Just some thoughts
I just returned from four days of a very intense union General Council session in Anaheim. As the old saying goes, "it was the best of times and it was the worst of times." Our division of the union voted to incorporate (very good) and Perry Kenny, a friend of mine, a good friend of our division of the union, a person I like, believe in and a long time leader of our organization, was kicked out of office (very bad.)
Yes, it was intense. It is hard to see someone you like, and a cause you believe in, be soundly defeated.
I drove to Anaheim and back for the meeting. I am glad I did because I needed the extra hours to think and ponder on the way home about the weekend and its events.
I like driving interstate five. After the eight years I lived in Patterson the valley has become a big part of me. Some folks see the valley as miles of nothing, for me it is almost a metaphor for the earth and life. In towns like Taft, Modesto and Patterson there are real communities that are communities in a sense you do not see in San Jose and the San Francisco bay area. In the bay area our cities blur together divided by artificial boundaries of map lines and signs. In the valley you do not need a sign to tell you where a town ends. In the valley, towns end.
As I drove I thought about how the long valley highways are like our lives. They stretching on straight and then offer unexpected turns. We think and do have a measure of control over our lives, we make choices and pretend to control our destiny. But, coincidence and fate does figure largely in our lives. Unexpected turns come out of nowhere!
I thought about seemingly minor choices (like getting on an elevator) I made in my life that altered its course completely and I thought about major life altering events that involved no choice, just bad or good luck or timing. Stuff just happens I guess.
Normally I listen to talk radio or news when I drive. This trip I listened to music. I listened to a lot of 60's and 70's music with its trippy style. I thought about how folks our age took drugs in their youth. I thought about how drugs are so unnecessary because life is the ultimate trip. I thought about how our lives are actually made up of periods of time of continuity separated by times of change where the rules change. I thought about how everybody's lives differ and about how we differ from ourselves at different points in our lives, yet we are also so very much the same also.
Remembering the mini-lives of my own. I thought about how my memories are like windows into these other lives and about how sometimes I seem to be taken by a memory or an event back into the life of the past. I pulled off the freeway and looked at the long line of trucks and cars coming and going away from me. I smelled the sage and gazed up at the stars and marveled about the wonder of it all.
1:01:08 PM 
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