The DOE show is over. These things are tests of stamina and endurance. I guess I passed. I packed up the booth last night. I fly out a little later this morning. I will be glad to be back home. I did a little more wandering in the streets of Nashville. Turns out, it's a really cool town. Music made this town. There are little clubs and bars with live music on almost any street. There are more monuments to guitars (also to Jack Daniels, he of the whiskey rye) than politicians - this, I think, is a good thing.
I found myself at the South Street Crab Shack last night just down from Chet Atkins Lane. I sat at the bar, watched the Spurs and Pistons on the TV, and ate a salad and a Tuna steak. I was so damn hungry, I ate like a man possessed. It was like I hadn't eaten in days (not true). I think I couldn't eaten the napkin and maybe even the bar, but I stopped at cleaning my plate.
Earlier in the day, I had read this little quote, and it reminded me of what this thrashing and rolling and tumbling is all about: "The search is what everyone would undertake if he were not stuck in the everdayness of his own life. To be aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair." Walker Percy, The Moviegoer.