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Driving west from Tulsa to Amarillo on a bright afternoon, you can measure the passing of time by the distance the sun travels down the bus’s massive windshield. Every hour or so I pull on the string that lowers the screen that shades my eyes from the glare. By about 7:00 pm, the screen is as low as it will go, and the sun is blinding.

Huge gashes tear the land in that part of the country: deep gorges formed by the tiniest creeks, or flat expanses of bare ground turned over by a farmer. The earth is red there, when the green grass is pulled back or split. Kind of like wounds, or cuts, but not the smooth kind made by scalpels – these are rough injuries.

I think of those who lived in this part of the country long ago, the ones whose land we stole. I think of how their life spilled into the earth. The water standing in the ponds takes on the red color of the soil, looks like pools of clay-colored blood.

* * * * *

I can’t remember ever being able to see so far. The height of the sky seems the same, but out at the horizon, around the edges, the sky looks like someone has stretched it. My eyes are telescopes. I can see small specks of cattle a thousand miles away. Huge power lines rise no higher than the width of my little finger.

It’s easy to feel small out here, where you can drive miles on the highway without seeing a house. It’s easy to feel like the whole world has expanded, and your existence has shrunk. And it’s not such a bad feeling. There is so much pressure on us to feel big, to feel important, that any lessening of this is actually a relief.

* * * * *

A dirt road runs parallel with the highway, and a teenager driving an old Chevy pickup tries to keep up with the highway traffic. Dust billows out behind his bald, anxious tires like the years of my youth: tempestuous and exciting and then settling, diffusing. He surges ahead. Later on, we pass him. He has stopped at a crossroad and is deciding which way to go.

* * * * *

The sun drops below the horizon just as we enter Amarillo, and the sunless sky feels cool against my eyes. We pull into a large parking lot, a day earlier than expected. Maile pops popcorn for the kids and the smell of it fills the bus. We put in a movie. They perch on the couch, all four of them in a row like birds on a wire, cramming popcorn into their mouths.

It’s a late night in Amarillo. The old man is sleeping beneath the bus.

Friday morning, 2am, and a thunderous rain pounds on the roof of our bus. Flashes of lightning dash inside where we sleep, and, quickly following after, thunder splits my children’s dreams.

Friday morning, 2am, and Lucy wriggles her way into our bed with the two words we can never refute. “I’m scared,” she whispers, curling up under the quilt with her mother, right up against her stomach, as if wiggling her way back into the womb. Sammy isn’t far behind – he takes my place in the bed, and I am relegated to Lucy’s bunk (I actually love sleeping in those tiny bunks).

Friday morning, 2am, and I lay in the bunk, listening to the storm. Sometimes I worry about invisible things: that my writing will never reach the heights I dream for it; that I will hurt those closest to me with one bad decision; that I will reach a later age and want a redo on this choice I’ve made to live an adventurous life.

These are the thoughts that come in the middle of storms. The sentences in my brain are frantic, like the rain. The sentences in my brain are flavored by the lightning, punctuated by the thunder.

* * * * *

Friday morning, 11am, I sit in a coffee shop and write the stories about which I dream. I drink a mocha and I read the creativity of my friends and I think about how this crazy family of mine is in Tulsa, and next week we will be in Amarillo, and, the next, Pasadena.

Life is almost always good when I rest in the here. The now. The frightful days that circle in my mind during a late-night thunderstorm rarely see the light of reality. The cool mornings after storms give me hope, when the gray sky apologizes sheepishly for all the fuss it made the night before. I drink my coffee and am reminded that autumn will circle around again. Cool mornings will come after the summer, mornings that require quilts and sweaters.

The heat of summer will not last forever.

Hope will circle around again.

It’s a smaller world now. We drive 10,000 miles in four months. We devour states the way my childhood self inhaled birthday cake. We breath in the miles and exhale them before ever really catching their scent, before ever really tasting the dust. The grit of every city coats our teeth, but we clean it from our mouths with the water of movement, of speed, of change.

The road we followed north from Ft. Worth to Tulsa stretched out in front of us. I wondered about the distance – we crossed that expanse in hours. Felt like minutes. Somehow it seemed like we were cheating, skipping through such demanding terrain without a second thought. Before the land was settled, it would have taken days. Weeks.

Or perhaps a lifetime. Perhaps the distance seemed so great back then that most people never left. Most people stayed. It wasn’t only their hometown – it was their world, their galaxy, their universe. Nothing existed outside of those rolling hills, the endless miles of trees, the sky that threatened to engulf everything.

* * * * *

On Tuesday night Maile and I sat on the front porch with a good friend, talking about books and children and moving. We drank red wine. Her neighbor saw us and came over, pulled up a chair. The neighborhood kids ran through the falling dusk, playing tag in a whirling cloud around us, like moths flitting around a porch light.

Sam and Abra ran senseless through the yard – they did not understand the rules. They simply ran because everyone else ran. Sam raised his hand in defiance, shouted a barbarian shout, took a swing at passing kids with a foam sword. Abra laughed and laughed, even as her eyes swelled with allergies. Then she came over and leaned her head on my leg, and I cleaned her face gently with a wet paper towel.

Lucy, quiet Lucy, ducked her chin down towards her sternum and took six brave steps to the tree that was base. A few of the girls explained the rules in matter-of-fact tones, as if Lucy was no stranger to them. She leaned towards the tree, put her hand on it as if it was a holy icon, her deliverance.

I found Cade in the bedroom playing with marbles. He needed some coaxing, but soon he galloped through the Ft. Worth night with the other kids, shouting to his new-found friends.

And us four adults, we drank in the night – the shouting, the shadows – long after our glasses were empty.

It’s a smaller world now. A world where children from Pennsylvania can play hide-and-seek in Austin one day, then freeze tag in Dallas the next, then soccer in a Tulsa field a few days later. A world where I can give my last quarter to a man in New Orleans, then a few days later have my life changed by a Vietnam Vet struggling in a hospital bed in San Antonio.

We devour the states as we pass through them. We gorge ourselves on miles traveled. But I hope I never take these stories for granted, the stories of real life people. The woman and her child begging in the French Quarter. The voodoo man with animal bones tied around his neck. The patient I could not touch with bare skin.

We should never wash the taste of them away.

Some of the stuff that caught my attention this week:

Should Microsoft Word go the way of the dinosaur? Based on the title, I think the writer of this article would say, YES:

Microsoft Word is Cumbersome, Inefficient and Obsolete: It is Time for it to Die (via my friend Jim)

No Pulitzer Prize for fiction this year – what’s up Pulitzer People?

While No One Wins in Fiction…

And one of the most beautiful essays I read this week:

This is why I avoid reading the books I’ve written. Why, when I must, I approach the book as a stranger, and pretend the sentences were written by someone else.

My Life’s Sentences (via Jason McCarty)

* * * * *

Link of the week:

“Poets and Writers” database of literary journals and magazines.

* * * * *

What do you use for word processing other than Microsoft Word?

For me, Laredo, Texas is where my memories begin. I lived there for a year when I was four. A land of dust. Ants that bite with fire in their mouths. Heat and lizards and trailer parks. Empty swimming pools and a tiny church with cement block walls.

Images of my childhood Texas are much like the memories I have of childhood dreams: stacked haphazardly in the attic of my mind, covered in a fine layer of time, in a spot where, no matter how hard I search, only the edges are visible.

So when we left New Orleans last week and headed west towards Texas, I had certain expectations of what I would see. I think dust was the main one followed closely by heat, armadillos, and vultures. Yet the further west we drove in Louisiana, the more confused I became: the landscape was still green.

* * * * *

Perhaps it will happen at the Texas border, I reasoned. Perhaps the sign “Welcome to Texas” will be a small part of a great line that stretches as far as I can see to the north and south, a line separating green Louisiana from a dusty brown Texas.

But it didn’t happen. In fact, the deeper into Texas we drove, the more beautiful it became. Oaks and Mesquite covered the rolling landscape, growing alongside rocks and cacti. The trees were lower, like servants cowering from the sun, but there was something majestic in the harshness, something tantalizing in amongst the shade.

* * * * *

Mesquite trees thrive in Texas for a few interesting reasons: they have a tap root, some of which have been recorded at 190 feet under the ground; they can regrow even from six inches underground; even a piece of Mesquite root placed in the soil can regenerate.

There is something to be said for deep roots.

There is something to be said for pushing up from under the ground.

There is something to be said for being broken and split and pulled up from the earth, yet maintaining a willingness to grow again.

I sat quietly in a mall somewhere in Nashville a few weeks ago and looked at my ringing cell phone. The call I had been waiting for.

“Hello?”

The guy’s name was Kevin – I had never spoken to him before, but a shared friend had connected us, thought we should talk. And as I heard Kevin’s story, I could only nod my head in commiseration.

He was a teacher and his wife was 20-weeks pregnant with their first child. They had just purchased their first home. And then, a few weeks ago, he received news that would change the course of his life: due to budgetary cuts, his contract would not be renewed in the fall.

But he’s a great writer, and he’s trying to figure out what to do, which way to go.

“So what do you think?” he asked me. “You made a similar leap. Do you think I can make it full time as a writer?”

* * * * *

During an early leg of our trip, we spent time with some awesome friends of ours. At one point, the conversation turned to serious things, and they asked me the sort of question that only close friends can ask, the kind of question that simultaneously challenges your direction in life but also makes you thankful that you have friends who can ask tough questions.

“Do you ever worry that by encouraging people to chase their dreams, you’re actually encouraging someone to do something irresponsible?”

I thought about it for a moment, then shook my head.

“Not really,” I said. “Sure, there are folks that need to be reminded to be sensible, people who make really unwise decisions. But most people I know need to do something irresponsible. The majority of those in our generation rely so much on comfort and predictability that there’s no room for God to do something exciting in their life.”

Our discussion went long into the night.

* * * * *

I took a deep breath.

“Sheesh, Kevin, what can I say?”

He laughed.

“I’m not asking you to make the decision for me,” he said. “I mean, I kind of am…”

We both laughed.

* * * * *

It’s so much easier for me to put my own life on the line, to make high-risk decisions, and to deal with the consequences. But I live a life that, in many ways, I could not in good conscience recommend to someone else unless I know them very well. To whom would I recommend a life of chasing your dreams, a risky life, a potentially uncomfortable life?

– To those who understand their worst-case scenario and are comfortable moving forward knowing that it may very well come to pass

– To those who put a margin for error in place and then stick with it. For me personally, if I ever get to the place where I have finished my projects and have no more income, then I will get a “real job.” I won’t hang on to my dream long after it’s withered, to the detriment of my family. That’s my margin. Know yours.

– To those who have supportive family or friends or a spouse willing to join you on the adventure.

– To those who have a plan and have already proven to themselves that they can make money doing what they love to do. If you want to make a living as a photographer, don’t quite your day job until you’ve made some money as a photographer. If you want to make a living as a writer, don’t resign from your day job until you’ve actually had someone pay you for your writing. Start leaning in the direction of your passion before you  make the leap.

* * * * *

So I watch my friend Kevin eagerly, waiting to see how things will work out for him. He’s made some good moves so far. One of them is writing an E-book which releases today, a book called, An Idiot’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s funny. It’s clever. And it’s free.

Supporting someone who is chasing their dream was never any easier than this. Upload your free version HERE.

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What’s the difference between chasing your dream and simply being irresponsible?