Traveling blues.
The flight out Sunday night was crowded and the airline held the flight for about half an hour, waiting on some other arriving flight. Having been in their shoes once or twice myself, I couldn’t help but gently chide the passengers arriving late, “Oh, so you’re the one who made us late?”
My arrival ritual, and this has caused much consternation in my past history with relationships, is to get home, unpack, and immediately assess what is needed for the next suitcase for the next trip, and pack thusly.
It’s easier and I don’t have to think about supplies when it comes time to load and go next. Ink cartridges, batteries, blank paper for charts, blank cassettes, and so forth. All much easier, and it’s my ritual. Unload and load up again.
Only, close to midnight Sunday night, I dropped a little cat food in the bowl and called it night, being too tired, too worn out, and frankly, not thinking about too much else besides sleep.
I did read about two pages in the bedside book, but not much lese.
So Monday morning, it was almost a surprise when I looked at my battle-beaten, road warrior suitcase. There was a safety inspection sticker on it. It had been opened and its contents examined.
Dirty T-shirt, wrinkled Hawaiian shirt, pair of shorts, a couple of blank tapes, a sign, and a couple of the usual knick-knacks, like a crystal, and a little Malachite figurine egg thing. A rosary. No big deal, didn’t bother me.
What happens when my ritual is broken, though? What are the ramifications?
Batteries. I know I forgot batteries this last time. I’m good at estimating consumable supplies for a road trip, and I was within five blank tape, and ten sheets of paper of guessing the right stuff for this last El Paso trip. But I, somehow, forgot batteries.
I do remember the luggage handler, curbside in El Paso, saying something to the effect of, “Oh yeah, I recognize that suitcase. Still have long hair, huh?”
I don’t know how he could recognize the suitcase, though, I’ve added at least two more stickers to it since I was last there….
Phone service & Aries
Didn’t work when I hopped off the plane. Didn’t worry about it. I was explicating the phone service problem with a local resident.
“You know it’s a problem when the phone works in Juarez, where you wind up with a roomful of 15-year old strippers, but the phone won’t work on its nation-wide plan in El Paso. We’re not really part of the nation.”
It was an Aries girl talking. One of three. Four. None of the same three that I alluded to on Saturday morning, either. Neither. It was a completely different group. I’m just an Aries magnet these days. Doesn’t hurt.
Still trying to figure that one out. It was amusing, in the very least. I counted five, varying from a couple of Aries readers to a handful of women cavorting around my table at closing time, all Aries.
And none of them were the Aries from the previous day.
That’s just a lot of fire. Made for a very Aries weekend, if you ask me. Can’t explain it exactly.
Got the nicest blurb, though, and an astrological explanation elsewhere, just a hint of a suggestion, though, as to why anything happened, it all has to do with Saturn. And Saturn’s just made his way in Cancer. Going to create a tension angle, at one point or another, over the next couple of years, to Aries. But that’s just an educated guess.
