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PASSING FANCIES ON THE JOURNEY TO IN-BETWEEN
On the Kerouac Least Heat Moon Steinbeck road to somewhere that’s not Here, parts of my mind are rattling around in an effort to remain awake and alert.
I’m driving a certain distance, watching the highway the cars the drivers the signs the markers the passing foliage, all in an effort to arrive safely and in one piece at my destination. But this bundle of alertness doesn’t take up all the space in my head, so part of me just keeps on writing and making notes, marking notations, taking imaginary selfies of both world at large and thoughts internal.
Having never driven behind myself, I don’t know what my car and I look like to someone approaching from the rear. But I do know what the rear driver and car look like because the three rearview reverse-image mirrors in my vehicle reflect scenes from a life distantly lived, distantly imagined.
The Tastykake glazed cherry pie I’m munching on provides refreshment accompanying my three-screen viewing of this rear-approaching person, and I can’t help recording details. She is dabbing at her nose with a tissue while glancing at the reflection of a car behind her. She is talking animatedly to an invisible friend, or to a small child I cannot see, or to a phone buddy…or to herself. Diagnosis of schizophrenia is a complicated thing these days, it being the case that everybody talks to the vacant air just about all the time.
The great challenge of our species is how to fill the times in between with something worthwhile, or at least something non-damaging to others. What do I do with myself during the times in between? Observing what goes on around me, fore, aft, left, right, below, above, inside, out, is something to keep me busy and out of trouble.
The Tastykake is crunchy and dribbly, the roadway running beneath my car is potholed and patchy, the sky is cloudy and gray, the car behind me is mottled and old, I the driver am also mottled and old. But the neverending road leads on, the overlapping thoughts and feelings and imaginings continue unabated.
The reverse-image driver’s rounded face is unreadable. Her eyebrows point up, like a theatre drama/tragedy mask. Her expressions alternate between wonderment and pain. But she stays the course, managing the endless highway and the endless chatter and the runny nose and the hundredfold additional sadnesses and thrills with which she must deal.
I pass by a vacant Hamburger Heaven with an enormous CLOSED sign. I wonder whether this means Heaven is closed to all hamburgers, whether there are hamburgers in Heaven, whether Heaven itself has shut down, whether the neverending road is all there is.
At last I approach the City and watch as it absorbs the sunrise morning into its cement glass metal concrete brick self, only to reflect back at me its ambient light and heat. It is familiar and comfortable. It is my Kerouac Least Heat Moon Steinbeck Tastykake destination.
I dab cherry syrup from my beard, house my rusty metal steed in its stable, grunt my way to a standing position and continue the few steps leading to today’s next adventures
© Jim Reed 2017 A.D.
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast