Movin' Along

The echoes of the humming engine fill the truck’s cab with a dull gray wall of noise, one overtaken only by the blaring radio and the regular beeps of taxi horns. Processions of automobiles flow down the city streets, crossing over the white lane markers, swerving over the dotted lines like fish riding the crisscrossed currents of a mighty river.

Like a fallen tree obstructing a stream, the occasional oversize truck such as my own logjams traffic, holding the streets motionless until it reverses into a loading zone.

There are pedestrians on the sidewalks: men and women in oversize coats, cigarettes dangling from lips, hats on heads, gloves on hands. There’s the white noise of their murmurings too, the mash-up of their many conversations and exclamations all going on at once.

At the loading docks where we deliver, there are more people, more conversations, more sounds. There’s the warning beep of moving forklifts, the slamming of garage doors, the booms of dropped boxes, the grind of a cart’s wheels, the whines of the occasionally ill-tempered employee. At some companies, complaints run rampant through the staff, constant bitchings about this or that – blame, anger, and fear paralyzing growth and fulfillment.

Still, the avenues and the highways roll on, progress still on the march while the future, as mysterious as ever, hides in the shadows.

All of these observations, which I make of the world around me, I see in myself too; my internal reality cluttered with the same conflict, the same confusion, the same power challenged by the same adversity.

In my head are the conversations of my subconscious – fueled by the same ambitions and vulnerable to the same fears. As my journey continues, I feel the pavement rumble beneath my feet and I wait for that force which is blossoming from within – bright and colorful, rich and dark like the blood in my veins and the soil from which the universe springs.