Who Still Blogs Anyway?
The first 10 notes of Beethoven’s Fur Elise rang from my phone notifying me that I had received a text message. I unlocked the iPhone that had been decorated with a brand new navy blue and rose-gold case and read the message to myself.
“Jas!” I could feel the shock and excitement emanating out from behind the words that I was reading. “Catching up on some of your blog posts and ‘A Collection of Memories’ had completely inspired and touched me!”
I don’t think that I was able to wrap my head around what she was trying to tell me. Clearly my friend wasn’t referring to any of the posts on my blog. However, I responded with appreciation for the kind words. (more…)
A Collection of Memories
The first family road trip, that I can remember, happened sometime around the age of eight or nine. I was handed a Kodak disposable camera and carefully tried to ration the allotted photos that could be taken on the wind-up-operating device. However, because I was only eight and had no experience with cameras and didn’t feel like using the view finder, I quickly went through the film reel by taking terrible pictures with thumbs partial blocking blurred views of ordinary trees from the inside of a moving car. (more…)
The Los Angeles of Old and New
La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, CA
The four of us stared down at the black sludge bubbling up from the short blades of green grass that had been blocked off with black iron gates. A small gust of wind had picked up a smell, of what seemed like burned tire rubber, and found its way into our nostrils. I instinctively moved my feet around a bit as if to sidestep the process that was taking hold underneath my boots.
“This all seems very unsafe,” I said as I continued to look down at the ground that was pushing up this dark liquid from decades passed. The ground at La Brea Tar Pits looked like some sort of horror scene nestled between the picturesque LACMA and LA Brea Tar Pits museums. (more…)
Across State Lines
I glanced over at the odometer and watched the digitally scribed numbers on my dash grow as I crept forward through the California desert. Death Valley’s hot breath blew past my windshield and into the open windows of my mid-sized vehicle as my tires continued to spin over dusty asphalt roads that were beginning to sizzle in the late spring heat.
The car full of people that I was towing were all headed over the first of three state lines that I would end up crossing within a month’s time frame, and with every border I crossed, and every mile that I traveled, I could only hope for more to come. (more…)
After The Thirteenth Mile
Rubber soles pounded the warm asphalt creating a steady, but rhythmic, slow-tempo drum beat. They had carried my legs with ease for nine miles on the winding streets of Eugene, Oregon before I felt the slowly creeping soreness of a run that was lasting too damn long spread through my overworked leg muscles. I did my best to breathe in the cool and refreshing air that had been warmed a little more by the bright sun since the start of the race over an hour before. I had enjoyed the run, glancing over at the tall green trees that proudly stood as they decorated the Northwestern track town, for two more miles before thoughts of confusion snuck into my mind.
Why the heck did we pay to do this to ourselves? I thought as I continued to place one increasingly heavy foot in front of the other. Everyone here is absolutely nuts.
