I am safely ensconced at the homestead in Albuquerque after arriving here late Tuesday. I have very mixed feelings about most everything, but it’s good to see the fam and their cat and get green chile and I’ve been able to walk a fair bit. Also reading quite a lot, which is probably about the most inspiring thing I do these days (when I’m not with the debate team, at least). Right now wading through the interminable frustration that is Tom Robbins, who weaves between brilliantly insightful and heavy-handedly immoral. It’s basically like reading a book co-authored by Gandhi and Ayn Rand.

I’m debating about whether to tag posts from Nuevo with a “From the Road” or not. I don’t think I traditionally do and I’m not really feeling like checking. In no small part because I’m writing this on my Dad’s Mac and Macs don’t have a right-click and that’s the function I’d normally use to check something like that. Otherwise I’d have to open a whole new window manually, which doesn’t sound like much, but you probably don’t know how existentially exhausted I’ve been feeling lately. It’s more the Mac than the exhaustion that accounts for the lack of Duck and Cover lately, but that ought soon be rectified since I finally found a viable free FTP program for the Mac. And I’m going to revert to handwritten dialogue, but would you rather have that or no Duck and Cover at all for a month? I’m sure your answers will vary.

I am at sea emotionally and mentally about most everything. I am torn between throwing myself into distracting projects like those vaguely intimated before I left Jersey and just committing myself to doing absolutely nothing for the time that I’m here. I am torn between trying to aggressively stretch myself out on the walking front and just taking it easy and using the confluence of relaxation and good food to put on a few pounds. I am continually overwhelmed by the magnitude of how different it feels to be back here in my new life circumstances. I was expecting it to feel restorative and resetting, but somehow it mostly feels anachronistic. Like I’ve calibrated a time machine very improperly and the rules of physics are battling it out for dominion over my fate. I could end up half-fused with an insect or wearing the billowy clothes of sixteenth century France. Most likely, I’ll just wind up confused.

It was snowing when I trundled down to the New Brunswick train station two days ago, towing identically colored turquoise luggage behind me, the larger ‘case with a busted wheel that I keep remembering to try to tear apart to minimize the degree of difficulty of its carriage. Nuevo seems in the midst of unseasonable warmth, the mercury transcending 60 today and reminding me of Balloon Fiesta falls. Maybe it’s just making its best sales pitch for me to move here a few months hence, though it should know that matching New Brunswick snowflake for snowflake would truly be its optimal effort. Maybe later. There’s plenty of time.

For the first time I’ve been in Albuquerque since the summer I wrote Loosely Based, I’ve got time. Lots and lots of time. There is no rush to decide anything, to do anything. Just to watch, listen, slow down. And spend time. I have a feeling I might not be any closer to any decisions on the other side of New Year’s. But for now, I can’t think about that. I can barely think about tomorrow.