Sedona: The Sign

Tonight as I returned to my hotel room with a scratchy throat and no voice after a long day of training I collapsed onto my plush bed.  I felt restless still.  I felt as if I had to do something other than sit in here; a cave I've had to create considering the traffic walks directly by the windows and balcony. Heating up a TV Dinner and flipping on Law & Order SVU I fell back into my comatose state I enjoy of mindless games on Shockwave and reruns on the television to tune out.  I munched on dinner and chips and salsa, slowly making my way to the bottom of the bag where all the crunched up chips lie.  The kind that to dip into the halfway empty jar of salsa you must cover your knuckles in sticky tomato paste and onions.  I've never been good with messy hands, my mom and Grandmother both remind me that as a child I would instantly wash my hands if they became dirty with mud or paint.  I can't stand the feeling of even a large amount of dirt residue on them.

I gave it a moment and decided to drive to the grocery store to grab more chips, but then something happened.  I don't know if it was more the thought of 'I just went through entire bag of chips in as little as two days alone' which was adjoined with a flashback of my obesity, or if it was just that restless sense that has been following me since my plane landed on the runway of Phoenix.   Whatever it was, I Instead of turning into the grocery store, I turned into the residential area of Sedona.  I drove up and down the streets looking at all the architecture and extreme hippie/artist/new age culture that is the foundation of this town.  Somehow weaving down these roads named after different brands of coffee I found myself whizzing through a scenic wilderness in the sunset.  I blared my music and drove...and drove...and drove.  Destination anywhere.  The mountains' profile surround me and fill me further with that restless sense of adventure.  My mind started to race, what's next?  When will the previous chapter finally break me from its bonds?  I feel in my heart I'm supposed to return, only next time with someone, but who?  Did I make the correct decisions up to this point in life? All those wanna be esoteric questions that fill anyone in the transitional stage I have found myself in.

Suddenly, I was drawn to an off road which led to historic Cottonwood.  It was much like any other historic strip you would find like Fredricksburg or Brady, very 'cutesy'.  Crawling through at 25 mph the sun was nearly disappearing from the sky and I knew although I had not found what I was searching for it was time to turn back.  Just past the quaint block was a new residential development I used to flip through, and then made an immediate return to historic Cottonwood.  This time just as I pulled in front of the first shop, The Hippie Emporium, I found myself having to slam on my breaks for a peacock standing in the middle of the road staring up at me.  His feathers did not cast it's thousands of stares, but only the two eyes in his head.  I looked around, where did this come from?  It wasn't anywhere in sight when I just crawled through town not thirty seconds before?!  All I could see were two kids, no older than fourteen hiding in the alley of a vacant parking lot fumbling around to stuff their pipe they weren't thinking to conceal, and I highly doubt they were out walking their pet peacock.  So what is this trying to say to me?  The peacock is a creature who can not only endure snake venom, but turn it to solar iridescence.  They can find themselves in a jungle of only poisonous foliage and survive gobbling on that.  Possibly this is a reminder of my strength, or my ability to come across a drained spirit and revive it.  My ability to take on a surmountable amount turmoil and find the beauty in it, I feed off it.  Oh the possibilities of conclusions to draw are endless.