Drive.
Whenever the dull, flat days of winter start weighing me down, I drive.
Maybe this stresses the increasingly short-lived seam of fossil fuels, but the motion is what allows me to be comfortable with myself. The spirit bubble I’m always looking to align in the level.
In order to write, I need to write.
I hope I’m not ruining your day with redundancy. But that thought needs to be written.
There have been eons in California and New York where I stared at loaded pens and empty paper. Waiting for ideas, hoping to uncover corresponding words and their creation. When really, all I could do was cultivate the furrows of a frown.
Doubt breeds doubt, stasis breeds stasis. And motion breeds motion.
Back to the earliest blur, the gangs of feral hippie children from my New England youth, the faces perfectly streaked with mud and paint. They were raised to be wolves, disregarding every man-made manifestation in the world around them.
They were also the ones to first eloquently question authority, citing natural hierarchies that didn’t resonate with my sarcastic teenage self.
At the time, I resisted what I perceived to be deadheaded-ness. (I’ve always had a modest colonial relationship with nature. I love her more than anything. Yet we used to sit on benches. We used to undress in the dark.)
But now, the world is full of reasons. What’s what has an actual answer. I guess sometimes you have to look beyond the patchouli for the truth.
An earth-driven agenda that once seemed to be sanctimonious hogwash is actually built on rocks of reason.
It’s not easy to accept everything that the world throws at my head. I wasn’t raised to see the world the way I see it now. With the constant connections and information. Knowing now that we are woven into our weather systems and where we source our food.
But until I can fully replace all the mechanics in my brain, I will still drive. Rolling through winter hills and reservoirs, looking for more of what I don’t know.
Please forgive me of my excesses. Sometimes the only way I know how to move forward is to move forward.