Last night

Above a barren desert highway,

the premature Milky Way

was visible before the last bites of dusky sunset fell

beneath the horizon. 

Then no sun.

No moon for 6 more hours.

Even the passing headlights stopped before midnight.

The Big Dipper danced a circle,

never spilling a drop,

while the Milky Way spun sideways

ready to take a drink.

A synchronicity is helping to enlighten my path during my current road trip. I didn’t have much of a plan for this month beyond seeing some friends in Colorado & Utah. Maybe I’d catch a couple indie rock shows — legends Guided By Voices and Afghan Whigs are both touring in that part of the country.
But I was feeling pretty rudderless, unsure of why I was really doing this or where I should go. Taos? Sedona? My current philosophy is that I’m trying to go with the flow of life, not really forcing anything. It’s kind of like I’m waiting for signs or taking opportunities as they arise. And it can be stressful for me because I’m used to being a planner.
I’m trying not to plan so much.
Wait..that sounds like planning not to plan. Wha?
I want my future possibilities to be far more broad than any plan in my head. There are guidelines, of course. If I say I’ll meet you somewhere at a certain time, I will be there.
For instance, the other day as I was wallowing in this decision — WTF are you doing Ahlberg? Really? You’re just going with the flow? Planning not to plan? That’s ridiculous! How can a person “succeed” without a plan?
Then I got a call from my cousin Anders. He was looking for a co-pilot to help drive a moving van across the country in a couple weeks.
There was a rough outline in my head about what the next few weeks might look like, but I wasn’t beholden to it. I was doing my best to go with the flow, hoping it would be flowing.
I thought (and said to him): give me a day or two. Let me check my calendar and see what airport I might be able to fly out of to meet you in Seattle.
This all happened as I was driving north from Denver to Fort Collins, it might have happened somewhere near Flagstaff…
After “hanging up” the phone (do we still say that?), I decided to pass a semi-truck that I’d been chilling behind while talking into a hand-held device which transmitted some kind of energy waves out into space that somehow got re-translated into Anders’ ear(s).
As I moved into the left lane and glanced across the divided highway to the ranch land beyond, I saw a big corrugated barn of a building along the road. It had those gigantic sliding doors like an airplane hangar. Above the closed doors were the words “Anders Auto Supply”. Or maybe it was “Anders Plumbing Refinement”. Something like that.
Whatever.
At any rate, just after I got off the phone with my cousin Anders (with whom I really only speak a few times a year), I saw a sign for a small business named “Anders something or other”.
This sort of synchronicity has happened to me almost every day for the past two weeks.
What would you do?