Road Journal .55 (Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan)

Monday, July 16, 2007

Thoughts while Driving

This is the fractal of our flag. It stands for the right to destroy itself. –Ken Kesey

A deer scurried over the two lane Illinois road, her cotton ball of white tail the last I saw of her as she camouflaged back into the forest. From the gravel shoulder, the flat metal surfaces of wood-post signs screamed their instructions: Maintain Minimum Speed, No Stopping.

Green signs over bridges announced rivers—discovered and named long before my birth. Blue signs proclaimed streets and intersections—paved and titled without my consent. I navigated from a map someone else had drawn, drove over a land others had conquered. Disaffected.

For states I’d been watching the people of my generation work for companies they didn’t care for, obsess over celebrity lives they weren’t living, and agonize over news too sensational for concern. Cataleptic.

At a truck stop in Milwaukee the brown feet of a sleeping man dangled from a sedan’s window at sunrise. Car doors opened and slammed behind the weary bodies of poor travelers walking into the lounge for a morning shower amongst the truckers. They dug deep into pockets to pay for their cup of coffee. They hauled the carload of their life to wherever they were traveling—modern Joads searching for their fields of plenty. The truck stop was their community center, the blacktop their home. Transient.

A Chicago girl, her brown hair wound in dreadlocks, told me impassionedly of the problems of urban sprawl, world hunger, racism, war, and fear. “Thinking of that makes it so hard to be happy,” she said. Overanxious.

As I pressed my two wheels to the eastbound road my brain simmered with the liquid of uncertainty, expanding until my incompatible thoughts coalesced in a wet cloud.

I had but six states to cover.

I’d seen friends shipped off to war. I’d heard the laugh of a new baby. I’d seen angry police officers lecture their accosted on the merits of tax paying and the horrors of terrorism. I’d seen the gap-tooth smile of a kid earning his first job. I’d seen the hungry men waiting in line at the shelters, rubbing their dirty beards. I’d seen the happy people rubbing full bellies and the sad people tugging ashamedly at their fat.

I’d seen the people squatting in the remnants of their homes, wondering if the government would allow them to reclaim their hurricane ravaged properties. I’d seen the sun reflecting off the first time home-buyer, the grin of the unsheltered as he stepped from the rain.

I’d seen the last arguments of the divorcing couple, heard the early rants of the new immigrant, smoked the last drag with a jail bound felon, witnessed the power elite struggling to protect themselves. I’d watched the cocaine destroy its user, smelt the three-star meal prepared by the men who snuck illegally across the border, heard the epics of the transcontinental truckers.

I saw the secret weapon transformed into the Achilles heel. I looked at a flag that could burn itself. Ironic.

One day my silk skin will turn to leather. The hair will leave my head. I will fade to gray. My cheeks will sag like limp sheets over the steal rod of my jaw. My joints will ache. My vision will fade. My heart of fire will burn cold. Worn.

Would I one day find a home? Comfortable and domestic. Would my world be stationary and simple? My mind limited to routine? Would I one day be thrown in jail? Beaten and sodomized. Would my life be treated as a game? My body as an animal carcass? Would I one day be stricken mentally ill? My memory a tie-die blur. Would my faculties diminish but my reservoir remain full? Tragic.

Would I never discover the unfound frontier? Never name my river or blaze my trail? Would I never draw my map or write the words unwritten? Would I do no more than sing the songs I’d been sung, elect the officials already nominated, repeat the message I’d been told, fight the battles fought before? Would I follow the instruction on each roadside post? Heartbreaking.

One day I would die, leaving my dreams to the efforts I gave them. Certain.

Crossing through Michigan in the rain, en route to my final six states, I was asked the question for the millionth time: what inspired you to do this?

This took no inspiration. The earth spins. The wind blows. The waves crash. Time passes. The mind rushes on.