I'm chafing in my life right now.  I need adventure and freedom and release from some of the responsibilities that feel like a heavy weight.

I want to learn to draw.  Gestures, shading, faces, bodies.  I'd love to know so much more about how to draw these. I'd love to know so much more about everything.  I know next to nothing.

I relish the exercise of just quietly seeing. I found an inexplicable list in my bag:

• leverage
• failing economy
• south pacific plan
• empty space
• ugly intersection
• drawing of a scrub jay
• a kiss

Where am I?  A longing for space and time.  I want to just sit and sit, read and write, smoke a cigar, watch the snow fall, clouds pass, deer nibble on the lower branches of the trees.

It begins to thaw my heart, this idea of getting away.  The renewal of possibility.  And I look at the date and realize it is the solstice, the rebirth of the sun.  Renewal of the seasons.  From here on out, more light, more day.

There's a glimmer in the air of possibility.  Everything seems possible right now.  Or almost possible.  Like the veil between what is and what could be is thinner, gauzier.

Or perhaps it seems like life is so absurd that any old absurd thing is full of possibility.  For instance, is it really all that crazy to rent out our house and go to Spain for a year?  Or to learn to draw?  Or to start a soul group?

The server at this cafe is charming.  She looks at me with so much sparkle, like she is secretly in love with me.  I never allow myself to believe such things.

Maybe I will go to Idaho.  My own private Idaho.  Where does that phrase come from?

I liked the contra dance last night.  It felt nice to have some attention from strangers.  I remember a dance with a woman named Natalie.  After the dance we were both flushed and breathing hard, looking at each other a little amazed.  I think I needed that.

Hop in a car, pick only blue roads, selecting at each intersection the road that takes you further from what is into what could be, stop at some nowhere little town and rent a cheap motel room.

Or motorcycle around, staying in hostels, drinking cheep wine with travelers and talking to retired ranchers in nearly empty bars?

Hop trains to wherever? Get on a greyhound to anywhere? Should I throw a dart at a map?  Flip a coin?  Roll dice?

I'm not sure it even matters.

I thought of going to Salmon, Idaho or Bandon, Oregon or San Diego.  Idaho was snowed in. And anything off the major routes were expensive via Greyhound.  San Diego was too I don't know.

When I'm traveling, I can just be.  The worries and concerns are immediate, real.  Hunger, thirst, desire, all now.

Traveling on Christmas eve.  So strange.  Such a relief.  Such a sense of unreality still.

Everyone on the bus is holiday antsy, up down up down.  Every stop trying to get off the bus to smoke, then chased back on by the driver.

Strangely, the Greyhound seats, so molded and plush and padded are remarkably uncomfortable.  A small ache between my shoulder blades.  I don't remember that.

Sitting here endlessly in a station in Sacramento.  No explanation.  No new schedule.  No anything really.  Just waiting.  There's no information about when and if we might depart, or why we haven't already.  Storm closed all the roads?  Cascadian independence movement cut off the border?  Classified alien activity site on Mt. Shasta?  My Sacramento friends are are out of state.

A combination of untruths and gentle pestering gets me on to a bus as far as Medford.  I promised the bus driver to have my friends in Medford pick me up.  I'd rather be stuck in Medford than Sacramento.  Plus when the road clears I can continue my journey.  What will I find in Medford?

I'm headed to Portland chosen more or less arbitrarily, seeded perhaps by my friend Bay there. Maybe I just wanted to see her all along.

A high school girl gets excited at the prospect of seeing snow for the first time.  Snow beings to appear alongside the road.  "Is it snowing?  Is it snowing?" she asks, craning her neck to see out the front window.  Her companion asks if she's ever seen Star Wars when the Millennium Falcon goes into hyperspace.  She hasn't.  Has she seen a computer screensaver with stars coming at you?  Yes, she's seen that.  "That's what it looks like when you are driving at night and it's snowing.  That's what it looks like," her companion explains.

When we stop, the snow is falling so thickly it looks like a sloppy special effect.  Less like falling flakes, than someone is disemboweling a couch from a high building.  There are white sheep in a white field covered in white snow.  They are nearly invisible.  Will their wool coats keep them warm enough?  I assume so.

The bus gets stuck at several stops, backing up, going forward, backing up, going forward.  The driver puts on chains over the high passes.

At Medford, we switch drivers.  My Medford-bound bus is going to try to shoot through to Portland.  Someone asks if we'll make it to Eugene.  Bus driver says "Gotta have a positive attitude." She asks again.  He says again, "You gotta have a positive attitude." And so we proceed down the road with a bus full of positive attitude.