Phoenix

Yesterday, Kyle; Jami; and I drove to Cortez and today we drove to Phoenix. I really like this part of the country. The drive around Telluride is always fun. Camp memories. The drive outside of Cortez for the first few hours was amazing. We drove through the Navajo Nation. I remember it strongly affecting me a few years ago when Kyle and I made the drive down to Southern CA for another wedding. I think I remember watching the sunrise or set and it was a borderline religious moment. Very similar experience today except for drawn over a bit of a longer time. And I wasn't driving today so I really got to sit back and absorb more than I otherwise would. Eventually we got to Flagstaff and it got a lot less flat and a lot more trees started popping up. By the time we got to Phoenix it was all over. It's been so disheartening and exhausting being in this city. All it is is boxstores, chain resturaunts, and plastic people. I don't know how to explain it except for that leaving the emptiness and entering the city I became very angry. Or dissappointed. Dissapointed that this is what progress apparently is. This is not progress. We've traded in our souls and connection with each other and I suppose to some extent the land and air and such for our own mini-gods. And they're not even cool gods. Boxstores, chain resturaunts, and ticky-tacky houses. This is not progress.

Needless to say I've felt better. But I'm beginning to feel better. Jami and Kyle are in the other room watching TV (our hotel room is pretty bad ass -- a sleeping room and a living room / kitchen). It's the first time I've really been able to be alone on this trip. People, even the best of them, are exhausting.

So, tomorrow's the wedding (my cousin's -- did I mention that?) and the next day we head back. I think we'll probably go home in one shot, going around Cortez. Oh, and Mom's back in Junction and Dad's cancer is suffocating everyone. His shit is beginning to fill the house and has already taken over a big chunk of the yard. Bandit can't even really walk around anymore b/c of it. I know that this is very likely the last time that I'll live in this house. Which is okay. It means, though, that I need to go through all of my stuff in my closets and really decide what's important b/c I can't keep anything in that house after this move. I'll never get it out again and I can't drag it all over wherever I end up with me.

I may try to make a trip up to Fort Collins shortly after getting back from this trip. A friend up there is really hurting and I feel strongly compelled to spend an afternoon with her.

This Morning

Every morning when I go outside to start my car, my dog's sleeping right there outside the door and about 5 or so cats are hanging around the door.  They're always really noisy and they like to follow me to my car and back telling me, the whole time, how they're hungry.  One of these cats (a quieter one that typically avoids the comosion and hides back under the truck and lets the other cats tell me what's going on) was pregnant earlier and had recently given birth to her kittens but I haven't seen them.  My dad says he hears them in such and such a spot every now and then.  Anyway, this morning there was a little tiny kitten (like maybe 4 or 6 inches long) lying dead on the blanket that Bandit usually sleeps on.  So, that was about the first thing I saw this morning.  I stood there for several moments looking at it and then I noticed that none of the cats were really talking to me. They were all kind of just standing and sitting around looking at me or the kitten.  They were all quiet.  It was kind of surreal.  Then my dad picked up the kitten and put him in the trashcan.