Deadhorse Lookout, Utah
"Surrounded by alien territory, greater authenticity could emerge."

The Muse travels well, she of the ungainly pile of tour guides and carefully curated maps maintains our places in spaces and times. I simply drive. Having successfully fled winter dread into ParadoxCountry, we find our collective ButtClenching as we investigate sentiment and erosion on the grandest possible scale. Much accretes over the course of a typical planet's entire history, and some leavings can't help but wash away over time. This washing away displaces original deposits, leaving behind the most curious structures and shapes, just like our lives seem to do. We live on time scales insignificant when compared to the total history of this planet. Modern geologists conclude with ranges multiple times the merely unthinkable, or within a few odd million years or so. We think ourselves senior in our sixties, not a paltry sixty million, but a sixty-some single years. We stand clueless but still curious, interested in observing, though looking over and into even finite eternity can produce some serious ButtClenching.

I suspect that ancient man sought out ButtClenching as a handy antidote to ennui. Chasing down a prehistoric bison herd probably added great terror as well as exhilaration through those millennia before one could simply plug into another binge watch. Climbing steep cliffs before the invention of the simple carabiners must have produced genuine ButtClenching. Today, we take to freeways or twisty two lanes to create these sorts of thrills, but we seem to need occasional thrilling to maintain our sanity. Once accepting the presence of paradox, our trip turns dicey. Rivers traverse valleys rather than logically following them, creating their own meandering paths from blueprints laid down before those valleys emerged. Great vistas open leaving the humble observer insignificant in the presence of such grandeur. Cliff walls seem to entice us to try to fly. I find a well-seated rock, seeking to ground myself while The Muse pokes her head well over each precipice, fascinated, I suspect, with her suddenly widened and deepened horizon.

Friday brings her usual recounting of the previous week, a week of stuckness, transitioning, and change. I began by Impressioning, taking a fuzzy look to make sense of my week just past, concluding that out-of-focus reflection sometimes creates more impactful impressions. I next fled outward with Out, away from an overly-confining snowpack, probably exhibiting symptoms of serious cabin fever. I next considered the fine art of writer's block in Blocked, where I concluded that even the occasional inability to produce provides evidence of an abiding skill. I then set about attempting to calculate my SelfWorth, figuring that mine might be priceless or incalculable, by which I meant not particularly precious or rare. I then looked at the hardest HardLabor, that provided by the dedicated care giver. I next set about stiff-arming the possibility of my own deliverance in RoadTricks, where I described some of the schemes I employ while failing to ward off change. I then produced a partisan political rant, TheRuleOfLawyers, where I rather emphatically restated my abiding faith in The Rule Of Law, before finishing my writing week in ParadoxCountry, where I surprised myself finding satisfaction in seeking more and deeper questions in lieu of not finding answers. Overall, I experienced a thoroughly satisfying writing week. Eight hundred and ninety-two individual page views produced this series' grandest total so far. Thanks for coming along.

The Muse, The GrandOtter, and I find ourselves pleasantly along for this latest toodle. Does anyone tootle anymore? By toodle, I mean a dedicated meandering rather than a focused pursuit of some definite destination, a ramble rather than a route. The Otter finds our improvisations frustrating. Figuring that someone must know tomorrow's agenda before tomorrow comes, she mumbles when rousted before mandatory checkout time. I'm up at my usual three am watching daylight appear then slip away as The Otter crawls into her day. She'd appreciate less surprise while The Muse and I attempt to engineer even more. We have no notion of precisely where we'll spend tonight. Last night, we figured we'd probably extend our room a day but found that they were already all booked up, so we went on our way, catching ourselves driving in darkness the final few miles, driving in darkness being a minor sin when toodling's the purpose because we cain't see nuthin' in the dark. We came to watch, ourselves and our surroundings, sometimes ButtClenchingly.

In exchange for the loss of certainty, synchronicities—small happy accidents which cannot penetrate dedicated planning's perimeter— emerge. Each Synch leaves us thinking how very fortunate we are as little surprises simply fall into their seemingly rightful places. Perfect restaurants appear in precisely the proper space at exactly the right time. Fauna appear just as we pass. That last parking place seemed to have been patiently waiting for our arrival. The absence of planning allows many blessings to appear, gifts which would have otherwise slinked away disappointed that we'd already made iron-clad plans. The absence of planning also seems to encourage the emergence of certain ButtClenching experiences, too, where shock edges out surprise, though not necessarily delight. We're toodling around The Great Southwest, just seeing what we can see while being what we might be without definite portfolio. Surrounded by alien territory, greater authenticity could emerge. We surprise ourselves with what manifests, especially the ButtClenching times when we're suspending somewhere over unimaginably vast spaces along the outside edge of time. How simply sublime.

©2020 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #SmallThings, #PureSchmaltz