May 27th.

I am sitting outside my hotel room in Scottsdale. It’s pitch black and not even nine o’clock yet. But the weather is incredible. The air is thicker than at home but it was ninety degrees today so I guess that makes sense that that blanket would linger past dark. It’s the perfect temperature to sit outside in shorts and a t-shirt and forget that temperature even exists. I’m sitting here drinking tea and writing and it feels like something that I would try and set up at a different time but not be into the tea or the writing or the sitting. The fact that I can just be here right now is so good to me. And those are the times that I really feel life is all about. For as much as I plan what I really want are these times where its all right in front of you. Everything is satisfying. Like right now I really like the way it feels to type. Somehow that’s enough. I like the sound of the crickets and their different volumes. I like the really quiet country song coming out of my computer. I like this luke warm tea and how easy it is to drink. I like how tired I am right now and knowing that I am going to bed in just a few minutes. I know it’s not possible to maintain this immersion but I am thankful for the times I get it. Every corner of life has texture and some strange velocity that you hadn’t noticed before. It’s winter drapes and crushed ice and butterscotch pudding. I just wish I could see that more than I do. But, then I’ll try to make a point to ‘be in the moment’ and that’s just super douchy to do that. Next think you know you’re slacklining between trees at Green Lake and then running into the lake with all your clothes on, or maybe you’re totally naked. Because everything needs to be an Experience. Stupid. Everything is an experience. It’s just that a lot of the time we’re so worried about what’s on the horizon we forget to look at our feet and see that we’re somewhere beautiful or terrifying or somber. And we lose our ability to know up from down. I think that’s one of my biggest fears in life. I don’t want to be walled off from what’s happening. I think I’ve done that a considerable amount in my quarter century. I can really focus on what needs to happen in two hours or tomorrow or next month or ten years from now. Every once in a while I give myself a swift kick and realize it’s crazy to treat time like an octopus because you are not in control of those arms and there are way more than eight. Our neighborhood paper always did a section on graduating seniors, with a short profile on each one. It asked where you saw yourself in five years. In a rare moment of no foresight I said that five years ago I was 12 and I never would have expected to be where I was at 17. So I had no idea. And at 23 I was that different person my 17 year-old self wouldn’t recognize. So, why force it? I mean, I ask this question to myself. I am the biggest culprit out there.

I do have to get to sleep. My thoughts are definitely getting sandy. But, I am thankful for this Arizona night. There’s a note on my balcony door reminding me to close it so the dessert creatures don’t help themselves to my complimentary toiletries and take up residence in the second (yes there are two) bed in the room. But, I’m thinking the sound of crickets is not something I want to keep out. And, so what if I wake up with a lizard on my chest? The don’t have teeth. Do they?