Between Point A and Point B

So I am on vacation this week. I felt a need to go on vacation, have been feeling it for awhile now, but not any particular desire to go on vacation. Extreme apathy has been more my style lately. But you can’t hang out in extreme apathy too long,  I’ve heard you forget how to breathe in there. So I knew it would be good for me to go, I knew I needed to be doing something, going somewhere, and yet I had no particular desire to do so.

How about some beach?! Sez I. Beach will be good for you! And so I made some plans, and reserved a room, and last Saturday I headed on out to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

From St. Louis, where I live, to Myrtle Beach is about 15 hours, not counting stops, so I thought that was a little much for a one-day drive. Some people I know thought that was a little long for a drive, period. Too much time with my thoughts, apparently. Like I can get away from my thoughts, no matter where I go?

Truth be told I was not looking forward to the drive, due to the aforementioned apathy. But I loaded up my iPod and I made a rule that I could not fast-forward any songs, I had to listen to whatever came up. (Deep, Song-Related Thoughts on the Road are some of my favorite Deep Thoughts of all. There’s something curiously validating about someone feeling something you feel, and feeling it so hard that they wrote a song about it, and other people recognized that this was a real feeling and they produced and promoted and sold that song. That means I am not alone in my feelings, no matter how weird and singular they seem inside my head.)

I started out with The Weepies newest single “I Was Made for Sunny Days” because it’s hopeful, and it makes me sad and happy and leaves me forlorn and optimistic all at once, and I thought that pretty much suited my state of mind. (If you want to hear it, it’s currently streaming at their site, so click the link up there and you can hear it. But I am sure you will not understand. I am sure you will not get why it’s what it is. I could explain it to you another time, if you asked me. But no, you will not understand it, I feel certain. Oh you, you and your not understanding things. The only thing I hate worse is when you do understand things.)

And so down the road I went, listening the The Weepies and Duran Duran and Public Enemy and Franz Ferdinand and Laura Veirs and Combichrist and DICEGRINDER and lord only knows what else. And as I drove I remembered what I thought I’d remember, as I had not really forgotten it, which is how forward motion soothes my soul.

I like to go places. I really like to go. I like to be on the way somewhere. I like to be in motion, aimed at a destination. I just plain like to go. I do not so much like to arrive. I do not like to BE places. You get somewhere, then you have to deal with that place. It’s no longer a potential place, a potential experience, it’s a real thing that you have to comprehend and undertake and deal with. That’s no fun. Going to a place is wonderful, and purposeful and calming. “I am on my way to a place! Look at me go!” That’s fun. Being at a place is frenetic and scary and full of loud noises and brightly-lit signs and full-length mirrors set across from toilets and all other manner of inexplicableness.

I like to have road in front of me, and beautiful scenery that I can’t quite see clearly, since I am driving. I like the sun and the trees and getting excited every single time I cross water, and I like the interaction of passing other cars and going faster than them, and then they pass you and you’re seeing their same stupid bumper sticker again for three hours in a row, and then you’re not because you passed them again, and then they have to stop for gas and VICTORY! You have defeated them!

I love listening to music and singing really loudly because all the lyrics suddenly really mean something – something profound – and I just have to sing along to it, and it’s OK because no one can hear me and it doesn’t matter if  Jim Bob from Kentucky thinks I am making funny faces, I do not even know Jim Bob and don’t give a care what he thinks about the faces I make. Has Jim Bob even heard this song? No, I thought not.

I like the physical act of driving. I love to go fast, and feel in control of my vehicle, and feel it respond the way I want it to and the way the motion of the car drags my body back and forth when I take corners and change lanes. I love having the window open and feeling the wind rush past, but really it’s me rushing past the wind. Driving – it’s so complex and it’s so simple. I push this pedal, I make it GO. Sometimes I think I’d like to rent a race track and just drive in circles for a few hours every day. Vrooom.

And so today when I was walking around this botanical garden/nature preserve thing I thought about the pictures that I most often take when I am in that kind of environment. They’re all paths. All my favorite pictures from all my favorite places, they mostly have paths in them. Maybe everyone likes to take pictures of paths. I don’t know. But I take a lot of them. And that makes sense to me, that fits. I want to look at paths because I want to be on paths. In several senses, I want to be on my way somewhere or I want to dream about being on my way somewhere. I just don’t ever, ever want to arrive.

And so tomorrow morning I will start for home. I really, really want to go. Tonight I am impatient that a night of sleep stands between me and the going. I am afraid that I will not want to arrive, and that when I do I will just want to turn back and head out again. And I will not be able to, I will have to stay. But I guess that will be OK too. I will make up some crap about an inner journey and I will make my peace with it and I will construct a process inside my head that feels like a trip somewhere and I will wait for my next chance to go.