American Odyssey

The Long Road Home

I have no past.

I have no present.

I have no future.

I have all three.

Time weaves strange fabric that we all wear in different ways.

For me, the past effortlessly intrudes on the present, while the future presents itself occasionally.

This is uncomfortable, as one might imagine, but manageable.

This spring, after attending Wednesday services at the Pyramid for a semester, I decided to up the woo woo and add a breath work class down at the local weed church.

There, in a former Jersey Mike’s franchise building that’s been retrofitted with a sound bath space, he sacramental blessing is either marijuana or psychedelic mushrooms to engage in some holotropic breathing on the floor.

This is led by a woman with golden eyes. Her name Nikki. You just listen to her, breathe a certain way for ten minutes, and then hold that breath, in, out.

She does the singing bowls and uses the rainmaker.

The effect is incredible.

It is like being at the Monroe Institute, but without wearing headphones. Puts you in the same mental space.

Also this spring, as my Dad and I disc’d up forty acres and planted pollinators for the neighbors, I looked down at my boots.

we've been at war my whole life

Tan suede, issued by the Army, I'd worn them in Afghanistan and then back in the states on Fort Drum and Fort Monroe.

The boots were twenty years old.

My war was twenty years old.

A fifth of a century.

When I spoke to my old battalion commander, Col. Chris Toner, now retired and back in Kansas he told me we would have a twenty year Catamount reunion in Watertown next summer.

There’s a lot of Catamounts that won’t be able to attend.

Here’s an example:

It got me thinking. For some reason, I felt compelled to visit Yorktown, Virginia for the Fourth of July during the America 250 season. I didn’t necessarily want to—but I needed to do it, something deep inside of me was insisting that I return home to Virginia.

But I was already home in Utah and Idaho.

I still don’t know where home is.

When people ask me where I’m from, I never know how to answer the question:

I was born in Utah. My people are from Idaho. I moved to Turkey and Germany when I was little. I grew up in Yorktown. I finished high school in New Mexico. I went to college in Virginia. I lived in New York, Afghanistan, and Virginia for the Army. I was homeless for a brief spell after the Army in the Bay Area.

I lived in New York City for a time. I got married in Montana. I got divorced in Arkansas, where my great grandfather lived on the border of Arkansas and Missouri. I got my Master’s degree in Virginia. I now live in Salt Lake City and spend a lot of time in Idaho.

Generally, I just say all over. Increasingly, I say Idaho because it tends to alarm people, unless they’re on the East Coast, in which case they just confuse it with Iowa and leave it be anyway. Shortly after planting my flax in Idaho, at that breath work class in Salt Lake City, I had a vision that prompted me to get in my truck and drive across America. The drive out takes me from Idaho to Nevada to Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia, DC, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. My flax flowers shortly before I take off for my trip. It will be ready for harvest when I get back.

I stop driving Sag Harbor, New York, an old whaling town. There, I stay with my friend Elise and her husband and child and new dog for a few days. I eat oysters and I swim in the Atlantic and I admire the hydrangeas. I go to the whaling museum and learn the whales the town harpoons now are billionaires. I eat at the restaurant where Justin Timberlake drank too much.

Linen, spun from flax, was used as trade cloth by whalers and used to be used for their sails, but cotton-based canvas supplanted linen sails by the time of Moby Dick. I finish listening to Harlot’s Ghost (which I will have a dispatch up on shortly)

Actually, if I’m honest, I had multiple visions: you should try breath work sometime. In one, I saw my brother Monty Quintana. Yet he was different than I’d ever known him. He was young, in prime physical form, an incarnation I had never known him in. He was painted as if he were running Go Jii Ya.

I needed to get back to the Jicarilla Apache Nation. Needed to spend some time on Dulce, see Monty’s sister (who, by proxy, since Monty is my brother, is also my sister)

In the middle of this trip, I stop off at a woman’s house in Crossville Tennessee, on Druid Lane, to pick up an esoteric library and mystical objects that used to belong to her husband, an FBI counterintelligence agent who passed away. I have three Rosicrucian Altar Pieces now, a censer, an incense grinder, a lightbulb with a Cross inside. I now have a black mirror and ESP Cards used by Duke University to study psychic phenomena, courtesy of my new friend, a retired Department of Energy employee who’s son reads my substack (thank you! You know who you are).

Shortly after picking up the mystical objects, I met a woman I vibed with like I’ve never vibed with anyone before. She’d heard me on a podcast and decided she liked the cut of my jib and came to see me in Washington, DC for two days. Normally, I last about two hours at a party before it is time to go. Even with my closest friends in Yorktown, I needed to take a brief ‘me time’ break to maintain my composure every day.

Not so with this lady. We were together constantly, except for bathroom breaks, and I never felt out of my skin. I laughed and smiled and felt better than I’ve felt in years.

We continued to talk.

Immediately after I met her, I began to see bunnies near me at regular intervals, every two or three days…I’d be outside and look around and there was a rabbit within eight to ten feet of me. It started at Ephrata Cloister late at night, the same day we both left DC.

I began taking video. I hadn’t seen a rabbit in that close of proximity for a while, and then it’s a whole fluffle of them for the next two weeks.

We wanted to see each other again.

She flew to Denver and drove out to Salt Lake City with me.

We spent three beautiful days in the mountains and I understood, in part, why I felt so compelled to take the trip.

So: this is just a summary, a preview, a way of whetting your appetites for the larger tale (which I am working on as a holistic piece and will take a bit of time—it is going to be long, and it is going to be weird).

I’m back in Salt Lake City, just moved into my new apartment and need to start doing some work up at the University again, but The Hunt for Tom Clancy is off summer hiatus and back to doing our thing, and I just wanted to tell you all how much I appreciate each and every one of you and the opportunities you give me to live out and tell great stories.

Substack is telling me this is close to our length limit.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you. If you’d like to support this work, please become a paid subscriber.

Matt Farwell