rainbows in the high desert air

i woke up early and walked to the coffee shop with the intention of finishing a book that i'm reading. i like the book - it's about a guy who moved to the navajo reservation to teach. he's not a very good teacher - at least not yet. but he's honest. and i like that. i meant to finish the book, but i got distracted. i couldn't quite focus.

i started thinking about pittsburgh. the year-long lease i just signed. i started thinking about steve moving back to L.A. and how much i'm going to miss him - but how happy i am for him. i thought about breaking up with derek. i thought about the photograph that i put in an art show last night that didn't sell. i thought about how wet everything feels today - the streets, my hair, my jeans, my skin. humidity - that's what it is. i couldn't stop thinking about my dream last night. i thought about my brother and cousins running the marathon tomorrow. i thought about last summer. i thought about how most things that have ever really mattered to me, have only mattered to me when they've been threatened.

and then i thought about this image. i thought about this moment and this day and i couldn't let it go. i remember driving the empty road through the navajo reservation with them. my dad driving, my mom in the backseat. the rental car - how nice it was to actually have air conditioning when driving through 100 degree temperatures. i missed my brother. i loved my mother and father. i loved having them there with me. the place was never real until i had a memory there with my parents.

my father made a right turn. we followed this dirty road down to the colorado river. lee's ferry. the weather was perfect and i thought that if this day were to be my last day, i wouldn't have changed anything about it - except that my brother wasn't there. i missed his humor. i missed his observations. i missed rolling our eyes, together, at my mother. we wandered down to the river. my father and i dipped our toes into it. my mother, wandering around, observing everything. every rock color, every lizard, every flower, every thing. we've almost been in car accidents so many times, because my mother can't focus on the road, when the trees are changing color or the sun is setting. my father, in all of his travels, had never been to this place. he taught me how to travel, to make turns down unmarked roads - he gave me my sense of direction, a love of long driving long distances, and the most sensitive, sentimental soul.

my hope is that i don't sign another year-long lease in pittsburgh. at least, not for a few years. if for no other reason, i feel like i owe it to my parents. i feel indebted to them - to continue their stories. the story of a little italian girl, who left her small town in central pennsylvania, and never could return after moving to a city full of culture and experiences and adventure and progressively minded people. and my father, whose traveled the world - who has left me messages on my answering machine of the sound of elk in the morning in the mountains, but he never got to stay. or live in these places that he's loved.

as we were driving, my mom made us stop. she made me take a picture. i didn't even care at the time. she must have talked about this monument and described it in perfect detail for at least 5 minutes. making note of every carved edge. if every photograph i've ever taken was ever deleted, or lost, or erased from memory, i would hope that this photograph would survive.