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There are a few things in this world one needs to just make peace with. No matter how hard you try to prevent it, your heart will get broken. You need to pay taxes. People can be unkind. Everything gets old or dirty. And I get speeding tickets.

Saturday ushered in a beautiful spring morning in a town which had been leaping between snow and sun for the past two weeks. I was excited for the day off. There were a plethora of things I wanted to get done including resting. Yes, sometimes it’s necessary for me to schedule in resting.

I attended a street sale. I went running and since I was a slave to my iPod play list, I overdid it complete with coughing all day from breaking up winter’s residue at the bottom of my lungs. I sat outside with a friend. I sat outside by myself. I absorbed the happiness and the vitamin D carried by the sun.

Then I went to my brother’s house to babysit. Or rather, I made the decision to drive 37 mph in a 25. I think I noticed him as soon as I passed him and not a second before. Then I saw them. My favorite colors. The flashing blue and red. Though I prefer my favorite colors in tee shirts and blankets.

True to my established history, I signed the citation and headed on my way. I don’t know what it is about me that screams, “I’m a competent, working citizen. Please, whatever you do, don’t let me off with just a warning.” Every time I’ve been pulled over, I’ve been cited.

Still I’ve made my peace with it. My sister and I agree it’s just the price you endure when you decide to live your life speeding. So my budget incorporates about two speeding tickets a year.

Imagine my surprise on Monday evening as I journeyed home from the same brother’s house, this time on the freeway, when my favorite colors, not in hair ties or shoes, burst into my rearview mirror once more. My usual nonchalance towards these situations was this time exchanged for anger.

I didn’t expect anything less than a citation from this one. The officer pretty much summed up my thoughts upon his return when he mentioned my previous infraction of a few days earlier. “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where do I sign?” Rhetorical question. I know exactly where I sign.

“Be careful. They come in threes when it happens like this, “ my ‘all but’ brother told me on the phone. I was officially concerned about my record and insurance premiums. He assured me I’d be fine. He comforted me by means of comparison. “I get like 5 speeding tickets a year. One time I got four speeding tickets in one drive from L.A. to Idaho. I displayed the previous three tickets on the dash as trophies for the final cop. Then I called him jockey pants like three times to his face.” I laughed. I’d make it through these two alright.

Until today.

When true to the fates, I walked out to my car at lunch and discovered it wasn’t parked where I left it. My usual nonchalance towards these situations was this time exchanged for fury. I was livid.

A phone call, a lift from a friend to the tow company‘s impound lot, $150 later, and with a few hours under my belt, I’m mildly amused. This is definitely a sign of my increasing maturity (fine… decreasing theatrics).

The week has brought about quite of bit of emotion, surprisingly, aside from the tickets. Yet I’m still shocked at my reaction to it all. I find myself in this dreamlike optimism. There is this hope smoldering inside me ready to burst into flame. And I can’t help but think of what one of my executives in Texas said to me last week.

While in a discussion about the purpose and meaning of life, as discussed by two business women in the middle of the work week, she said to me as forthright and candid as anyone has ever said to me, “you still have many places to travel and many lovers to have.”

I felt the truthfulness of it surge through my being and reignite a fountain of hopefulness in me. And that is why, I’m not going to sweat the fact that at least all forty hours I have worked this week have just been spent on traffic infractions.

Next Chapter Please

A little over two years and two weeks ago, I stood in one of my favorite places in the world, trying to make sense of the emotions I was feeling.

It was an uncharacteristically warm, sunny, March Monday in Pennsylvania. I was supposed to have been on my way to Utah and should have been at least in Indiana. My car had other plans. Subsequent to having dumped a grand into it the week before, Sunday brought me the devastation of a glowing orange “check engine” light.

With tears in my eyes, I dropped her off again at the mechanic’s. Then after sulking for most of the day and in an effort to take my mind off of the fiasco, my mother took me out to dinner. Upon completion, we drove to my PA mecca of peace. The Gettysburg Battlefield.

As we parked behind the Pennsylvania Monument, twilight was unfurling one of its greatest miracles on us. A thoroughfare of freedom beat… across the wilderness!*

I stood on the granite structure and although the anxiety was literally nauseating me, I was eager for the change. Both of my friends, melancholy and excitement, had shown up to support me in another transition.

Last night as twilight approached, my companions dropped by once again. In front of a fully opened window, I stood in the kitchen of my third floor apartment, watching the passing cars, and breathed in the last two years.

If I had to name a best friend of this chapter in my development, my apartment would be it. I have come to love this place and everything it stands for.

It’s my dumpy, no dishwasher, one wall is cinder block, have to drag my laundry to a laundromat, haul all of my groceries up three floors apartment.

Two years I’ve been living there. Seven months on my own now. And my best friend indicates to me everyday how blessed I am. EVERY DAY.

I’m reminded how I have a job good enough to afford living on my own. I remember how nice it is to clean and have it remain clean until I dirty it again. Showers are no longer a must especially after a tough long day… when a bath is calling your name.

I wake up when I’m finished sleeping on Saturday mornings. Not when my roommates start making too much noise. It's my refuge. It's my freedom. It's my independence.

And the view… three floors of lugging, heaving, yanking, and towing… but the view of the valley.

In the winter while the snow falls, the blanketed world seems peaceful. In the Fall and Spring when it’s midnight and raining, the traffic lights turn the roads and my living room into a hypnotic show of green, yellow, and red. Green. Yellow. Red.

And my personal favorite. In the summer at dusk, the sun reflects off the buildings’ windows and blazes as a fierce flaming gold fire.

I have laughed there. I have cried there. I have loved there.

Last night, I could have been on a granite monument in Pennsylvania as I gazed out my kitchen window with melancholy and excitement.

Two weeks will bring me to a new house, 3 roommates, and a significantly decreased rent (allowing me to travel more.)

I became an “adult” in college. I matured in this apartment. And I will miss my best friend.

*America the Beautiful

Both the Raw and the Worn

I was in 6th grade when I was first introduced to the Robert Frost poem “the Road Not Taken.” I read it, listened to my teacher pontificate on it, caught the big picture idea of the “less traveled road”, then stashed it away in my mind with many things of my youthful ignorance.

I’ve only in maturity realized many writers write on many levels. Thus is the craft of a wordsmith. To portray something so strongly revealing of the present, with a silent subtle nod to the past, and either an optimistic tribute or a pessimistic sneer of the future.

Because of an experience, the poem reared once more in my mind this past weekend. I was left to commence an investigation of what truly motivated Frost to put pen to paper.

I’ve known for sometime now I managed to get myself on a road less traveled. However, what I newly noticed this weekend was my strong affinity towards others who have done the same.

Was this the first fork Frost ever encountered? I daresay not, so what made this fork different? Was it the actual path? Did he travel heretofore with a companion and was this fork only now noticed because of his separation from the companion?

It can be a lonesome journey, the less traveled road. The encounters are wild and there are times you wish you had anyone to witness the GRANDness of the experience with you.

Still, I feel somehow the universe does not gift such experiences to a generic audience but merely an individual whose mind is most receptive and open to an out of the box occurrence.

There are many days when I wouldn’t trade my life with anyone in the world.

Subsequently, there are days when I would trade my life with anyone in the world. This past weekend was NOT such a day. It was filled with some fear, modest rejection, and ended with unfeigned emptiness. Yet I celebrate the experience.

Because two less traveled roads, by two more unique travelers, merged for a meeting in time on a sofa on the front porch late on a Friday night.

It follows that I’ve had hugs where another’s body or skin pressed against mine… but a hug where another’s soul pressed against mine is something I’m not gifted enough to recount.

I felt the world silence. I felt total stillness. I felt a swelling heat permeate my essence. Then a juxtaposition of intense passion and peace in chorus.

And the bitterest sweet element is trying to discern if I, alone, was the only one feeling it. Still I suppose I wouldn’t be on the less traveled road if the other shared it with me. The universe designed these moments in solitude for the visionary. Those willing to journey a road less traveled.

Finally, my favorite question, might the two paths, both the raw and the worn, meet once more on the road Frost takes so much time to describe? Even now, I am smiling.

I shall be telling this with a sigh…
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.