As bad as showing up in Rome without a reservation on an, unbeknownst to me, holiday weekend? Spending my last few days in Australia in a squat, bad? Or hiking around an island off Nicaragua hoping for an opening and sliding into the only one because of a cancelation?

I guess that will remain to be seen. I’m still in the midst and swirl of it all. Things have randomly and radically changed again. And in the place where I am because of the last radical change. The dust hasn’t settled yet. It’s dusty as hell, actually–literally and figuratively. I’m in a state park, the first place I stopped on the maiden voyage of the Starfish Enterprise; going where this woman has never gone before. The Captain’s Log around that star date, about four years ago, would reveal my camper starting on fire a little bit.

Luckily I was outside, watching my-guy-at-the-time do some backing up and trying to learn something. That’s when the sparks really started to fly! And not the good kind. The sway bars hadn’t been put on correctly and the friction rubbed through the power cord plugged into the back of my truck. Sooo, back to the ranch to rewire and re-place those sway bars. Myakka River State Park was the closest and chillest spot–back to nature to balance and calm me. The photo here is after we arrived safely and before the truck wasn’t going to start when we wanted to leave.

We got that figured out, it was a fuse, and motored on in search of filling our now pretty starving stomaches and calming our rattled nerves. Landing at the foot of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, right on the water with sunset giving a show through the dining room window, all was forgiven. Some people may have thrown in the towel. Parked the camper, or maybe sold it. Gone back to good ol’ reliable sticks-n-bricks living. The thought never crossed my mind.

Maybe I have been here before. Maybe I only remember the good stuff. Like forgetting the pains of birth when the urge to have another baby kicks in. The room I finally found in Rome ended up being down the block from the restaurant where my soon-to-be Italian lover worked. While everyone else slept, Ainslee and I smoked joints and waxed lyrical as she painted images ignited and words worth remembering around my chair; in the morning it looked like an art gallery more than a squat. And waking up in a bungalow on the beach with a sunrise I could see from my bed, was how my aversion to making reservations worked out on that island.

I cling to that now, as I’m told there may be no place for me here in March. I hold onto every time it looked like things were really not working out for me. Something was always working in me and in my situation to bring about something better. Bigger.

I got a Christmas card years ago that said,

Sometimes we see only the underside of the tapestry of life.

All knots and gnarls and missteps.

But there is a Master Weaver who sees it from above.

And He weaves according to a plan