No sooner did I hit the road than thoughts started swarming in again. I’ve done such a good job of keeping all my thoughts and memories, my nostalgia a frequently humming but quiet din, like white noise, like company, like a cat that sleeps next to me but never really tells me whats in it’s thoughts.
On the road, no radio, hours of swaying roads in front of me, passing car after car, everything articulated itself clean and clear.
I thought of him and him and him and him and him. Who I wanted to be for them. Everyone one of them. If they could see me now. In this car, thinking of them. Really. I was thinking of me, in his eyes. In all of their eyes, separately, individually, as a watching mass, judging and assessing and categorizing and itemizing. I was thinking of me, just me, how I feel and smell and touch and how they do the same.
And I was looking at the sky and trees and this nuclear power plant so perfectly situated in this peaceful brook. Who would put a nuclear power plant there? Who would put such a picture perfect power plant, just like that tower you always see in the panoramic overview of Simpson’s Springfield, in the midst of an English country side?
And I was looking and watching and noticing I was going to get there way before I needed to get to work, that I was making good time. I hadn’t stopped once, even though I was thirsty and hot and early and zipping along.
And by the time I got to Astoria I had more than enough time to just park my car and run along the train tracks and sit and think some more.
And I tried to think of me. Just me. Outside anyone else’s needs or perceptions. To just feel being me, out there, on the water, next to a lonely little van and an old train station with an hour to kill and work to be done. And I realized I get up ever day to be someone who’s a stranger. That I know myself so well yet I don’t know what I want. Not really. It all sounds good. All of it. Any of it. Any of it but just this, just now, how it goes, day to day, the first thing I do when I rise and the second thing I do when I rise are no longer me. I thought about how very much Astoria feels like a beach town and smells like a beach town but really that’s mostly the Columbia and things just aren’t what they seem. Sometimes that’s nice. Sometimes the approximation of the dream makes the fantasy real. Sometimes it just makes you forget what the real sea is all about.
So I went and did my job and I left Astoria and I came back to here and then I left my job and I’ve done my penance and said good bye to some things I should have cast in that Astoria sea a long time ago. I gave up knowing what I thought was me and decided to start studying my desires and not my ruminating on my habits.
I’ve decided to take me for more than a test drive. That me I think I know but I really only see for glimpses at tentative commutes. I’m taking her out on the town to see what she’s capable of. I’m taking her to the sea and the mountains, I’m gonna open her up on the road and see how she handles.