About Me

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Paso Robles, California, United States
Novelist, poet, songwriter, and journalist, I bring over four decades of experience to the written page. I just finished Mental Hygiene, a coming of age novel set in Fort Jackson, SC circa 1967-68.

Monday, August 29, 2011

Into the New - Senior Gypsies

So we quit something.  Not sure what, because it's so large.  No house, no worldly goods, sans a 10X15 storage space, untethered from friends and family.  We gave up to our wanderlust.  Sold it all or gave it away or stored the rest.  (see song "LA Freeway" by Guy Clark).  We are not young and that suddenly makes no difference.  Because we could, we were off to live in the world.  If you stay in touch, you can go along.

In May we hit the road, going through Las Vegas (very surrealistic), Flagstaff (transient), Monument Valley (that's why the Native Americans hate us), Taos (oh, come on), and after stops to visit with friends, to Austin (doesn't deserve to be in Texas).  We lit out for the border, Loredo (my God!) and like a couple of fugitives, slipped across the Columbia Bridge like common wisdsom escaped from the principal's office.

Ten hours later we were singing along to ranchero music and entering the city limits of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, city of re-invented Americans, runaways, artists, writers, and the real or wanabe adrift.  Since arriving in July, I've witnessed the execution of a chicken, been matador to a very young bull (no horns), learned a lot about Sterling Dickinson (Google him, it's worth it), and reaffirmed the belief that the only person I could be doing this with is my wife Lynne (see www.homefreeadventures.blogspot.com).

Yesterday a friend asked us how we felt.  Both of us answered simultaneously, "Light."  That may make no sense to some of you..... but the ones that understand know just how happy we are.