Road Trip 2024: Settled

We've been doing these road trips with my brother Michael for four years now, long enough to become pros at it. We're comfortable enough with each other to share hotel rooms. We're also cheap, but hey, it lets us spend more time on the road. 

Some routines have been established. For example, I like to turn the TV in the room to what Michael calls "The Murder Channel," looking for shows like Forensic Files or one of the many incarnations of Law and Order. Ernie likes to surf social media on his phone, and Michael prowls news sites on his iPad. Since his iPad is right there under his fingertips, he also does some writing. A few days into our roadtrip, he came up with this:

Settled

Settled, like sand
Fluid, like water
I know my spirit’s yearnings
I cannot account for others

I watch the sunset
I listen to the trees in the wind
They speak a language for which
There are no known words

Let no one tell me
My purpose here on earth
Let them speak for themselves
If it matters so much

I prefer to watch
And absorb
And wonder
So let me be slow with answers

My time here is limited
So let me be blessed 
With the gift of reflection
And throw in some kindness

If I should see good in myself
Spare me the self-righteousness
Give me the simple ability

To see it in others 

Em, Ernie, and Michael: Road Trip 2024

We're on our yearly road trip again, but I have yet to write about the last one we did. As usual, Michael is way ahead of me on this, so I'm going to let him start off  the vacation chronicles (generous-if-lazy creature that I am). So let's kick off the vacation report from Michael's POV:

Monday a.m.
September 16
Arroyo Grande

We’re at it again. Emily, Ernie and me. It’s day two of the annual trek, a gift trip whose existence must be attributed largely to Covid 19 (albeit the 2020 version) and our late mom, Margaret. Who would have expected them to pair up in such a positive and enduring manner? As she might have quipped, “Who’d a thunk it?”

It’s easy to describe the elderly folk in their final years as “declining” if one adopts a comparative view of life’s continuum. After all, many things simply don’t function as they used to - notably, the mind. Bodies wear down too. Mom was no exception in the fall of that year. I came to view her as a person who was winding down and balancing her biographic accounts in the months leading to her departure. Did she have odd visions of matters not discernibly connected to reality? Of course. Did we any less enjoy talking to or spending time with her? Not at all. Neither in the spirit of pity nor strictly as a matter of compassion. For even in that twilight time of her life she was giving us things no one else had to offer - a deepening view of ourselves from a family perspective - an appreciation.

On the Northwest trip in the fall of that year, during the time of the election I spoke with her quite often - usually in the evening - about our collective journey, hers and mine. I was careful not to offer condescending thanks for all the good things she had done for me. That would have put her off and I knew it. Rather, I mostly asked her to fill in gaps in the family history to which I was not privy, particularly involving her father who had been so important in my life after my own father died when I was quite young. I learned much from our chats. She was capable of remaining mentally crisp for about an hour on those occasions, which fact alone seemed to mean a great deal to her. This I know. They were some of the best moments I ever shared with her.

So here we are in Arroyo Grande. We traveled to Santa Barbara from Arizona yesterday and had lunch with sister Carol, then on to here for the night. We’re headed to the Pinnacles National Park, northeast of Soledad, California. Emily, a serious and trained geology enthusiast, will explain in some detail to me just what I am looking at and I will lose track of this information somewhere along the line. Now if we were talking about wood…………Tonight we’ll stay in Monterey and continue north tomorrow.

So, back to mom and Covid. During the summer of 2020, Em and Ern were preparing to take mom on their annual trip into New Mexico. Art shows, where I exhibit my work, were all closed due to Covid restrictions, and I was known to be available to travel with them. I did. We were sitting in our room at the Thunderbird Motel in Taos one morning when I asked Em and Ern, who had just entered, if they had ever traveled to the Pacific Northwest. Before they could even answer mom blurted out, “When are we going?” None of them had. Off we went in late October and the rest is history. The trips with mom and the presence of Covid had brought us together. The annual trip is now a tradition we cannot miss.

The travel plan is never much more than a sketch, subject to diversions and distractions but always pregnant with experience. We’ll see how this one evolves. We do have a list. We’ll try to do it justice.

Ernie's Take on the Pandemic Road Trip, Parts One and Two

Ernie had his own take on our West Coast Road Trip, as well as his own photos, sketches, and notes, and you'll find his account is way more concise than mine was. I offer it here as a different perspective (though we were riding together in the same back seat).

Ernie's Take, Part One

Ernie's Take Part Two 

Ernie's Robot

My husband makes up really great titles for things. If you were looking at a display of his art in a museum, you would have as much fun reading the titles as you would have looking at the actual art. But unfortunately for Ernie, he's married to me – and I like to make up my own titles for his work.

Take Ernie's Robot. I found him lurking in a forgotten portfolio. I like him so much, he sits in a prominent spot in the room where we spend most of our time. I see him every day when I wake up and every night before I go to sleep. He is there while I'm watching movies, while I'm working on our big desktop computer, while I'm folding laundry and putting it away. I meditate or vegetate under his glowing gaze; he watches me do my homework. He has witnessed hundreds of phone conversations, but he never repeats anything he's heard.

The Sphinx Lady presides over my science and travel library. She is so gorgeous, she would probably sell pretty quickly in an art show. But I suspect many who admire her obvious attributes do not suspect the appetites that are the flip side of her sublime expression.

Skeleton Guy is an illustration for an article Ernie did for a gaming magazine, DIFFERENT WORLDS, about precolumbian monsters and spirits. If you see him, you have to be courageous enough to grab his exposed, beating heart, or the sight of him will drive you mad. I always thought he would make a great Halloween card.

We weren't careful enough when we stored The Jaguar's Wife and something stained her face. But I rather like it – she looks as if she just got done eating a chocolate ice cream cone. After all, it's not easy to hold onto a cone with your paws.

Ernie named this picture Cease And Desist – I call it Zeppelin Woman. I love the little chubby spot around her navel. I have no doubt she'll fight off the bad guys.

Here are some details from The Novel, a piece that I hope to have mounted and framed some day.


You can read it from either direction. Ernie did it on a whim, with some leftover particle board.

It has suffered some damage over the years, but I love it anyway.

The Crocodilian is still loaded with personality, even though he's dead. He's from one of Ernie's on-the-run sketchbooks. Ernie has kept several over the years, drawing in them with crayon and/or grease pencil. Happily, he has begun to scan some of this stuff into our computer, where he can work on it with the GIMP program. These sketches are some of his best work.

I have appropriated many drawings by Ernie to illustrate my blog – it's one of the perks of being married to an artist. Fortunately for me, Ernie is a kind man, gifted with infinite patience. We have even begun to do some art together, using my photographs and his skill with GIMP. Together, we designed the cover for my book, Broken Time.

We'll be doing more of this in the future, so . . .

… watch this space!

The Publishing Singularity

Here's a link to Ernie's new blog posting about his experiences with the new, self-driven universe of publishing. This singularity is sucking people in from all over the globe (and beyond? ; ). Yesterday I was standing and talking with my mentor at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix (I'm in the docent program). She asked me what else I do besides school/day job/docenting), and I told her about my publishing history. When I mentioned online publishing with Smashwords, she said her husband wants to publish with them too, and that he had taken writer seminars with Mike Stackpole.

Small world! So here's what Ernie has to say about it . . .

Chicanonautica: The Virgin of Guadalupe, UFOs, and Other Strange Lights in the Sky

Here's a link to Ernie's latest post on La Bloga . . .

THE PICKUP PICK-UP / MYSTERY MISSILE ROAD TRIP

Check out my husband's new blog on mondoernesto.com – I helped drive . . .