Katsushika Hokusai 葛飾 北斎:
A Mild Breeze on a Fine Day
(Gaifu kaisei),
from the series “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji
(Fugaku sanjurokkei)”
(c. 1830/33)

" … maybe those things just found us …"

Finding doesn't necessarily require seeking. When I put myself out there, I stumble across something serviceable if I pay at least a halfway kind of attention. Presence or any particular mindfulness need not precede discovery, either. It's mostly a matter of me just being there. My more noteworthy discoveries might find me, though they might not seek me or anybody. It might be that these adventures, these plots and twists, result from random interaction and that all our fervent instruction in the supposed fine arts of seeking amounts to little more than attractive distractions, useful for diversion and entertainment but useless for their stated or presumed purpose. I've usually found something other than advertised when I attended some workshop or training, whatever the intended purpose. So it always seems.

Toodles seem to bring out the best of this class of experience in us. The Muse and I head off in some definite direction and begin bumping into Finding stuff we never intended to find, never imagined Finding. This process seems to be the way travel broadens us. Were we more like detectives, seeking with some definite questions, trying to determine who did or didn't, our travels would become an entirely different business. Were we seeking The Best of anything, our excursions might threaten to become frantic. If we set objectives beyond some waypoint to maintain momentum but determined the goodness of our excursions by our success rate at Finding something definite, we might just as well stay home, for the streaming services overfloweth with series enabling us to accompany actual celebrities as they do the discovering rather than us. Might just as well watch them eat the bugs.

Our world seems overflowing with marvelous things, many of which have never been discovered or never been discovered in ways that only The Muse and I could ever reveal. Even some seriously shopworn old restaurant, in continuous business since the first Roosevelt administration, seems prisine when we do the Finding. Synchronicity seems as commonplace as gravity when we're simply out there and Finding, out there and being found. I sit here in the predawn chill on the veranda of a cafe/restaurant overlooking Death Valley, writing this story. The Muse and I spent the night in a tent. It's nearing the end of February, but the weather's more like April at this latitude. Still, the predawn chill has me typing while wearing my fingerless knit gloves, my coat with my down vest beneath it, and my stocking cap. The grey greens slowly distinguish themselves from the greys as the sky tries to turn blue again. The clouds appear to originate in the grey hills, and as they float away, fine details and a broader range of colors distinguish themselves along the ridges.

We were partaking in a supplemental second breakfast in a combination casino and diner when The Muse found the advertisement for a resort offering all-weather tent camping experiences in Death Valley. I figured we'd rent a room in Lone Pine, an adjacent town, then drive down the following morning, but The Muse supposed that we might instead start our day visit after arriving that evening and overnighting, already there and present. We were channeling nineteen seventy-four since, when we entered that casino/diner, we walked into a thick fog of genuine cigarette smoke, the kind common in nineteen seventy-four but in ever fewer places since. Nevada seems a remarkably retro place. We both must have imagined we were still in the flower of our youth, for neither of us could imagine turning down the opportunity to spend that night in an unheated tent in February. Our whole travel day reoriented as we targeted the campground as the end of that day's trail. We spent the rest of the day Finding the most remarkable things. Or, maybe those things just found us without us seeking anything.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #iAlogue , #PureSchmaltz