Road Trips

"One [reason for the melancholy I feel] is that, though I am here in body, my mind and my nerves too are not yet altogether here. We seem to grant to our high-speed roads and our airlines the rather thoughtless assumption that people can change places as rapidly as their bodies can be transported. That, as my own experience keeps proving me, is not true. In the middle fo the afternoon I left off being busy at work, and drove though traffic to the freeway, and then for a solid hour or more I drove sixty or seventy miles an hour, hardly aware of the country I was passing though, because on the freeway one does not have to be. The landscape has been subdued so that one may drive over it at seventy miles per hour without concession whatsoever to one's whereabouts. One might as well be flying. Though one is in Kentucky one is not experiencing Kentucky; one is experiencing the highway, which might be in nearly any hill country east of the Mississippi . . .Our senses, after all, were developed to function at foot speeds; and the tranisition from foot travel to motor travel, in terms of evolutionary time, has been abrupt. The faster one goes, the more strain there is on the senses, the more they fail to take in, the more confusion they must tolerate or gloss over--and the longer it takes to bring the mind to a stop in the presence of anything. Though the freeway passes through the very heart of this forest, the motorist remains several hours' journey by foot from what is living at the edge of the right-of-way."

Taken from Wendell Berry's Recollected Essays 1965 - 1980

Aging Halloween

I've decided I'll be a fairy for Halloween this year. I say this year as though I've had previous years of costumes. The truth is I'm a bit of a recluse. Other people live to dress up this time of year. Me, I watch people in their costumes and wish that were me. But instead I stay at home. This year is different - I have a party to go to. (I say that with pride, which strikes me as a bit pitiful)

A friend and I wandered around the Halloween store for hours looking for just the right costume. They have quite a selection of, shall we say, revealing outfits. There was the referee, the milkmaid, catwoman, batgirl, elvira, school girl and scottich girl. There were over 70 costume choices under the category of "slutty", usually involving thigh highs, boots or both. As I was looking over the selections, part of me was thrilled at the thought of looking like these volumptuous models, like I've always dreamed of looking in a Halloween costume. The other half of me was appalled that I would be on display in skanky fetish outfits for any male to see and lust over. I think of this as a sure sign of my age.

I finally decided on black fairy wings and dark makeup. I felt a girly sort of giddiness when I thought of the fun I would have wearing fake, sparkly eyelashes. The other part of me thrilled at the cheap cost of makeup and wings. Halloween has become ridiculously expensive.

  

I tried on the wings tonight with the outfit I had planned and I realized another sign of my age: I am not willing to be on display if I'll be cold. I'd rather be comfortable. I wonder if fairies wear sweaters and boots?

Dotted Line

                I drive two hours three days a week to get to college. I knew early on this would be a drain on me but I hadn’t realized just how frustrating unexploded road rage can be. I had a friend who told me the reason his priest lived so long was because he never learned to drive. I have to wonder how many years I’ve aged in the last three semesters; people on the road drive me crazy! Some days I think there’s a trend. There must have been a memo sent out to all tan SUVs the other day, because they all drove in the left lane on the highway. Every one I passed. It has to be a conspiracy, designed to make us all choose public transportation. The summers in Pittsburgh are the worst. Nothing makes me crazier than when the construction barrels come out, which have now wisely become concrete barriers to protect PennDot from angry drivers such as myself. Does it really take 5 months to fix a [bleep!] exit ramp?

                In a strange sort of dichotomy, this weekend I took a long drive to get away and relax. I picked a spot on the map that was straight highway, pointed my car in that direction and drove. My friend told me I was crazy. Five hours in a car relaxes me? When I come close to homicide on a daily basis for school? Let me explain.

                When I take a long drive, I know I have hours to myself in that car. There isn’t much in this world I can control, but for a short amount of time, I know I have me, myself and the music I choose to listen to at my command. With my little red Matrix and my brain set to cruise control, my mind can wander where it will. I’ve worked out many issues on long car rides. I can let myself think and think until I’ve either exhausted my brain or worked the problem out in my head. I can cry, I can yell, I can sit in silence and marvel at the scenery. I can put on angry music, sing at the top of my lungs, pretend I’m on the movie set of Thelma and Louise with the wind in my scarf or stop at any billboard-advertised store that catches my interest along the way. On long road trips in my car, I am free.

                This weekend was a gorgeous time to travel. The leaves must have been at their peak because the colors I saw while driving across the countryside melted every tension I had taken with me. I got to see the sunset and travel for a time with the sweet memories twilight brings with it. I can smell Kennywood at any given twilight, when the lights are just being turned on and that’s when I know it’s time for funnel cakes. Or when lightening bugs used to come out at my Gram’s place so thick they would light up the field with their blinking lights. I would dance around the yard trying to catch them while she watched on from her lawn chair, crocheting in the fading light.

                Driving at night is my least favorite time to drive because the passing scene is blanketed, bedding down for the night, a place I should have been had I left two hours earlier. The cars in front and behind me become my only world and I grow easily agitated with trucks and their painfully bright headlights. The drive is saved, however, because there is something soothing to me about the dash lights, a soft reminder of drives past when I would wake up in the van my father piled us in for road trips. The glow would throw a vaguely green cast to the gray in his beard and the sheen of his skin as he accepted a cup of coffee my mother poured for him from his army green thermos.

                What can I say? My car is my happy place.

Out of Control

            I found the Big Dipper pretty easily. I also found all of Orion, which I’ve never been able to see in the city. I even found four or five Little Dippers, which probably says something about the depth of my star knowledge.

            I’ve always wanted to sit on the hood of a car and watch the stars from an overlook. It sounds lonely and romantic and full of pathos. It certainly sounds better than gingerly walking through a pasture in deep darkness with no street lights to guide me or even horizon city lights off in the distance to brighten the edge of the night sky. I kept one eye out for cow patties and one eye out for the mean-spirited bull. That meant I had no eyes leftover to appreciate the night show spread over the darkest blue dome above me. I‘ve heard of people having a third eye, but I’ve never been able to find mine. Perhaps I’ve misplaced it? It’s entirely possible, as I’ve misplaced most everything else in my life.

            Oops. Eyes one and two failed me—I slid in something a little too soft and squishy to be dewy grass.

            I’ve never thought of myself as a city girl, but then I’ve never thought of myself as a country girl either. I suppose that would put me in the suburbs but the country girl in me resents even that title. However, with a dome of splendor above my head, surrounded by loud, bellowing, angry moos, slipping in nature I’d never meant to, I felt more like a city girl than I ever had in my life. All I’d wanted was to soak up the atmosphere! Instead I was stepping in it.

            I’d done this night excursion so I could be with the horses in the dark. Taking away one’s vision has a way of enhancing the other senses and I was eager to experience this blindness with a horse. I hadn’t planned on experiencing it with noisy cows as well. By the time I had found a looming, hulking shape in the darkness and determined I wasn’t about to snuggle up with a cranky bovine, I realized just how tough it would be without sight. Until that night, I’d never understood just how reliant I was on my vision and how helpless I felt without it, how out of control.

            I stroked the horse I’d come across, whose name was Solomon I think, and thought of my fear. How ridiculous I was being. I couldn’t shake my fear, the instability of my situation. Horses are wonderful and calming and sweet. And terrifying because they spook easily. One minute I could be finding comfort in Solomon’s presence and the next I could be knocked over by his big body, shoved out of his path in his rush to get away from whatever had scared him. Horses, by nature, are prey. They have to be aware of everything around them in case a lion or loud human might jump out and have them for dinner. Or breakfast. Or lunch. In the dark, I became more and more alert because I realized I wasn’t in control of anything. Without my vision, I was helpless to see and anticipate what might spook Solomon. My night excursion to find peace had become a precursor to finding a masseuse—every muscle in my body was tensed and ready to give flight.

            By the time Solomon ambled off, I was ready to head back to the main house. To lights. To a place where I could see. At the very least, to a place where I wasn’t afraid of what I couldn’t see.