Americana

24 hours in a sweaty car with 4 people.

9 junk food meals....or maybe more, who can count?

4 Smart Water bottles filled with vodka

1 bag of shitty mushrooms

3 nights spent on a living room floor...

....in the company of 7 other people at close proximity for 5 days.....

a little alone time feels fantastic, even if it means sacrificing a little sleep to get it. 

One thing that the drive to Austin, Texas did was to show my how much of this country is really still just cowboy country. It's hard to imagine people stacked one on top of the other in so many places in the world when you are driving through the Flint Hills of Oklahoma (or was it Kansas?), approaching the massive sprawling oil fields of southern Oklahoma and Texas. Looking out of a gas station window, eating cold pizza from under a heat lamp, seeing nothing but oil pumps and trees with no leaves...it's kind of the most American feeling I can really imagine. Every time I see a tumbleweed, I feel like I am in a Western movie, but one that has been artificially, digitally colored, so that everything is just a little too modern to feel believable. 

I just suddenly have an uncontrollable urge to decorate everything with dusty old bones and fake flowers, giant deer skulls and bat bones on delicate string. Charcoal grey, black, eggshell white, and whatever shade is just a touch lighter than sienna. The giant collection of trinkets at my desk looks to bright and garish after so many miles of empty, southern landscapes.