"I can assure you that flying saucers, given that they exist, are not constructed by any power on earth" -President Harry S. Truman

I arrived in Roswell, New Mexico in the shroud and mystery of a rainstorm. Mysteriously, I was drawn to pull off the highway onto a mysterious stretch of road in order to take a mysterious whizz on an unusually mysterious tree. 

Suddenly, the clouds burst open and a shaft of light shot down all around me - pale, blue, and calming. I felt myself being lifted, bodily, off the ground. Not by rope or chain, but with a force that made my body suddenly weightless and whisked me up, up, up. My eyes drooped and I fell into a deep slumber.

When my eyes reopened, I was laid out on a table - a tray of shimmering instruments at my side and a wispy creature bent over me. For a moment, the pain was excruciating, and I looked down in horror to see my stomach splayed open, a kidney grasped in one of the beings long slender hands and a fistful of wet intestine in the other. 

Another of the creatures approached the table and passed its hand over my eyes. The pain, and the terror along with it, subsided immediately, replaced by complete serenity and understanding. This will be over with soon. We can put you back together again. We have technology far beyond the reaches of all the King's horses and all the King's men.

Again, my eyes grew heavy and drooped. A smile, unbidden, sprouted on my lips.

I opened my eyes once more, to see only the trunk of the mysterious tree. I reached frantically for the wound in my stomach, to find nothing but the vague memory of a past pain - the sharp, but faraway ache of an old scar when prodded.

I zipped up my pants, got back into my car, and continued on my way. When I arrived at the UFO museum, I was shocked to see that all the displays were exactly as I had seen them. The shimmer of their alien metals, the slenderness of their form, right down to their damnable blurriness. The beings must utilize complex cloaking techniques to discourage human imaging. 

We. Are. Not. Alone.

I've driven 3,600 miles so far. I've been on the road for a month and it has been an enlightening and shocking one. 

First, I got into school in New York and Chicago. Which is great, but complicated. Then at the apex of my trip, as far from SF as I was going to get, my San Francisco plans changed dramatically. For the better and also for the more complex. So I'm racing a bit, to cope with the literal and figurative turnaround.

Things change. Sometimes for the worse and sometimes for the better. The only absolute is that things absolutely change.

This sign-off is just for my parents. So, earmuffs unless you provided me my genetics. 

You dick. If you've read this far and you're not my parents, you have disobeyed me for the last time - no soup for you.

Just kidding. Read it. It's way adorable.

Seriously. Guys. Holy shit. Atheismo be praised. You bear the brunt of so much of my complexity and strife. I constantly seek your counsel and you forever offer it freely - absorbing some of my struggle as your own like penance. Leaning on me the same way, perhaps, and voicing your own opinions, to be sure. But you're there and that means so much. You're wonderful. You deserve all your joys.

I just wanted to let you know that today, I had an incredible day. Practically perfect. I was in New Mexico when the sun rose, and Colorado by the time it set. The fields were sun-burnt and yellow, and the sky was blue like nothing but the desert sky can be. I darted in and out of sweet-smelling showers all day, and you know how I love the rain. The clouds bore down around me like some fearsome glacier in reverse.

Keep your eyes on the skies.

Love,

Yer (youngest) boy.

-IP