Half-fantasy, half-reality…A travelogue written from my desk.
I have a note, scribbled in Sharpie, taped in a journal:
“I don’t run away. I just get lost at high speeds.”
Why I wrote it and what it was supposed to remind me of I’ve completely forgotten.There’s nothing nearby to give it context. It’s just there, a motto keeping company with a mob of unrelated words.
I need motion. Forced to remain still for any length of time, unless my mind is busy enough to satisfy my restlessness, makes me panic. I start hunching down and fidgeting. My eyes dart around as I look for any reason to jump up, anything to break the monotony.Once upon a time, I could jump in the car and drive until I was calm again. That was months ago.
Anyone who has ever been in a car with me for any length of time knows that I use cars for more than basic transportation. They are tools for both expression and relief. Those unused to this and doesn’t trust both my reflexes and knowledge of my own limits, faced with my operation of a vehicle under the influence of any intense emotion, often ends up white knuckled and bug-eyed. For some reason though, they almost never criticize or suggest a bit more caution on my part.
In a couple hours, I’ll be heading to Greensboro…Not an exotic trip full of new experiences or anything.I’ve made it so many times…births, deaths, vacations. Add in work and I’d have all the makings of the American Dream.I can drive in while I sit here. I AM driving it while I sit here, fantasizing about four hours of mobility.
Of course it starts with the familiar swamps, tiny Elizabeth City, enough to get used to driving again.
The bridge across Albemarle Sound is where I relax, assured that my world has not been transformed into a snow globe while I wasn’t looking, that I won’t be slam into curved glass and find myself suddenly swimming in glitter. This is the bridge where I used to always roll the window down when I was coming home, even in the dead of winter. My first gulps of that water smell, air with texture. On the way back across the state I’d enact the same ritual, saying goodbye to real bodies of water.
Windsor. When I know I’m going somewhere. Times like these when I feel like I’m living life with my foot caught in a bear trap, it’s the first place I breathe freely on my way away from this home.
Still, this is the beginning of the part I hate the most. No bypass to keep Williamston at 45 mph from depressing me. No more swamps and sounds, and even in summer it feels dead to me. Steinbeck and Faulkner start quoting themselves in my head.
“My mother is a fish.”
Thank god I no longer have to rely on radio stations. The lack thereof made the stretch seem longer and even more dead. I remember one late night drive when we found a bluegrass station and got so excited that we missed an exit and almost ended up in fucking Manteo.
While I’m being thankful, thank God for all those new unfamiliar bypasses that let me avoid every familiar town west of Windsor.
With Faulkner finally drinking himself to sleep, I’ll be sliding north of Rocky Mount, pushing 85 and not thinking of stopping, not even for that Waffle House with its memories of gallons of coffee that kept me conscious for the last leg home from somewhere. Fuck memories and fuck a waffle too…I get started with the memories and, if this were my car (my dog was in the passenger seat and the cats were in the back), that northwest swerve would turn into an exit.
95 South as far as it will take me.
The waffles, even the coffee, just ain’t worth having to say: Oops, got lost again! A record two months for a five hour drive. You know how it goes…
So those are the rules. No stopping or thinking, unless that thought is, “Can I get away with 90?”
Driving is all numbers.
No more than 15 over.
17 to 64.
Going 110 in a 70.
2 hours to go.
Gonna make it by 10.
Exit 224.
What was that whole thing about math being a pure language or some shit? Seems significant in this context.Fuck it.
Zebulon! Founded by aliens in 1742, a place where they could practice their strange faiths and antenna binding without fear of persecution as witches in the name of God and, more recntly, dissection by NASA in the name of science. They’re completely safe because, well, no one stops in Zebulon.
So it’s safe for me to stop here too…if I can just find a fucking Waffle House. Surely aliens eat waffles too.
Past Raleigh, past bars I’m banned from, streets that I swear pitch and wobble because I know that couldn’t have all been me. Chapel Hill, The Dean Dome, a pilgrimage I’ve yet to make but, for once, won’t be tempted by. After last year’s team of schizophrenics lacking even basic proprioception, I’d only stop to wail and rend my garments.I have few enough winter clothes as it is.
440 to 40…MY interstate. 64 miles of nothing on my mind but avoiding exhausted truckers kept sentient only by enviable amounts of speed and the rhythm of a hooker’s head on the steering wheel.
I wonder if truckers carry iPods now.
Too soon, there are those hills that actually feel like hills and the inevitable watery eyed sneezing that let me know I’m officially in That Part of the State, the never-ending traffic that ends my high-speed oblivion a good 30 miles before the Stopping Part.
No Asheville, Nashville, Knoxville, Memphis. At least that means no Arkansas or Oklahoma, but damn I’ve been desperate to see desert for months now. No clue why.
But I’ll force the fantasy to stop here, if for no other reason than that I need to pack and dog-proof the house.
For awhile after I make the trip back home (probably as a hung-over, grumbling passenger hunkered down behind sunglasses) I’ll only get my fix on the occasional nighttime, near suicidal runs through the un-populated roads of Camden…Windows rolled down, laughing and dressing up narrow two-lane roads as interstates.
But it’s not time to think of that yet.
No forethought has officially been added to my list of rules.
“I don’t run away. I just get lost at high speeds.”
Why I wrote it and what it was supposed to remind me of I’ve completely forgotten.There’s nothing nearby to give it context. It’s just there, a motto keeping company with a mob of unrelated words.
I need motion. Forced to remain still for any length of time, unless my mind is busy enough to satisfy my restlessness, makes me panic. I start hunching down and fidgeting. My eyes dart around as I look for any reason to jump up, anything to break the monotony.Once upon a time, I could jump in the car and drive until I was calm again. That was months ago.
Anyone who has ever been in a car with me for any length of time knows that I use cars for more than basic transportation. They are tools for both expression and relief. Those unused to this and doesn’t trust both my reflexes and knowledge of my own limits, faced with my operation of a vehicle under the influence of any intense emotion, often ends up white knuckled and bug-eyed. For some reason though, they almost never criticize or suggest a bit more caution on my part.
In a couple hours, I’ll be heading to Greensboro…Not an exotic trip full of new experiences or anything.I’ve made it so many times…births, deaths, vacations. Add in work and I’d have all the makings of the American Dream.I can drive in while I sit here. I AM driving it while I sit here, fantasizing about four hours of mobility.
Of course it starts with the familiar swamps, tiny Elizabeth City, enough to get used to driving again.
The bridge across Albemarle Sound is where I relax, assured that my world has not been transformed into a snow globe while I wasn’t looking, that I won’t be slam into curved glass and find myself suddenly swimming in glitter. This is the bridge where I used to always roll the window down when I was coming home, even in the dead of winter. My first gulps of that water smell, air with texture. On the way back across the state I’d enact the same ritual, saying goodbye to real bodies of water.
Windsor. When I know I’m going somewhere. Times like these when I feel like I’m living life with my foot caught in a bear trap, it’s the first place I breathe freely on my way away from this home.
Still, this is the beginning of the part I hate the most. No bypass to keep Williamston at 45 mph from depressing me. No more swamps and sounds, and even in summer it feels dead to me. Steinbeck and Faulkner start quoting themselves in my head.
“My mother is a fish.”
Thank god I no longer have to rely on radio stations. The lack thereof made the stretch seem longer and even more dead. I remember one late night drive when we found a bluegrass station and got so excited that we missed an exit and almost ended up in fucking Manteo.
While I’m being thankful, thank God for all those new unfamiliar bypasses that let me avoid every familiar town west of Windsor.
With Faulkner finally drinking himself to sleep, I’ll be sliding north of Rocky Mount, pushing 85 and not thinking of stopping, not even for that Waffle House with its memories of gallons of coffee that kept me conscious for the last leg home from somewhere. Fuck memories and fuck a waffle too…I get started with the memories and, if this were my car (my dog was in the passenger seat and the cats were in the back), that northwest swerve would turn into an exit.
95 South as far as it will take me.
The waffles, even the coffee, just ain’t worth having to say: Oops, got lost again! A record two months for a five hour drive. You know how it goes…
So those are the rules. No stopping or thinking, unless that thought is, “Can I get away with 90?”
Driving is all numbers.
No more than 15 over.
17 to 64.
Going 110 in a 70.
2 hours to go.
Gonna make it by 10.
Exit 224.
What was that whole thing about math being a pure language or some shit? Seems significant in this context.Fuck it.
Zebulon! Founded by aliens in 1742, a place where they could practice their strange faiths and antenna binding without fear of persecution as witches in the name of God and, more recntly, dissection by NASA in the name of science. They’re completely safe because, well, no one stops in Zebulon.
So it’s safe for me to stop here too…if I can just find a fucking Waffle House. Surely aliens eat waffles too.
Past Raleigh, past bars I’m banned from, streets that I swear pitch and wobble because I know that couldn’t have all been me. Chapel Hill, The Dean Dome, a pilgrimage I’ve yet to make but, for once, won’t be tempted by. After last year’s team of schizophrenics lacking even basic proprioception, I’d only stop to wail and rend my garments.I have few enough winter clothes as it is.
440 to 40…MY interstate. 64 miles of nothing on my mind but avoiding exhausted truckers kept sentient only by enviable amounts of speed and the rhythm of a hooker’s head on the steering wheel.
I wonder if truckers carry iPods now.
Too soon, there are those hills that actually feel like hills and the inevitable watery eyed sneezing that let me know I’m officially in That Part of the State, the never-ending traffic that ends my high-speed oblivion a good 30 miles before the Stopping Part.
No Asheville, Nashville, Knoxville, Memphis. At least that means no Arkansas or Oklahoma, but damn I’ve been desperate to see desert for months now. No clue why.
But I’ll force the fantasy to stop here, if for no other reason than that I need to pack and dog-proof the house.
For awhile after I make the trip back home (probably as a hung-over, grumbling passenger hunkered down behind sunglasses) I’ll only get my fix on the occasional nighttime, near suicidal runs through the un-populated roads of Camden…Windows rolled down, laughing and dressing up narrow two-lane roads as interstates.
But it’s not time to think of that yet.
No forethought has officially been added to my list of rules.