I'm getting location fatigue. I really have no idea where I've been. It's all a blur. One town after another, one long highway after another. The Red Bulls and drinking every couple of days can't be helping, either. There's no pace to it, no rhythm, just one long slog that molds into another.
Not that this isn't great country or a fine trip, it's just that it is slowly becoming one big ball with no beginning and no end. I guess I have the photos to dileniate one day from the next. I guess that's one of the reasons we keep photos, right?
That's one of the reasons I went on this trip. I won't kid you that I went on it because I love my dad so very much that I had to spend two weeks with him. Hell, I've been in love and I don't know if I'd choose to spend two weeks with her on an island somewhere or a well-equipped SUV, even. I wanted to go on this trip to see large chunks of this country that I've never seen before and I wanted to go on it to find and buy stuff.
Today I finally found some of the things I was looking for. It's only been a small amount of postcards and some clothing items. It proves that this junk is out there, though, it isn't just all
The things we buy have a certain allure. Whether or not that power is a good thing is a whole other discussion, but the things we buy and live around have more meaning than just what they're meant to do.
There's a Japanese called "tsukunogami," which is the idea that after an object hits its centennial, it becomes a living being. I'm sure I'm missing part of the trick here. The general idea remains, though, which is that these objects have an energy of their own.And I love it because it means that I'm not just buying up crap to fill my life with. It means that I'm buying up the spirit of something that has a history and an energy beyond you buying it over a counter. It's why old stuff is cooler than new stuff.
I see that in the photos my dad has already bought, in the photos that spurred this road trip on in the first place.A photo of a bunch of men in mustaches is just that until you come back to that exact place ninety years later and hand that photo back to the person who owns the place. It proves the place existed, that people went there and cared about it back then and it isn't just some ugly place where people get drunk. Not to say that it isn't that, as well.
High Point: Dad and I rolled down into town and after some detective work, which included talking to a cowboy who trained at the same Army base as my dad, we figured out where one of our old bar photos belonged. It was down the street aways and even had an article in the newspaper that very day (none of it mentioned the old business that was in the postcard, much less the giant bear in the postcard. . . ).
I had to talk him into believing that it was the place, but after finding a few architectural indicators, he finally broke down and admitted it was the place (not that I was right, just that it was the place that I was saying it was).
The building was abandoned and the door was wide open. We walked in, shouting ahead of us, partially out of respect for the place and its owners and mostly out of a desire to not get a face full of birdshot to the gut. It is Montana, after all.
Sub-High Point: I got to wear my Brokeback Mountain cordouroy jacket today when it started raining.
Low Point: I lost two pool games in a row by sinking the Eight Ball within three or four turns. It was rough. Real rough.
Waldoism of the Day: "We wake up, we eat breakfast, we dive, we eat lunch, we go to sleep, we wake up, we do it again."
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