...a Westbound Car Crossing Indiana

Everything translates into dots and lines of white and yellow light. Cell phones out, laptops cued... distractions abound. Mike watches the road and tries to keep us on course. The GPS is set... 122 miles to go. Ice spilled from my preparatory Iced Mocha melts on the ground beneath my shoes. My left foot edging against the driver's side seat belt release is certain to cause some discomfort, but it's really the only way I can sit without my lower extremities falling asleep, so... it'll have to do.

I love thinking about the cars passing in the opposite direction. I wonder how many of them will arrive at the place I left... life has a way of filling in the gaps, doesn't it? I wonder if the people going faster are reckless or simply, well, driven. Maybe there's urgency to their pace. We're rolling a respectable 70 at the moment, nothing to scoff at.

Just passed a mail truck. I've never met a mailman well enough to remember their name, but I respect them all. I don't understand the fat ones... just because, if your job involves walking every single day of the week (except Sunday) how do you maintain that kind of body weight? Our mail carrier in the house where I grew up had the perpetual sunburned muscular look one would expect from a postal service employee. Maybe I've just been spoiled by him.

Just passed a deer crossing sign. On the highway. Going 70. That's messed up. I think that must just be there for liability reasons, because deer or not, nothing short of divine intervention is stopping 4,000 pounds of car in any sort of time to avoid an animal. Sorry bambi.

Coming home tonight... and I think there's something there. I think we all have a different routine about coming home. Especially those of us who left for very specific reasons and moved to the other end of the country. Maybe it's just me, but I know the people I like to see when I come home, the people that basically make home somewhere to come back to, and they're not parents or siblings... they're close friends, complicated relationships that you just can't help but orbit.

Sometimes we can all be like Pluto. Just this distant dwarf rock floating in the sky far from the warmth of the heart, the shining beaming star for which we keep a hidden solitary space. I don't think it ever goes away. Even on the coldest day, once that beaming, glowing sun has us in her gaze, we're locked in for the count. But maybe there's something to be said for those far off bodies.

It's the inner conflict I love. I mean, no, obviously I hate it... but something about it oils the gears in me that somehow help me function. Sometimes I need the destruction to handle all the simple happy peace of life. Does that make any sense? I think there's something in everyone that seeks balance. For most of us that force urges us to find happiness. But what about the people who have already found their happiness? What about those old-soul trouble seekers who suddenly found the water to douse their flame? One can only live so long as a bundle of wet sticks until the longing for pure, raw heat starts to rumble. And there's nothing wrong with that. Fire shines a light, doesn't it? And as long as you don't let it burn down your house, a little light can prove very useful in dark times.

But I'm rambling.

We keep passing the sillhouettes of leafless trees in the distance. Like million fingered hands outstretched from the ground towards the sky, clawing their aged way towards greater heights... I respect their persistence, but the scars and split bark from recent lightning storms makes me question their prudence.

I wonder if the fir tree knows the distant planet. Two beings reaching for the same sun. I wonder if, moments before the lightning strikes and splits the soaking tree in two, it sees and knows everything in existence, even the other planets, or does it always understand its place in the universe?

We were all created, eons ago, by a cataclysmic cosmic collision. We really are all made of stars. We are, all of us, from our very cores, being pulled towards the same far off star.

A year from now, I'll read this and laugh. Right there. Because, as it stands, I've always looked back at myself and thought how foolish I was back then... what little I knew about the world. And I suppose that is a good thing. Better than to look back and wonder were the insight and the wisdom went. Enlightenment often means recognizing the folly of our past.

100 miles to go.

That's all for now.