Back in My Road Days
Posted: April 11th, 2019, 7:59 pm
I did crazy runs. People thought I'd lost it. Kevin, the ex-grunt who did time on a desert army base, said everything below Oregon was a "shithole." But Chef Steve knew it was just something I had inside. And so I returned to the great desert playa a few more times-- to the spaces between. I'd slip out of work on Thursday afternoon to cheat Friday and get rolling, thousands of miles in a few days. But I came to realize the problem of motion mania. A hard run out to the edge might set up a quiet launch beyond, but if I went too far, too fast, I might miss my turn, or a fever might follow me out.
.......My first map had only lines and points, so I always ran to the next point and ignored the blankness between . . . Until I got a better map, one that showed every ridge and thin trail, so I could see what filled in blankness; like hawk aeries atop cliffs; or the foolish, joyous squawks of spadefoot toads after blessed rain, out of their sleep holes to play and screw in the mud, not wasting a single precious second as their hardened predators circled closer; maybe a rattler twisting away from my treads, only heard, not seen.
.......I traded eight lanes for four, and four for two, but even two were too fast, so I found dirt. Yet even on dirt I sometimes moved too quickly; I wanted every scene from every angle. But I could never get to it all, only more of it, so where was the balance between motion and connection? I was always rolling too fast in those days; it was six hundred miles out to the edge of trees and no time to get there. But I could still catch a small world's vastness, its creeks, peaks and bluffs-- things you can't get from up in the sky.
.......No, you can't fly hundreds or thousands of miles on an airplane and get the shape of rock; you get hazy little bumps under the wings. Huxley said we'd fly on rockets by now-- no shape at all, just a blue-brown blur in the window . . . So I had to spurn the airport, with its tinny echoes of voices and footsteps on miles of sterile, gleaming concourses, and acres of vast window systems with distant jet planes inside them creeping and launching. No, to get the shape of rock I'd need the surface, at the speed of wheels, no more.
.......I had to get away. To see other places that others had to get away from to see the place I got away from. Eventually we all go in crisscrossing arcs and bet the over-under, react and refract, ping peaks and set sights. So for awhile I had to make an uneasy peace with the long haul road, no way around it. But I could still find stretches of the Old Road where old classics still stood, with a poetry of their own. The best rooms had some mileage on them, some mix of cracked walls or singing pipes, splintered chairs, antique air and carpet from the Carter years worn fuzz-bare like patterns of dry stream beds. I could find them on the Old Road, the neon streets, literary places, faces nicked, some with big fat door casings beneath twelve layers of paint.
.......My first map had only lines and points, so I always ran to the next point and ignored the blankness between . . . Until I got a better map, one that showed every ridge and thin trail, so I could see what filled in blankness; like hawk aeries atop cliffs; or the foolish, joyous squawks of spadefoot toads after blessed rain, out of their sleep holes to play and screw in the mud, not wasting a single precious second as their hardened predators circled closer; maybe a rattler twisting away from my treads, only heard, not seen.
.......I traded eight lanes for four, and four for two, but even two were too fast, so I found dirt. Yet even on dirt I sometimes moved too quickly; I wanted every scene from every angle. But I could never get to it all, only more of it, so where was the balance between motion and connection? I was always rolling too fast in those days; it was six hundred miles out to the edge of trees and no time to get there. But I could still catch a small world's vastness, its creeks, peaks and bluffs-- things you can't get from up in the sky.
.......No, you can't fly hundreds or thousands of miles on an airplane and get the shape of rock; you get hazy little bumps under the wings. Huxley said we'd fly on rockets by now-- no shape at all, just a blue-brown blur in the window . . . So I had to spurn the airport, with its tinny echoes of voices and footsteps on miles of sterile, gleaming concourses, and acres of vast window systems with distant jet planes inside them creeping and launching. No, to get the shape of rock I'd need the surface, at the speed of wheels, no more.
.......I had to get away. To see other places that others had to get away from to see the place I got away from. Eventually we all go in crisscrossing arcs and bet the over-under, react and refract, ping peaks and set sights. So for awhile I had to make an uneasy peace with the long haul road, no way around it. But I could still find stretches of the Old Road where old classics still stood, with a poetry of their own. The best rooms had some mileage on them, some mix of cracked walls or singing pipes, splintered chairs, antique air and carpet from the Carter years worn fuzz-bare like patterns of dry stream beds. I could find them on the Old Road, the neon streets, literary places, faces nicked, some with big fat door casings beneath twelve layers of paint.