Let's Start at the Beginning

It was journaling day at Wasatch. Mine was a tan hard cover that was one foot in length, rectangular, dark green spine, with engraved gnomes on the cover and the bottom corner of each page. They were funky sort of gnomes with mischievious eyes and long twisted hats. Kind of eery fairytale-like gnomes.I liked them and they frolicked through my pages as I progressed each week.

One day I wrote down this dream I had that I wouldn't let go of. I had a vivid dream to travel the world and I wanted to do it in a very specific way. First, I would take my car across the US and into Canada, then the West Coast down into Mexico. Then continue through South America until I reached the southern tip, sell my vehicle and buy a plane ticket over to the southern tip of Africa. I would get a motorcycle and travel my way up North, entering Europe as I work my way through the Mediterranean and northern areas, crossing into Russia, dropping into the Middle East and onwards towards Tibet and China. From there, I would travel South through Malasia, India, and the surrounding countries until once again, buying a plane ticket arriving to Australia, finishing in New Zealand.

For the next decade, I put it down. In fact, I don't think I gave it another thought until my Saturn return was beginning.

That's when I met my now wife-to-be, Anna.

She loved me so hard it made me uncomfortable. Made me squirm. I was not used to a love that came with something to sacrifice, mainly my light or life force energy.

I asked Anna on our first date if they had good knees. They said, "Yes, why?" Smiling, I answered, "I have a lot of hoops."

"I love hoops."

"With fire."

"I love fire."

I didn't even know what to do with that!

Anna moved into my house in late February 2020 and then the COVID Quarantine came. We came home from her best friend's wedding in Jamaica and had covid, almost died together in the house, and out of some miracle...survived.

At the end of April 2020, I was rehabilitating my lungs and sleeping a lot, because out East, my practice was shut down along with every other business in Connecticut. Anna was teaching preschoolers over Zoom. We took a psychedelic journey together and during that time we talked about Love. We talked about all the things most couples get divorces over. That was the night we created The Bird and the Potted Tree anaology and ultimately, the propechy of our love story. A day or two later, one of her best friends called from Colorado and said, "Come quarantine with us!" Which was a really wonderful invitation to extend. We were so excited for so many reasons. Emily and I had a really intense past life reconnection when we met and hated each other. Anna made us three cook and eat dinner together in her apartment a few months into our relationship. It's safe to say, her and I developed our own unique, real, and wonderful kinship to each other. Emily's crossed rainbow bridge as I write this, and I'm convinced it was her guiding intuition that sparked my teenage dream to make its way to come true.

This would be the trip that starts it all. The very beginning of where we are now.

We packed my SUV with a cooler, a duffel of clothes, and my dog, Zaí. We had our rent paid for the next 4 months, let our roommate know that she was officially the queen of the castle, and left two days later, not knowing exactly when we'd return. We ended up spending two months on the road. Nobody was anywhere across the States. Highways and Freeways were empty and gas was $1 per gallon. The only places in the country that were open were grocery stores, and some businesses depending on where we went. We avoided big cities and even got to drive Highway 1 all the way up the coast of California. We got to Big Sur the day it opened and we were the only people there. We camped on the coast of Oregon and ate cheese and ice cream at 10am in Tillamook at their creamery.

For the first time, since that journal entry from 2005, I thought about that dream of mine and it started to feel like a possibility.

I had never wondered about the specifics of this dream when I was 14. We were only able to do this because the world was frozen. But it was a catalyst for ripping out the backseats to my car two years later and closing my studio and leaving to travel the country with Anna, Zaí, and Murph a year after that.

There's something so special about the moment you let go what others think of you. Social media has given a platform for people to think their opinions are open for everywhere, so when they come unwanted, I just let it go in one ear and out the other.

There is a silent empowerment that begins to grow once you accept where you're at and start following your actual journey, whatever that entails. The road was our oyster and my car was our safe place. The first real place we got to be alone and it was a small space and our friendship and love only grew. This was where we determined what our relationship was and how we wanted it to be, what we expected from each other, and despite our differences, we have always ended up in the same place when it comes to morals, ethics, hard conversations, and beyond.

I am living on the road getting to live out my ultimate creative journey. I need to pinch myself sometimes, because my 14 year old self.... she was setting us up for something wonderful. She knew to pay attention to that dream over other vivid dreams. She had the intuition to stop at that and go, oh that makes me feel some type of way. And somewhere inside of her, she did keep that dream. She was smart and didn't obsess over it. She just let it ride out in a safe deposit box to withdrawal when the time was right. That clock struck and now I'm here. How long will I be here and what will I keep doing with it?

Until the next post.. thanks for reading.