Leaf journal, musical journeys

Often I stop and look at a beautiful leaf, and then I pick it up and put it in whatever book I have handy. So far I haven't arranged a good way to preserve them, but I keep some of them with me until they fall apart. Last fall I picked up a couple leaves from my running route. One was simply beautiful. Another was not exciting--small, oval, and speckly, with a story. I call it my interruption leaf, because I was walking with my roommate's mom, and we were praying together. In the middle of her prayer I stopped walked and backed up a few steps and said, "oh, that leaf looked metallic somehow, it was so beautiful!" We found the leaf and I realized it only looked metallic because of the lighting and the speckles. I felt very ashamed and wicked, so I kept the leaf as a reminder that I can't always "go ride bikes". The leaf is still in the binder cover I slipped it into, cracked and almost completely brown.

Leaves seem to mark various occasions, so I will paste them into a large multimedia journal and write the synopsis of the occasion.

Location and sensory experience have a powerful connection. There's no way to draw a picture of this, but when I return to a place, I remember the music I listened to and the conversations I had. Today I walked out on a pier on Lake Michigan, which brought to surface memories of some poignant walk-n-talks. Once at night, and I got my first glimpse of the dazzling Chicago skyline by night. Another time I made a spur-of-the-moment visit to a friend because I was passing by Chicago, and for that afternoon we were really good friends. Sometimes we are not so conversational. Life gives moments, not always hours, and rarely lifetimes.

One little stretch of an unremarkable highway should be the same as other stretches, but somehow my brain recognizes the geographic location, and I'll remember belting out Downhere songs last time I drove past that light pole, or exit, or patch of trees.

And in my head is a road map. Red highlighter shows my routes to Michigan and Illinois, yet the highlighter has ridiculous amounts of metadata that's invisible to the naked eye; it is simple... known. It's known that this spidery shape represents a community of brothers and sisters in Christ. It's known that on this or that trip I sang myself hoarse; on that route I exhorted my friend to get away from her dangerous boyfriend, as a terrible slush storm slowed our progress homeward; this route draws memory of a beautiful pattern of clouds that seemed to alternate yellowish and bright-bluish.

And people can be colors. I know one person who is the color blue. Doesn't look blue. Just as the same identity. And today I realized I can't arbitrarily make blue my color, even though I like it enough to wear it regularly. So I bought a more suiting color.

A road trip of three hours is short. It's only a couple of cds. Only a couple of good full length conversations (complete with dozens of snapshot diversions). I could drive and drive; only, if every occupant in the car is blissfully asleep, I sometimes get jealous and ease the car onto the rumble strips.

This weekend has been a Robert Fulghum weekend. "It makes me happy to see there is a Robert Fulghum book in your bathroom," I said to my roommate at her new apartment. Last winter my "Everything I Know I Learned in Kindergarten" lived in the bathroom. When I got home from my road trip, what should be lying conspicuously on my laptop but yet another Robert Fulghum book, a gift from my sister who knows I like his writing? (How I would love to converse with that man.)

Life tends to flock.