When i think about it - some of the most profound and rewarding moments of my life have taken place while i’ve been in a car. My drives to Bradford, the trip across the country with my father, a long drive with a scared dog on my lap and JT sitting behind the wheel are just some of the moments that I think about every single day.
I’ve combined these with movie lines and song lyrics, and I’ve realized that these snapshots are the things that help me maintain my sanity - my tiny, twisted, and warped sense of sanity. I think of how I start - no matter how faintly - to cry, every time Morgan Freeman starts to say…
I find I’m so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it’s the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.
And I think of all the time i’ve spent being hateful, resentful, jealous, angry, mean spirited and afraid. I think of them and I shudder. I shudder because someone out there…someone equally afraid and resentful and hateful figured out the magic connections between words and feelings, and he put them together and opened his mouth, and out came
Is this the life that you lead?
Or the life that’s led for you?
Will you take the road that’s been laid out before you
Will we cross paths somewhere else tonight?
Somewhere else tonight…
When I can catch my breath - when I can forget about my weight or my smile or my thinning hair or the size of my dick and my 401k and the friends and relatives and dogs that i’ve had to say goodbye to…when I stop to breathe and I think about tucker on my lap, and Red’s first trip to the pacific, with a heart full of hope…when I sit quietly and listen I realize that anything is truly possible.
And with that single thought…in that one single moment, I realized that I wanted to live again - and be funny and witty and charming and loved and loving and here. Yeah - i think that’s it….I wanted to be here.
I’ve made promises to myself for a decade. I let a very good play slip through my fingers…I haven’t written anything important to me since my mother passed away, and I’ve been afraid to embrace the love and loves that could have changed my life.
I think the idea of the web is little more than riding shotgun. It’s hitchhiking across this great land of ours and being introduced to the faces and smells and places and landscapes that have eluded us our entire lives. It’s Borneo and Iraq and Ireland and Sacramento and East Meadow and Haverhill, and we get to experience it while someone else pays for gas.
Somewhere buried within these lines are some of the clearest thoughts i’ve had in years. I’ve decided to just try, for one second, to not be typical every day, not to be the “self” that everyone expects, and that most have grown tired of…to keep driving until the road takes me to a place I haven’t seen. But this time, I’m inviting you along for the ride.
-The Stranger