The Narrative Breaks Down

After being home for exactly a week, we were leaving again. Friday we had swim class for the Boy, then finishing packing, cleaning out the fridge and getting the cat's zone prepped, making dinner and leaving. That was the plan.

It all went off without a hitch, except that I went swimming with Cass with my phone in the pocket of my board shorts and didn't notice until I got out after a half an hour. Whoops.

Maybe I didn't use enough rice, or wait enough hours, but it was lost.

That's been both a blessing and an annoyance. Being disconnected has been pretty sweet, but not being able to easily take pictures or look things up has been lame. I'm also a bit of an inveterate Simpsons Tapped Out junkie, but having finished their latest mini update with a week to spare gave me confidence that by the time we got new phones (Corrie's phone has needed to be replaced for far longer than mine, just not fully incapacitated), I wouldn't have missed too much.

I'd wanted to put pictures into these pieces about going to the Cabin, but I may not get to it: I'd have to fish through Corrie's massive collection of huge files from her Nikon dSLR, and I don't have the energy right now.

I have other things I need to to be working on, so these may be few.

The trip to New York was something planned for a while and spoken about with many people in my life who are not related to me. The trip to Sacramento and the Cabin was for me, for Cass and Corrie; it was time spent with loved ones and trying to share/create the feelings and memories that I had as a boy like the one we just created.

Without a phone to document certain things, and with the desire to create memories for a thirteen-month old (which is more about smells, sounds, and feelings than concrete experiences) more than to exploit an adventure for literary creation's sake, the narrative of this adventure has broken down in my memory.

Why a quick trip to Alameda seems more vivid and fresh in the memory banks than five days spent in the vicinity to Mt. Lassen, the Cascade's southernmost volcano, is beyond me. Must be a trick of proximity and novelty versus familiarity and nostalgia.

We got the Decemberween picture taken for my mom; saw Jules's new place in the mountains; watched the bats emerge at dusk; introduced the Boy to the Cabin; taught him how to feed Charlie; took him to Mill Creek, then Lassen Volcanic Park, then the Mill Creek Falls hike; got to introduce him to his Great-great-auntie Erm and GG-Uncle Rich; learned about and stayed on Alameda; and then drove the whole way back, because it had just been too long.

Seeing Uncle Dan and Tia 'Pita is awesome and too short, as usual.

Getting to see Grandma Kate thrice in a month's time was very cool.

Hanging out with Uncle Norm and Auntie Holly and their boys, Norman and Simon, expanding Cass's world with cousins, that's what it's all about.

So later on today, maybe tomorrow, I might get some more details up here with pictures, but I'm not sure. This trip has germinated a seed of thoughts in my imagination that's spreading in two directions, maybe even three.

I picked up a book at the Cabin that's written in a style like mine, Shelley Jackson's Half Life; I picked up Islands in the Stream, Hemingway's posthumous novel, from an indie bookstore in Alameda; and I had an epiphany about travelling, its effect on humanity, and how it all could be tied together with anecdotal philosophy (what I call whatever this is---"literary blogging"). Part of me wants to work on this "treatise" and part wants to return to my novel.

Part of me is laughing and yelling at the rest to get ready for work to resume, to be really well prepared. And then I remember that a union conference is this weekend in DTLA and runs late each day.

The fun never ends, the adventure goes on unabated, and the only time I can get over here is when a nap is on or sleep is happening.

I would never change it, of course.