How would God respond to making a mistake? Would planets collide or mountains slide into the sea? Or would the ledger of all life simply remain out kilter until a series of small events forced that ledger back into balance again? It's probably the l...
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August 5, 7:04PM
Atlanta, Georgia
Hey Buddy, have you ever started down a path and wished you hadn't? That's a silly question, isn't it? I'm sure you have. Probably everybody has. And that's how this trip feels now. It's only five days old and it doesn't make sense anymore. Then again, how are you supposed to spend your time when it's running out so quickly? Maybe I won't have to worry about that question much longer because the engine is still making funny clicking sounds. I might get lucky and it will blow up before I have to go too much further.
I actually made it to a motel last night but I'm not sure it was worth the effort. There was just too much noise for me to sleep. The roads were empty and traffic was quiet, but the couple next door was fighting over some TV show about chameleons. On one hand, it was nice to learn something new. For example, I never realized that chameleons don't know that they're changing color. That's actually pretty cool. But on the other hand, the couple just sounded stupid. In fact, pretty much every argument everyone's had since the beginning of time probably sounds stupid if you listen to it for more than a few seconds.
I tried to block out all the noise by picturing the woman changing color in the glow of the TV. If she switched the channel to a cop show, she'd turn blue. If it was a doctor show, she'd be mostly white but sometimes red. And if she turned on a mystery, she'd be black except for those scariest moments when she'd become the yellow shine of a flashlight. But no matter how hard I tried; their voices kept coming through the walls.
When the man started listing the three worst types of people in the world, I knew it was time to leave. I was pretty sure that all three types would sound ridiculous but I also didn't want to take a chance that one of them would sound like me. Anyway, I drove through the rest of the night and into the day. There were places I had planned to stop between Houston and Atlanta, but it was too dark or it felt like the wrong time so I just kept driving. Now, I've covered almost 3,500 miles since my trip started. At the beginning of all this, I had planned on stopping once in Mississippi and once more in Alabama but I've already given up on my list. Carefully planning out my route hasn't helped at all.
I wish someone would just tell me to pull off the road and stop this whole thing. But each day, I start the car and keep going. When I'm driving, the miles and hours and states slide by. Most of the time, I don't even think about why I'm out here. I just try to make sure that I take the right exits and that I keep the gas tank filled. In a way, it kind of feels like swimming laps in a pool. After a while, you forget whether you're in the shallow end or the deep end. It's only when you put down your feet that you realize you aren't where you thought you were. That about sums up my day.
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Tonight, I tried to remember what it was like to enjoy baseball when I was a kid. The score was four to nothing after the first and then little by little it went from a close game to a blowout. The real excitement was when the lights went out in the stadium. It was only for a few seconds, but the umpires forgot to stop the game. Anyway, a player ran all the way from first base to third in the darkness. You couldn't really be sure if he touched second base or just took the shortest route there. The hypotenuse. After several minutes of arguing, the player was allowed to stay on third. It's the kind of thing I would have loved when I was a kid. Instead, I just watched curtain clouds thickening as the teams rushed to complete the game before the rain started falling again.
I guess it's impossible to be seven years old again.
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The next entry in Ril's diary read:
Feb 9
(21 days before Christmas)
I met you for "fencing" tonight. Or that's what we told everybody. Did you forget the lie AND did you notice the look on their faces when we came in all flushed? Happy Birthday again. Do you love me still?
It was a good birthday for me, too.
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