77777
So, there were so many synchronicities on the road….. but some of them were just downright odd… for example, as soon as I hit Palm Springs and all the way to Tucson, I swear to god, every third car was from Minnesota. It was getting downright freakish. I began to test myself, because I am famous for making magic out of molehills (it’s the Piscean in me, you see, or the me in the Piscean: Rose Colored Glasses.) I started really seeing where the cars were from. I mean, I figured, since I was from Minnesota, I might just notice more often when cars are from there. What if I had grown up in, say, Ohio?
But nope, no cars from Ohio at all!
Illinois?
Hmm…… well, while I was waiting, I started ticking off where the cars actually were from:
California… Arizona… Minnesota. California. California. Minnesota.
Once I crossed into Arizona… Arizona… California… Arizona… Minnesota… Arizona. Minnesota. Arizona. New Mexico. Arizona. New Mexico. Minnesota.
Hmmm…….
SUNDAY, MARCH 14TH:
FROM TUCSON TO SANTA FE
STARRING MY LUCKY NUMBERS 7 AND 11!
Saturday night in Tucson I was up until about 2:30 am. I got back to Joni’s little cabin, nestled in beneath piles of cozy Mexican blankets, and, guarded by her Native American Animal Masks, fell asleep…
For about two hours. I awoke suddenly, just past the witching hour, and had this burning desire to get on to Priceline and book my hotel… Why Pricline? Well, no, they don’t do product placement… I like to try and get 4 and 5 star hotels for super cheap prices…. I’m a Bohemian on a budget with Glamour Girl taste in nice hotels. Trust me, I’ve slept everywhere from park benches to beaches to campsites to sofas to the backseats and frontseats of cars to Le Georges V to the Taj Mahal to castles outside Dresden to…. etc. ad infitum. I like experiences and adventure, even if I’m trying to have neither! I still get them. BUT I discovered that you can go on to Priceline, find the average price for a 4 or 5 star hotel, and then get the deal at half price sometimes if they aren’t sold out… so I like to take my chances. Which is what I did! I ended up booking two nights at the Santa Fe Inn and Spa in, well, duh, Santa Fe… I had been waiting because I wanted to feel guided to stay there, and because I was imagining myself stopping in a few places along the way and you never know who you might meet or where you might end up when you’re on the road.
…I didn’t have a gig in Santa Fe. I was going to see this painting by an artist friend of mine… he’s a friend, sort of. We’ve never actually met. But we are fans of each other’s work, and he painted this painting listening to Poet’s Lovely Daughter. Plus I’d never been to Santa Fe, and I wanted to check out potential venues for my next tour. So!
I tried to get back to sleep but there was no having it. So, I packed up all my items, drove over to Colleena’s Gallery, packed up my gear, left the key in her kitchen, and hit the road.
77777
I had started seeing 7s everywhere, in groups of 2 and 3. I kept seeing “77” on license plates, on signs, streets, exits. And so I decided to get on Highway 77 and head north to New Mexico.
I also began to see all the Minnesota cars again. Arizona, New Mexico, Minnesota. (What the 77 was going on!?)
As the mileage on my car hit 77,007, I passed by a town called “Oracle,” which is a song I wrote for my first and even more obscure album, “Mermaid on Dusty Grounds.” The lyrics are thus:
I walked numb and drunk
to the oracle at Delphi
that I might inhale Pythia's smoke
and gaze into tomorrow
I met a priest who drank
the wine of wisdom
he told me to go home
but instead I stole his cup
and the gods have grown
bored with my possibilities
I can tell by the way my prayers are left
bleeding in the dust
over the entrance to the temple
an inscription reads
Know Thyself
I know my gods
I can smell them on my hands
I kneel at an altar made of rain
but i want to be Athena
babies in my oceanic belly
gods of war sucking at my breast
Oh, Oracle, do not leave me alone with the vanishing smoke
ask of me something I can give
but the Oracle does not ask, it tells
and in this darkness where I stumble
I discover
I do not know the question I want to ask
I had originally written that as a poem either just post or previous to my very first trip to Europe. I can’t remember exactly the timing of it, but I remember sitting in the Kitchen at Keep In Touch, this place I used to work at just after I finished massage school and just before recording that album, and I remember writing in this little travel journal, scribbling those lines…
Anyway, I had to laugh, here on highway 77, because more and more 7s were everywhere. Then I realized it was my Grandmother’s birthday, and her lucky number was 7, and so I called my mom, who confirmed that yes, it was my Grandmother’s birthday.
“She would have been, oh, let’s see. 88!”
I had to laugh… then my mom gave me some bad news.
“Well, your Uncle Bud died.”
That was a sweet pain.
“Oh, no!” I said.
“Yup. He was 98 years old.”
Now, my Uncle Bud was my grandmother’s older brother. He was the last living member of her siblings. My grandmother herself, Grandma Winick is how I knew her in my mind, although her name was Mabel, had died when I was about 12, just before I turned 13, in fact. I remember the night she died, my aunts and I died laying on of hands healing and read from the Book of Psalms. I don’t think it was their intention that I be there, but I was, and although I’ve never told them this, it was my first memory of the experience of energy moving from some source outside of myself and yet within myself and through my hands. It is because of My Grandmother Mabel Winick that I am a singer, a writer, an actress, and a massage therapist/ healer. It is ALL related to experiences I have had with her or because of her… I’m writing a cabaret about that, for my next tour… about the influence of her love of music and movies on my performer life AND my love life. (I’m still looking for my Clark Gable.)
Uncle Bud was a cool guy. I remember sitting next to him at my Aunt Debbie’s wedding a few years ago, and he and my ex boyriend/ drummer and I were having a Heineken and he turned to me, bright shining blue eyes twinkling, and said,
“So! What do you do for entertainment?”
“Well, Mike and I here, we’re in a band!” I said.
His eyes got even bigger and he smiled.
“Oh, yeah? Well, gee! You know, I used to pal around with the Andres Sisters back in the day… they were from the old neighborhood! Oh… you probably don’t know who the Andrews Sisters were…” his smile started to fade a bit.
“Oh, you bet I do,” I said. “’Don’t sit under the apple tree with anybody else but me! Anybody else but me, anybody else but me! No! No! No!”
I started singing that old WWII hit and my Great Uncle Bud chimed right in.
“Well, that’s too bad,” I said now, in 2010, to my mom on the phone. I told her about all of the 7s and she said, “Shouldn’t you be going to Vegas instead of Santa Fe?” We laughed as I passed another car from Minnesota.
FROM AZ TO NM (WITH A DASH OF MN)
I drove north through mountains and the Gila National Forest. I kept waiting for inspiration to stop, but I just kept feeling the urge to keep on ahead! Soon I entered New Mexico, where I saw a sign that read, “The Land of Enchantment.” All along I had been seeing 7s, and I had been seeing reminders of the last guy I dated, which was frustrating, because of course the word is “dated,” i.e., PAST TENSE, and I really didn’t want to think about him, but there was the car he drove, which must be the most popular car on the road, and there was a street sign with his last name on it (seriously) just as my phone started spontaneously, on its own, playing a song that reminds me of him (from the first night we met and the second night we met.) I screamed. “Argh! Erin, really!? Get that out of your mind!” And then I laughed. Because this, I am famous for this. I end things with a guy and then he’s everywhere. It was like that with the first man I fell in love with, and then every time I have felt that powerful “connection,” be it lust or love, if I try to get out, the images are everywhere! I tried to test myself. “Okay, Erin,” I said aloud,
“obsess over Mike.” Mike was one of my best boyfriends, a relationship that lasted 4 years. And there could be a LOT that would remind me of him. We went through music tours together, traveled Europe together, owned about 7 different cars together and lived in about 5 different houses together. We had a lot of adventures together. But I looked and looked and could not see a single Minivan, Vanagon, RV, (!), signs about dinosaurs or Americana music or punk rock, nothing about Tauruses or drummers or Florida. I couldn’t tune into public radio, which he loved, or hear any Rolling Stones or John Hiatt or Robyn Hitchcock or Sade. The only thing I could see that had anything to do with him was all these cars from Minnesota, and now THIS was getting REALLY curious, because an hour or two outside of Albuquerque, I swear to god, every other car was from Minnesota. I guess there must have been a LOT of snowbirds in New Mexico?
Then I forgot all of it as I approached Albuquerque and the gorgeous grey mountains in the horizon. So beautiful!
I thought about stopping, but it was about 6:30 pm, and I thought, naw, let’s get up to Santa Fe, I’ll be there in an hour and I can check in and get dinner and go out and check out the nightlife…
Ha!
Rounding a curve on the 25, I left relative grey late spring for
a blizzard.
Seriously.
Suddenly, halfway between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, there was
a blizzard.
I suddenly could not see more than one car in front of me and we were driving about 20 miles an hour. I thought about how this little Jetta, which I bought in Santa Monica, CA, had probably never seen snow or ice before. I, of course, spent my formative years learning to run on ice, drive in the snow, etc. So I wasn’t worried or scared exactly, except…
It was bad. All of the exit signs were completely covered in snow and I had no idea where I was. Thank god my iphone was working so I could keep track with its GPS and know approximately which exit to take…. we were driving in a tailgate train of cars and trucks, because you just couldn’t see. 20 miles an hour and we were still slipping and sliding and just trying not to flip off the sides of the interstate, which was now only one lane.
So. NO WONDER EVERY OTHER CAR HAD BEEN FROM FREAKIN’ MINNESOTA! The gods of weather and traffic had been trying to give me signs: IF YOU CONTINUE ON THIS PATH YOU WILL BE ENTERING MINNESOTA (at least weather wise.) It’s as if I entered a portal through space and time (well, I did, but that’s another interpretation of the story) and suddenly Minnesota and New Mexico were one. Wild,
Two white knuckled hours later, I followed the train into Santa Fe. We all were going into the city, I guess, although if I had been smart enough to listen to the weather and traffic radio channel, I would have heard that they were closing off the highways and exits in about half an hour. So none of us would have had any choice, anyway!
I used the GPS to get approximate directions to my hotel, but still stopped twice to inquire and get further directions. I was exhausted I had been driving for hours and hours and then in the blizzard and I was having a low blood sugar and the backs of my legs were wobbly and I was getting a searing headache. Finally I pulled into the registration parking area of my hotel. I got out of my car and looked up at the beautiful snowflakes and as they hit my lashes and melted, I thanked god for getting me there safe.
I went into lobby to check in. It was a lovely hotel, run by Native Americans, all Santa Fe themed, of course. The gentleman in line in front of me was telling the concierge that please, please, please. He needed a room. He and his wife and daughter had tried three different hotels, and there were no vacancies!
“We’re sorry sir, but we are fully booked,” she said. He buried his face in his hands. Then I heard him say that they were closing the roads and what was he to do? Oh…. I felt so bad for him, but really thankful I had woken up in the middle of the night, way too early, and booked the room here. I was so thankful I had just gotten on the road and hadn’t stopped, since I was apparently hell bent on getting to Santa Fe to see this painting…
Another concierge came to the front desk.
“Yes, miss, can I help you?” he said. I smiled. I was about to finally get to check into my room, call my mom and tell her I was alive, and eat something.
“Hi! Yes. I’m Erin Muir,” I said, pulling out my drivers license.
He typed at the keyboard of his computer for a moment, then looked up and smiled.
“Welcome to the Hotel Santa Fe Inn and Spa,” he said. “We’ve upgraded your room to a King-Sized Suite.”
I smiled.
I was gonna make it, at least for tonight.
“Thank you,” I said.
MORE TO COME:
CONNECTION AND SPIRITUALITY VIA PAINTING AND SONG
STIGMATA IN THE MORNING
DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS, THERE’S NO GAS IN THE GAS STATIONS IN PECOS,
AND THEN,
AUSTIN, SXSW, RED GORILLA MUSIC, AND ME, SINGING AGAIN…..
