15:14

Vacaville.

Typing on the floor, Nurse readying for her night with the girls.  All I can feel is gratitude and amazement in the realization that I have everything I need.  Mindful, moment I’m in, all of them… blazing in truth.

Stress, now, NONE.  I disallow its power and presence, any relevance or application.  Drive here listening to some new music – chill, electronica and trip-hop inference with a dominant echoing guitar.  Acoustic, electric, atmospheric.

Relaxing, no worries I thought.  Everything is right here, on this drive in the backcountry of Sonoma County, Cotati or Petaluma-ish.  The exact place wasn’t important.  Lowered the window, listened.

I’m finding peace, I thought.  Like I never felt in any other time in this writer’s Story.

It wasn’t a big revelation—no thunder, no spiritual lightning shape splitting my soul open. It was smaller, gentler, like the low-octave roll-hum of tires atop fractured asphalt, the smell of eucalyptus through the vents, sight of cows stepping lazily in tandem against a backdrop of dry hills.  Peace didn’t announce itself; it just arrived, settled about this writer like it had always belonged there.

My world, for once, wasn’t asking me for anything.  No deadlines, no performance, no proving myself useful.  Just the turning road, the measures of the new music I found, a crow circling over the fields now with their Autumn palette.  I could’ve just kept driving, there, forever, driving toward nothing in particular, a destination-less flight.

Okay, so maybe this is what it means to arrive.  Not at a town, not at a promotion or raise, but finally seeing yourself, that you already have EVERYTHING.