it's like riding a bike. i think.

i missed my flight, which really did me no favors except for squeezing an extra five hours out of this west coast experience which i will fondly refer to as "Two Weeks of Living Amongst The Grapes." 

someone should write a book and title it that.

maybe that someone should be me.

upon realizing i would be spending an additional unwelcomed five hours in an airport, which by all accounts is my idea of a waking nightmare, i figured i had about three or four different ways of occupying suspended time. i don't fare well when being asked forced to sit still for extended periods of time confined to uncomfortable furniture and recycled air conditioning hovering somewhere around 57 degrees.

this is probably why i don't work in a bank.

but alas, i could:
(a) find a bar and get bombed. meh.
(b) walk around and buy things i don't need. also meh.
(c) pick a fight with TSA for trying to confiscate the shell casing from my grandfather's funeral. super meh. i'm trying to get home, not in lockup.
(d) write.

so here me is.

i haven't been here in a bit. and by a bit, i mean five years. and while i find it painfully familiar, i'm also not entirely sure i know how to do this anymore. or maybe it's a bike-riding situation and i just need to find the pedals again. my legs are longer than they were the last time i was here, so it's quite possible that i just need to adjust the seat a bit.

i had all but forgotten about this space entirely until a few months ago. i met a man in the middle of america, by happenstance completely. about a billion things had to cosmically align for us to end up in the same room, at the same time, but cosmic shit is bigger than me and i don't really try and fully understand it. because as soon as you think you've figured it out, the sun shifts. the stars do their cosmic thing. God says hello. and then you're just back to putting one foot in front of the other while systematically reducing your intelligence level to "1+1=2 and that's all i know right now."

so i try and let happenstance remain happenstance. and pray that the yellow brick road will be kinder and a little less winding this time around.

anyway. it was that man in the middle of america who somehow found this place, liked me enough to read more than i'm certain he found amusing, and suggested i maybe revisit it again now.

so here is me.

i spent the last two weeks of my life looking at this every single day.

every. single. day.

i also spent the last two weeks craving a conversation with someone who disbelieves in a god, or God, or something bigger than us, and asking them, "but, really?"

there's this long road that weaves through the napa valley called "Big Ranch Road." i put almost a thousand miles on a rental car during those two weeks. up and down Big Ranch Road. most of my mornings were met with sights of hot air balloons which filled the sky in a way that flies fill a vineyard in harvest season.

this is harvest season.

flies are a plenty.

the flies like the sweetness of the grapes, and i'm on board with that. the flies like things which are sweet, and i like things which are sweet. we all should. so let's align ourselves with the flies and be less consumed with the over-annoyance of their swarming all around, and realize that we are like-minded in the simple fact that: sweet things are nice.

the hot-air balloons helped me remember why we're all here. we all just want to see this world from a vantage point that is greater than us. we all want to be a part of something amazing.

if i make it back to Big Ranch Road again in my little lifetime, i will consider myself a lucky girl.

i laughed there. in abundance. i cried there. with my heart in my hands.

i lived there.

for two irreplaceable weeks.