I've been going over photos of my Route 66 trips taken about 8 months ago for an art photography magazine I'm working with, and I've come to the conclusion that last summer may have been the best time of my life.
It started with music, both my band's first show at a coffee shop in Broken Arrow and the Riverfield band's annual show. It was something I could show up to with a group of friends and just relax the whole time. Nothing hugely stressful, just songs I liked to play and sing. Of course, I thought it was stressful at the time; anytime I get on stage, I tense up. But now, I look back on it and realize I got stress confused with excitement.
Those friends I spent time with have grown distant over the last few months. I simply don't have time to call and talk to as many people from home as I'd like, and as a result, some of those relationships suffer. In my eyes, this is a terrible shame. Those people from the city I spent almost the entirety of my life in essentially created my personality. I owe them absolutely everything, and some days, it's hard to cope with the fact that I no longer see them every day, that when I go to class or meet someone at a coffee shop, I see different faces. Friendly, nonetheless, but not the same.
Then there was the road. Most people wouldn't understand how waking up at 7AM and driving for close to 15 hours just to come back to the place where you left could be something that was remotely desirable, much less one of the most enjoyable ways to spend time I have ever found. In Erick, OK, right on the Texas border, we waited on our food for what seemed like an eternity, both of us deathly exhausted, falling asleep on each other at the table. Yet, even starving, tired, and a few hundred miles from home, I found that moment to be something more infinitely memorable than any of the times I have eaten after sleeping for 8 hours here at school. And this is only one example from this trip, probably one of the least potent. There's the abandoned house, the beach outside of Oklahoma City with soft-drinks and a small lake, the museums that all had SX-70s, every little bit I've put together in a photographic collage in my head.
It seems strange that I just decided to reminisce now, considering it has been so long since the summer ended. But really, I think I'm only stopping to type this all out because I have finally allowed myself to look back again. This summer will probably be spent at home, with the same people in the same places. The only difference is the wider gulf that opened when I went to Columbia and everyone else stayed in Oklahoma. What this means for me remains to be seen; I just hope that I can find half of the unexpected experiences this year as I did the last.
