I turned 34 on friday. We went to the Grand Canyon and then our friends wedding in Tucson.
We stayed in Motel 6's and then rented a cool desert casita.
I had a head cold, the altitude descending from Flagstaff made it worse. I had toyed with the idea of dropping acid on my birthday but instead I was hocked up on Sudafed and cough drops.
I dragged around clogged ears, stuffed nose, a sore throat but eyes still wide and a heart still pried open in my chest for another year.
The sight of the Grand Canyon was too much to understand without interacting with it, which we didn't, we didn't hike to its bottom nor sleep on its cliffs, just drove obediently from lookout point to lookout point until the time zone changed but we felt little different.
But you can't talk shit about the Grand Canyon my girlfriend and I joked.
My girlfriend Siobhan she bought me pizza and two different slices of cake for my birthday dinner and was so gentle to me and my congested ass face the whole trip. My treasure. Our 2 year anniversary is in a few days and I've never been with someone so long. I've never loved so easily, and felt love in return the same.
4 days, 34 years of age, Motel 6, 2 years of continuous love. I love numbers and how they let us track the imperceptible, attempt to put order to an orderless time. Time is an insomnia in Williams, Arizona staring at my bright phone in the dark next to my dreaming lover while a stranger snores loudly through the thin walls of our motel room.
On my mom's 62nd birthday a few weeks ago I asked her what she thought it was all about, she said experiences, love and family, that there was no end goal, just to experience as much as we can. I am grateful to be alive. The night before we saw the canyon, my girlfriend and I hurried outside to take photos of ourselves in a flurry of Arizona mountain snow, like happy fools, returning red cheeked into a steak house where we ate a warm apple pie slice a la mode, and melted, everything melted - it wasn't the Sudafed nor the acid I never took, everything was just melting into itself rendering the world, love, illness, health all the same. Two days ago, three days, today, tomorrow, 15 years from now, time flies when you're having fun.
