Lately I’ve embraced letting loose with a really robust “Ahhhhh” after every sip of water. It’s a smoke em if you got em mentality as the human experiment winds down.
In the meantime, life still manages to inhabit.
Some personal news that I’ve been avoiding talking about here: been in CT allllmost every weekend since March due to [ONGOING SITUATION]. On the plus side I have a new favorite rest stop along the way. It is located across the highway from my old favorite rest stop. The new favorite has cleaner bathrooms and better candy, but a much less creepy gift section. So it certainly wasn’t an easy decision, if that’s what you’re thinking.
Another thing I have discovered on my many trips back and forth from CT: a town, that as far as I can tell, is just a mountain covered in different strip malls.
After the exit you drive up a bit and there’s a strip mall (this one has an Orangetheory), and then you go up a little higher and there’s a different strip mall (this one has a Red Robin), and then at the top there’s an even bigger strip mall with a Target. At one point on one of my hikes, I was in the parking lot of one strip mall and looked out across a deep crevasse at yet another strip mall and thought: there is no possible way to get over there. It was like those pictures of ancient monasteries built into impossibly sheer rock cliffs. The chances of your arrival are a test of your faith. That one had a 110 Grill, about which I’ve heard the banality of its menu is more than made up for by its allergen-friendliness.
It’s good the way life says You’ll now be driving to CT every weekend. And also How about a little war to raise your gas prices. Things just have a way of working out that way. They say God/the universe doesn’t give with both hands. What this adage presupposes is: binaries; hands; giving.
I think about how as recently as a few years ago we were all desperately striving to be exemplars of the live mas mentality. Now we’d give anything to live menos.