Met along the way

Sometimes I don’t know why I make the choices I do. Sometimes I don’t know I going to be making a choice until the instant I do. And sometimes innocuous choices leave me thinking, “Hmmmmm…”

The other day the choice was Highway 111 down the east side of the Salton Sea or Highway 86 down the west side. The roads cross each other near Mecca and rejoin at Brawley. Highway 111 is about two miles longer. A tossup.

The light at the junction was red as I approached, and I was in the left lane, so, what the hell, I turned left onto 111.

The town of Bombay Beach is on 111. It presented another choice: stop by or keep going? I’ve featured Bombay Beach on the blog before, and I did a video. Would there be any reason to go again? I wouldn’t know unless I looked.

I decided to stop. And that’s how I met fellow wanderer D. A. Pirate and his canine companion Sam.

Interesting guy. Veteran, lives and travels in a Mini, well-read, student of Aztec culture, mystic, thinks Sam might be the reincarnation of a pianist…

He wanted my opinions on various art pieces along the beach. “See that big eye down there? What do you think it means?”

“Oh, the all-seeing eye of God? The eye of enlightenment? The inner eye of the soul? Government surveillance?”

 “See that tower? What does it remind you of?”

“I don’t know why, but I’m thinking of the Manhattan Project’s first test, how they put the bomb in a tower.”

“Yeah, man, Trinity! Fat Man! And the black stones at the bottom are the destroyed Earth.”

Since my hearing isn’t very good, I had to ask Pirate several times to repeat himself. He replied, “Sorry, my voice is weak because I had throat cancer.”

“Me too.”

“No!”

“Yeah!”

If I were inclined toward a mystical view of life, I might conclude there was some type of behind-the-scenes force directing my choices so that I’d end up by the sea with a fellow throat cancer survivor, talking art, reincarnation, Aztec warriors, tattoos, compasses, and the Bomb. Anyway, it’s not the day I set out to have. It was better.