Today I start a new adventure! Burnet is my new home, and I already love it here. This morning I woke up with my little brother and sister so I could hang out with them while they got ready for school. I forgot how frenzied and important the first days of school are when you're 8 and 12 years old. Then they left all hurried, and our goodbyes were brief. I don't think they quite understood that they wouldn't see me for a long while. It was funny because my parents made weird faces at them.

I spent alot of time looking at my new book that I got at Borders. TEXAS 24/7. It's a photography book about Texas life. Its so very interesting. Man, I've been so emotional for the past few weeks, some pictures made me cry just because they were so right about life or because they were just really impressive. One photo of bikers praying over each other at their biker church caused several a tear to seep out. (Seriously though, I've been crazy emotional lately. I cried about two Asian children getting their picture taken at the mall a couple of weeks ago. Then, I got choked up when this little girl smiled at me one day in the food court. I started bawling when my mom told me about some kids in the ICU at the children's hospital she works at. And stupid nostalgic stuff has me blinking back tears constantly lately. Its ridiculous.)

Then I went to have coffee with one of my best friends, Robert Effin Ortiz. Ladies and gentleman, that is one great guy. One latte later, I dropped him off at O' Cleburne High and drove home. I passed the Cleburne Municipal Airport and strained my eyes to see if any planes were about to take off. Yesterday morning after breakfast I stopped there and rolled down the music, turned up The Postal Service, read a little bit of C.S. Lewis and watched the small planes roll out of their mysterious garage homes, rev up, and fly off into the morning. I wanted to stop again today, but I was on a schedule.

I went to my family's little beige house on the north-side-of-cleburne-middle-of-nowhere. Have you ever been to my house? It is small and cluttered with my family's life. There seems to be life in stacks and piles and in boxes and on tables and in closets and under beds and strewn about on the couch almost always, but its home. My mom and I finished packing all of my stuff into our cars and then we began our drive. I drove in front, leading her mini van to Burnet in a quick and orderly fashion.

At different points on our journey I would spy a familiar spot and almost see my moments reoccuring there. There was the airstrip where I could see my friends laying down on their back with their legs stretched out to the sky, reading poems and making fun of each other. I could see us pulling out an old wooden bench close to the  runway and sitting on it, all together. I saw us running about with our hands out like birds, screaming at the wind and the ascending planes, and life, with mouths full of poetry. I saw tee-pees lining the road into Cleburne, which had made Sallen laugh uncontrollably the first time she saw them. They are ridiculous. On a bridge that has recently been abandoned to its old age I watched my family in its early days, throwing rocks down into the Brazos River. I saw an old gas station that didn't sell Arizona Green Tea, which led to seeing Nick and I walking across the highway to another gas station in pursuit of the tea. But I just smiled, and shook my head, and they all disappeared and I continued on my road trip, constantly checking the rearview mirror to make sure mom was still right behind me.

The farther south we went, the landscape became even more beautiful. I saw white cows. I saw a big, open, perfect field of tall yellow-green grass. I saw  "Love Ranch". I liked that one the most. And there were a million sunflowers lining the road the whole way there, of course. You must be careful when it comes to sunflowers, I have decided. The reason is that even though it is so enticing and wildly poetic to want to run and dance and frolic among the sunflowers, it is just not possible, and it would probably hurt. Those things have very thick and coarse stems! Ouch! Some fields of sunflowers are actually hybrid monster sunflowers that eat people! They have eatten many people who used to be my friends- friends who thought it perfect to run among wildflowers such as those. Now, I have less friends. So, heed my warning, BE CAREFUL around the sunflowers.

So we made it to Burnet, safe and sound. We went 67 to 220 to 281, take a left on 29, and left, right, left you're there.

I want you to come down and see the stars here, they are very clear. And when you come we can make new memories that I will visualize on days when I am find myself alone. Perhaps we will photograph ourselves in my new surroundings. You will meet my new family, the people who have started this wonderful new church that I work for. You can hang out with all of my kids and maybe go to see them at lunch time, too. There is a Tea Room downtown that you could go visit with me, and then perhaps you will let me show you some of the new things I've been writing. Bring news of your life, and evidence to prove you are doing something productive, like a sample of your photography, or your writing, or paintings, or music, or long division problems, or scientific calculations. And then we can go to my new house and you will shake hands with Claudio, my new best friend- a gorgeous SharPei doggie who drinks purified water and loves watching The Muensters. Perhaps by then my flowers will be in full bloom, because I plan on planting my first flower garden very soon dear, and I will want you to pick one to take home with you.