Tongues of Fire

Day 2

Finally, a bit better today. Didn't get much rest last night but Morpheus did have his say and I managed about 5 hours of sleep until noon, with little interruption. I decided to do something which is not really in my nature and that is to try and take my mind off my troublings actively and not just bathe in my own sorrow, hoping some divine intervention or a hand would reach out and pull me out of my swamp. Around 1pm, I decided I wanted to go and visit the impact zone myself, and so did a quick Google map search to see whether any public transportation took you there fast enough to allow you to get back in time before the end of the day. It appears that 55 miles around these parts is not such an easy ride by bus as I would have thought. I would have to take a coach and then change for an Amtrak Train service to Lake Tahoe.

I found myself counting for every penny - public transportation is not cheap - but I should get my first paycheck real soon so I should be ok for the remainder of days until that happens. I also thought transportation on a Saturday should be smoother than the rest of week, when both visitors and commuters share the same services, but it looks like, on this particular Saturday, it was unusually more difficult. I missed the 14.04 and then the 14.54 because they were both full, but did eventually get a place on the 15.34, which was packed and which, for the first time, allowed passengers to stand in the aisle, which is against company regulations. We were also told the agency had supplied 5 more services for the day due to the high demand of passengers coming in and out of the Sacramento area, which is not far from Lake Tahoe. 'Traffic should be unusually busy', continued our mustached driver. And it was. It took us more than an hour to travel a 25-mile-distance. The two-laned road was packed on its right side with cars heading north, while the left lane only sporadically saw a couple of camping and police cars heading to the South, towards San Diego. It didn't take much to understand that these people were heading north for the same reason I was and, throughout the ride, all I could hear on the bus was the shockwave the meteor had sent through our community. Everyone, from the young to the old (I was seated behind a 90-year-old woman) had had their lives impacted by something they had only seen in movies or read in books.

I changed for the train service in due time. I, and 80 percent of the passengers on the bus. Only, this time, the ten-carriage train provided much more comfort and space than I'd had on the bus. The only thing that troubled me was that my phone battery had died on the road so was unable to either send or receive messages from Audrey. I will have to be totally honest and admit that this 'spur of the moment' I experienced this morning was not all of my own doing but that Audrey'd had a hand in it. I did manage to reach her in the end - she'd been awake all night and was happy to interact right away. We both talked about the asteroid - she had heard a loud bang, but then again she's much more sensitive to noise than I am- and eventually I toyed with the idea that we should both go and see the impact site. She apologized for not being able to come along as she urgently had to go with her dad to the doctor's for an unscheduled appointment, before eventually stopping at her grandfather's and helping out with the annual plowing. All these words - so new to my vocabulary( 'plowing'); it took me 35 years to eventually admit that the things which had fascinated me in my youth - like making money in the city, working as a District Attorney, or eventually lobbying with the big boys on the Wall Street - have now completely lost their meaning and importance. I'm slowly experiencing myself a call, coming from the gut, simmering rather than boiling. A call for a simple life - a life in the country, growing your own fruit and vegetables in the orchards, sleeping under the night skies with the loved one - a growing desire to build your own house with your own hands, in order to spend all this time caring and nurturing only what comes naturally from the soil.

I spent time thinking about all this while leaning my head against the carriage window and looking at the Californian landscape breezing in front of my eyes. I only see it now, after so many years - and as a native - for what it is: beautiful and mesmerizing, especially when the sunlight hides behind the faraway hills, bathing the oaks and pine-trees in the most incandescent green you will ever have the chance to see. I love traveling by train. The fast-moving pictures of trees, shrubs and sun-bathed hills manage somehow to pump up the blood in my veins, a reminder that life is active and a continuous ride to the finish line. It's as if life is meant to be lived only at high speed, because in 'General Relativity' fashion that's when time slows down and you can access the creative brain - that 90 percent of stuff which is dormant most of the time. I find myself buzzing with ideas for projects, or thinking I finally have the resources to complete my PH.D but, when the journey ends, somehow all this goes away or fizzles out and you spend the rest of the day trying to recapture that primal energy which goes beyond the palpable life and is connected to the Higher Conscience. It is the power of divine inspiration to strike only at high speeds, or when one is coerced into a life of unnecessary, prolonged agony, only to disappear once certain comforts and peace are attained.