrote Mr. Semple that I didn’t think I’d like him a bit but he would be crazy about me as I had seven gold teeth and weighed 250 pounds.

6-16-55

Arizona Road Trip!

I have not posted in a long time. A long time indeed. So I thought I'd share a little about my road trip to Arizona last week. Probably won't write about the whole trip, but at least it'll break the dry spell.

Day One
Victor, John Mark, and I set out for Prescott, AZ at 6:30 AM. I bought a pair of Converse shoes last month, years after the trend was at its peak, having taken that long for me to work up the self-confidence to tap into the "cool skater" look. Now, I realize that Converse shoes make my toes amazingly cold. Even so, I'm not getting cold feet: this trip is going to be awesome.

After John Mark, a veritable encyclopedia, names an interesting fact about almost every town we pass, we cross the border into New Mexico. All the buildings are tan adobe on a tan, dirty landscape, hiding in plain sight like soldiers in camo gear. It's kind of ridiculous, actually. New Mexico says "we love tan" like Chic Fil A workers say "my pleasure."

For lunch, we stop in Albuquerque, the Weird Al song soundtracking in my mind until we leave ("Where the sun is always shining and the air smells like warm root beer"). We pull into a parking lot for Subway, but then see an adjacent Mexican grocery store and decide to check it out. As we're walking in, a Texan woman, as evidenced by her big hair and big accent, pulls up in her car and addresses us: "Is this a Mexycan resturaun?"

"We don't know, we're just checking it out."

"Well is it a resturaun?"

"We've never been here. We're on a roadtrip."

She pauses half a beat, comes to a decision, and says, "Well, I'll just wait here and see if you come out."

Sure enough, she follows us in three minutes later. I hear her at the counter asking for "More cheese. More CHEESE. MORE CHEEEESE!"

Albuquerque. ("where anyone on the street will gladly shave your back for a nickel.")

All the workers at the Mexican grocery store speak spanish (go figure). Victor foretells, "They're going to speak to me in spanish." They do. Also, Victor arrives at the counter and pays sixty cents for a drink. Turning to me, he whispers, "Sixty cents! Back in America this would be at least..." and then catches himself. This isn't another country, Victor. Just Albuquerque. ("Where the shriners and the lepers play their ukuleles all day long.")

We cross into Arizona, and somehow the chiles rellenos burrito I ate for lunch doesn't give me any problems. In fact, the entire trip is easy. Sunny skies. Good company. No traffic or construction.

We left Colorado as the sun was rising, and we arrive in Prescott as it's setting. There is spaghetti, a game of Catan, and kids running everywhere. And then bed.

Day Two

An interesting disaster happened that night, namely, that Victor found a very comfortable sheet in the middle of the night and wrapped himself in it. Unfortunately, it was not a sheet. It was a window curtain. During the rest of the trip, I catch our hosts checking on other household items, making sure Victor hasn't put them to some ungodly use. "That's not a napkin, it's our cat." Or, "Can you please use a Q-tip for your ears, instead of our homegrown carrots?"

Shiloh kindly makes us a quiche, which is like Heaven in a crock pot, only filled with cheese and meat instead of God and the saints.

That morning we get the tour of Prescott, which as it turns out, is pronounced by locals to rhyme with "Biscuit." Who knew? Prescott is an amalgamation of old hippies, young students, and outdoorsy folk. Everything is a something/bar. Icecream/beer. Hair salon/saloon. It's weird.

We eat lunch at In-N-Out, which (for me) does not measure up to the hype. Good shakes, though.

And then the afternoon. Oh Lord, the afternoon! After removing the canoe from the backyard, where it is covered with scraps of lumber and dusty from disuse, we set out for a lake ten minutes from their house. This lake is the best of all lakes, at least to a Coloradoan who sees the dog's water dish and calls it a pond. The water is calm, and towers of rock jut up from it. This makes it a perfect place for adventure, as you can maneuver between islands or park your boat and go hiking (Park? That can't be right. Moor? Hitch?).

The afternoon is perfect.

On the way back home, we are in such good spirits that we flirt with a pair of girls who pulls up next to us at a stop light. When the light changes, I keep accelerating or decelerating as necessary to keep in line with their car, making the three of us feel awkward and also a little charming. After a few minutes of this, we are dancing wildly, and so are the girls, they in their jeep and us in our.... uh, minivan. Yes, we're in Shiloh's minivan. But we have a boat strapped to the top, so that has to count for something.

That night we eat chicken teriyaki with rice, which is delicious. (You can tell I'm related to my mom, who will forget entire days of a vacation while remembering every single meal. Also, you can tell I'm fasting today.)

During dinner, the youngest daughter becomes obsessed with finding out how many days remain till her birthday. After shutting herself in a room for fifteen minutes to concentrate on her calculations, she emerges triumphantly with an announcement: "Forty-six hundred days!"

The guys try to teach me Halo, which I have somehow avoided my entire life. I do wonderfully. I'm sorry, did I say wonderfully? I meant to say disastrously. I get killed dozens of times and never shoot a single person. It is enormous fun, actually.

Later, we watch a few episodes of Portlandia and eat icecream. (Is icecream a liquid or solid? I'm only fasting solid food today...)

Before we go to bed, Victor says to me, "Today was a good day."