<\/p>\n
Headlights reveal a small portion of an empty road at night, the field
\nof vision in front of you and to the immediate sides of the road\u2014the
\nwhite line, the gravel, the ditch overgrown with deceptive grass\u2014and
\nyou’re going so fast you can’t see a\u00a0 tomcat prowling in that
\nditch or where a jittery rabbit darts off, startled by your bumping,
\nroaring car, your 100-watt headlamps.<\/p>\n
You can only see the moment right in front of you, not behind you in
\nthe dark, not further ahead in the dark, nor from side to side; it’s
\nall dark in the country stretching out, invisible for miles.\u00a0 The
\nonly glimpse you have of something outside of yourself is what is shown
\nin the radius of a streetlight or the silhouettes from a house set
\napart from the road, but as you go on, feet per second, mile by mile,
\nand speed past it, you only get the light, never what is in the house,
\nnever who is in the house, never what problems go on there, or what
\nthoughts occur when it is time for bed or time to wake up or time to
\nsit down to dinner.\u00a0 You’re just a stranger, illuminating moments
\nin succession, revealing them to yourself, and judging them against
\nwhat you know.<\/p>\n
The road, the road.\u00a0 You are traveling not just between places on But on the road, you simply exist as distilled consciousness poured out The radio is proof enough.\u00a0 You are a slave to time and distance, What can you find?\u00a0 There are horrible pockets of this country And so you rock in your bucket seat, your own small voice croaking What you are, what you can be: these things are easier to consider when
\nthe map, but between the disunited states of your own being.
\nBehind is your normal self, for the most part, your job, your bars,
\nyour facts of life.\u00a0 But up ahead, where are you going?
\nVisiting family, old friends, or just an unfamiliar city where a
\nnegligible promise is located.\u00a0 And in those places you must be
\nsomeone else, who you used to be, assuming the false face of
\nI’m-fine-and-those-jokes-are-still-funny or slipping back into the old
\nspeech, y’all, goocher, I love ya, Ma<\/em>.\u00a0 Pulling out the
\nmannerisms and worn-cloth attitudes you have long since left behind or
\ntailoring new ones that you think will be appreciated by the
\nhalf-smiling strangers…committing temporary suicide for a few days.<\/p>\n
\nat seventy miles per hour.\u00a0 The dotted white lane markers blip by
\nabout as fast as your neurons fire, piston clank memories spark out of
\nnowhere, no hesitation, no inspiration, just the random combustion of
\nyour previous lives.\u00a0 Here, there, everywhere.\u00a0 Anonymous to
\neveryone else on the road, you dream up an autobiography, mentally note
\nthe evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, that you are alive.<\/p>\n
\nimprisoned within your sedan or coupe, but to the radio you are a
\nwilling servant.\u00a0 There is no control over it; it’s hard to
\nmaintain any sort of mood while it plays, songs selected at the whim of
\nstocky DJs isolated in their whirring booths miles away, but from this
\narbitrary flood of rhythm and rhyme you drink and drink, the singers
\ntelling you what you want to hear, the chords dripping into your ears
\nand mimicked by your own heartstrings.<\/p>\n
\nwhere radio is a shut-in old hag, staticky and fickle, yielding nothing
\nbut bitterness, but on most stretches of the highway, if you scan and
\nseek with the appropriate amount of earnestness, you can find a wealth
\nof harmony.\u00a0 The lonely snob who gets to play jockey for two hours
\non Sunday nights and so he lets loose, giving you the nitty-gritty
\nbombast of B-sides and vinyl-flavored songs long thought lost to
\nhistory.\u00a0 Or the mute conductor who just lines up the records,
\narranges the needles, and pushes Play; she never says a word, just lets
\nthe playlist speak for itself, daring you to find the common
\nthread.\u00a0 These things happen.<\/p>\n
\ninside a reverb curtain of an old sixties number or beating excessively
\nloud above a singer-songwriter’s slow ballad, driving past signs that
\nbear words but no meaning (because we know in our hearts that the exits
\nthat are not our own lead nowhere) and ignoring the annoyed whine of
\nyour engine, and the needle climbs inside your heart, 60, 75, 90…<\/p>\n
\nthe stereo soothingly hums and the pavement carries you on its
\ncountry-wide shoulders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,352],"tags":[68,353],"class_list":["post-2489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cass","category-gsarchive","tag-cassander","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2489"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2803,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489\/revisions\/2803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}