I’ve woken up and it’s 2:23am.

That pisses me off.

Why not 2:22am?

Are they messing with me?

Showing me who’s boss?

If I remember right, 2:23am is the exact same time I woke up the first morning I set off on my first Camino.

Is that a coincidence?

What woke me was someone walking around outside my room.

Walking up to the door.

Standing there.

I could feel it. Feel the energy.

It was a presence.

And then they walked over to my car.

I’d locked the car. Taken everything out of it.

I’m not stupid.

Am I?

The trains with their mournful whistles are going nuts tonight.

Do more freight trains come into town because of Thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving is the day after tomorrow.

The people next door are muttering.

Even at this hour.

Don’t they sleep?

They might ask the same of me.

But at least I don’t mutter.

Last night I went to a smokehouse just down the road.

Texas beef.

Yes, I ate meat.

I must be a disappointment to you.

I am to me.

Sometimes.

More times than I’d like.

The meat made me feel slightly nauseous.

The cosmic rays in the morning will fix that.

I have people now who are trying to help me.

Do they pity me?

Or do they believe that with the help of the Beneficial Galactic Cosmic Rays, (which are their official title) I can truly manifest?

There’s a motel just up the road called The Galaxy Motel.

It looks nice.

More expensive, but nice.

How come an Indian motel owner is called Nick?

These are the great imponderables.

Note to myself: Take a photo of Nick, with his teeth.

The man who does housekeeping looks like he just got out of jail.

He’s large and he shuffles and he has long thin greasy hair and shifty eyes.

His teeth are worse than Nick’s.

I like him.

I made him smile.

I’d worked hard to make him smile, but I made him smile.

That’s how come I know how bad his teeth are.

The smile cracked his face.

It was apparent to me, at the exact moment of smiling, that he hand’t smiled in a while.

I felt proud of myself.

That I’d made him smile.

And then I felt disappointed, because I’d allowed in ego.

I try to keep ego out.

But with me, it’s hard.

You know what I mean.

The people next door are still muttering.

At least they’re not moving around the room.

Shaking my bed.

Every now and then I hear a sharp noise from their room –

Like they’ve put down something metallic on their bedside table.

A gun?

A knife?

A prosthetic?

Now I can hear one of them urinating.

I’m not kidding.

They obviously needed to go, because it’s lasting a long time.

Male? Female?

Prostate?

These are the great imponderables.

They’re still muttering.

Jennifer has better hearing than me. If she were awake now, she would tell me what they’re saying.

Jennifer has better everything than me.

My mother tells me at every opportunity that Jennifer is “a great asset” to me.

She has no idea how much that pisses me off.

I try not to take it personally, but I’m a deeply flawed individual.

More trains.

I can hear their engines too. The throbbing diesels.

And the mournful wails.

It’s beautiful.

I love this place.

Truly, I do.

Last night, before I went to sleep, I panicked.

I stepped back for a moment, and saw what I was doing in overview. Like I was standing on a high hill, looking down on myself, walking through a valley in shadow, full of swirling mist.

Lost – confused.

And I panicked.

What am I doing here?

Really, what am I doing here? 

Do I truly believe that something will come of this?

Or have I become so delusional that I can’t see clearly anymore…

I felt scared.

I felt scared to my bones.

And then I called in Trust.

And I felt okay again.

The terror – and it was terror – passed.

The mist in the valley cleared, and I could see my path ahead of me again.

It led out of the valley, out of the shadows.

Yesterday we walked into Starbucks. It was in downtown, in a little franchise store in the basement of an office block.

But there were windows on one side, and the morning light was streaming in.

There were three tables – one in shadow, one in partial sunlight, and one in full sunlight.

Jennifer wanted to sit at the table in the sunlight, but I wanted to sit in the shadow.

We sat in the shadow.

I chose the shadow because I know that Jennifer doesn’t like to sit in the sunlight.

But as I drank my Short Double Cappuccino Half Milk, it occurred to me that Jennifer had wanted to sit in the sunlight so that I could take in the Beneficial Galactic Cosmic Rays.

Even though she hated sitting in the sunlight.

She would have done that, for me.

And me, I chose the shadows because of her.

What does that say about our relationship?

There is someone walking outside in high heels.

It’s coming on 3am.

The woman, I assume it’s a woman, has gone to her car.

Didn’t she read the sign?

No trespassing
No loitering
No prostitution
No drug dealing
No weapons

The people next door have lifted their muttering to a chattering.

They must like each other, they talk so much.

Like me and Jen.

I love this place.

I just wish the lock on the door worked.

I will now try to go back to sleep.

Tomorrow – or at least today – is another big day in the beneficial cosmic rays.