I can only imagine

First, I'd like to apologize for not writing in a while. I've been hanging out in a cabin in the mountains of Utah. To be honest, I haven't felt like writing recently. Sometimes it's nice to relax on this journey without the pressure of constantly thinking I need to be doing interesting things that will generate stories. I don't want to force stories. I want life to just simply happen. And if I'm going to be doing this for a while, I'm going to need a brief escape from thinking like a writer here and there. Sometimes I forget to take deep breaths and reflect a bit. That's all I needed to do. So continue checking my blog on an hourly basis. I promise to always come back to you.

So, I left you hanging with the story of selling my car for $100 in Vegas just over a week ago. Since then I have taken an overnight Greyhound bus to Salt Lake City, driven with my uncle to Park City, Utah, for the Sundance Film Festival, caught a cheap flight to Phoenix, and driven to San Diego with a friend from high school.

Going Greyhound doesn't beat being behind the wheel of my own vehicle, but since I no longer have that luxury, it was a decent enough alternative. I sat next to a girl with a mustache and a guy with an eye patch, and in front of a kid who liked to make beats with his hands on the window, ignoring the fact that my head was resting on it. But luckily, I was exhausted from my night out in Vegas, so I slept like a baby for seven out of the eight hours it took to get to northern Utah.

Lothar offered to accompany me to Salt Lake. Like me, he had no agenda, and he figured it must be a decent enough place since he had heard about it from movies back home in Germany. I shipped a couple bags by themselves from the Greyhound station in Vegas to my hometown in Iowa. I was unaware you could do this, but when I discovered it, I found it to be very convenient. This left me with a small suitcase, a backpack, and my guitar.

My uncle Bob from Chicago was to arrive in Salt Lake that night to spend a week learning the ropes of film making at the Sundance Film Festival as he pursues the production of his first movie. Knowing that I am a homeless kid looking to go any and everywhere, he offered to have Lothar and I crash with him at his hotel for a night, and for me to accompany him to Park City for the festivities the following day.

Since Lothar and I arrived in Salt Lake at sunrise, we were the first to check into the hotel. After a brief nap, I took my German friend to a bar to watch the NFL playoff games, which were the first and second football games he ever saw. He watched closely, asking questions about the rules of the sport that I realized only Americans seem to care about. He said he continued to enjoy it more and more. That, however, may have been related to the increase in alcohol consumption throughout the afternoon.

Later that night, Lothar fell victim to the Marriott's cozy beds. I sat at the hotel bar, waiting for my uncle to arrive into town. I began chatting with a man and woman who were on their way to see a movie in the Sundance Festival. I said I would love to tag along if they didn't mind since my uncle wouldn't be arriving for another couple hours. They said they didn't mind, and the three of us hopped in a shuttle to the theater.

Upon our arrival, the woman mentioned I should be aware the film dealt with a "unique" topic. I didn't mind. I had just met some new people, ridden 20 minutes with them to a part of town I was unfamiliar with, and bought a ticket. So I wasn't going to let a "unique" topic turn me back.

Ninety minutes later, I was speechless.

Drum roll. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A documentary (this means true story) about guys who like to have sex with horses. Absorb what I just wrote, and let us never speak of this again.

I arrived back to the hotel at the same time my uncle Bob was walking into the lobby. He asked where my German friend was. I told him he was sleeping up in the room. I realized it was a bit strange that a kid I had known for less than a week was sleeping in my uncle's hotel room. He didn't seem to mind and suggested we go wake him up. Ten minutes after he met Lothar, he decided he liked him so much that he invited him to stay with us at the cabin in Park City. It seemed our cross-country journey would have yet another chapter.

I went snowboarding, caught another flick, and went out to some nice dinners with my uncle and a few other people who were involved in the film project. But mostly I spent the week in Park City hanging out at the cabin. I cared more about the shooting stars we'd see in the sky at night than the movie stars roaming main street. I would make breakfast around noon, shower around 4, and stay up until the sun threatened to rise. After driving 40 hours in two-and-a-half days, losing my car and saying goodbye to half my belongings, I needed to shut my mind off for a while.

But my mind was stimulated at times as well. Lothar and I had some great late-night conversations while looking for shooting stars from the hot tub. One night, as he was buzzing very hard off the chewing tobacco he tried for the first time, he began a series of great thoughts. He wondered why people cared so much about the celebrities roaming the town and so little about the universe and all its mysteriousness. "All the writers in the world couldn't describe what we're seeing," he said so fittingly as we watched the dozenth shooting star soar across the black sky that night.

He analyzed what he was doing with his life. He was heading back to Germany soon to finish his degree in product engineering. He analyzed what I am doing with my life. I am traveling the world with no agenda. He wondered if we will ever know if we are making the right decisions. "Maybe we will know soon, but I don't think we'll know until our very last days," he said.

It was deep. It may have had something to do with the beers and the chew and the sitting in the hot tub for several hours in 5-degree temperatures, but I felt a tear form in my right eye. My first cry of 2007 had nothing to do with sadness and didn't stem from joy. It simply happened out of wonderment -- from imagining where life can lead and what will become of us. Imagination is a powerful thing. It's the only other thing we have aside from what's going on right in front of us. In my position, imagining can be a scary thing or a beautiful thing. As a lone traveler, there are so many fates that lie on so many different paths. I have absolutely no idea where I will be in a week and who I will be with and what I will be doing. And I really think that is amazing. All I can do is imagine.

I parted ways with my uncle, Lothar, and my other companions at the cabin. I boarded a plane a a few days ago to Phoenix to visit Whitney, a friend I promised I would visit while I was in the Southwest. She and I drove five hours to the west coast, where I met up with Scott, a friend of mine from college. I'm sitting on a couch in Scott's apartment in San Diego, feeling good about writing for the first time in a while. Whitney left this morning. Tomorrow morning, Scott and I will head up to Los Angeles to make some cash by playing extras in a movie -- something a friend of mine, Mike, who works in the movie business, arranged for us.

I've felt strange the last couple days. I think since I finally took the time to realize what I'm doing, where I've been, and where I might go, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. Aside from a few changes of clothes, a camera, a computer, and a guitar, imagination is all I have right now. A few hours ago, I got the word "imagine" tattooed on my lower right abdomen. Unless I decide to go streaking, no one can see it but me. I guess I just wanted it as a reminder of the most important thing to do on this often lonely but incredible journey.

I don't know my next step. I will likely leave the country within a couple weeks, but nothing is ever set in stone. I never give my ideas enough time to become plans.