This morning, I woke up with cool hands and feet, and lightly sore legs. I dressed with the lights off and my eyes half closed, had to fumble around under the bed for my belt. I packed my things, got into the Minicooper, and drove north. I passed the commuters on their way to Bellevue, and got over the Mercer Island bridge into Seattle. I filed into the queue of cars merging onto I-5 in the shadow of the convention center and then drove up along the highway until I turned off into Northgate. I got a bottle of tea at a gas station and headed off again. At first I thought I’d drive up to Lynnwood, but I found myself hanging onto the perimeter of the lake instead. I didn’t have any destination in mind. I placed a new CD I ordered online (Tennis’ Pollen) in the load tray and turned up the volume. I took whatever road would get me farther away from where I’d once been.
It’s a liberating feeling when you’re on the road and you have nowhere to go. The lines of the road, the street poles, the shopfronts and the trees whip and blur past and it seems like the past and present are obliviated away leaving only pure and untrod future living.
Thousands of desperate men are fighting to the death in Eastern Europe, a wholly new form of intelligent life is being borne in by semiconductors and processors, and the earth is raging at our transgressions against it. But for a short time I’m not there at all. I’m beside the flowing, the rapid current of the entire world and yet I’m not of it or in it.
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