les passantes
I felt the wind cutting at my face again today. It’s been a while since I’ve felt it.
Early this morning when I woke up, it was storming. Lightning trickled along the underside of the armada of clouds. I didn’t go into work. Instead, I climbed onto the roof and felt mother nature’s breath grace me as the storm passed by, high above.
After that, it was still and humid. The water in the air seemed to stop the wind in the tracks. So I got into my old Toyota, rolled the windows down and gunned it out of this damned crumbling town and out onto the highway. There, on the road, I felt the wind cut at my face again.
Font paraître court le chemin
But the only short roads are ones that have ends to them. Out past Versailles, Lafayette and Warsaw. The blank farmlands and crumbling barns. Fading Mail Pouch tobacco advertisements. Houses that could barely be considered lean-tos with gigantic satellite television dishes attached to them. The real American heartland.
If I had the money, and the gas, I think that I’d just drive across the country aimlessly, stopping only to sleep as I needed it. And not just on the highways. Through the crisscrossing county back roads, and rainy alleys. Sixty miles per hour, seventy, eighty, ninety. When it starts to rain I’m going so fast I don’t even need to turn on the windshield wipers. Running never solves anything, though. At least, that’s what I’ve been told.
The farms pass in blinks as I weave in between the steel dragons carrying logs, fuel and frozen television dinners (competitively priced) across the nation. People’s lives, generations- lives, deaths, births, hard times and golden ages that I’ll never know are tossed like dry autumn leaves in my wake. I will never know them. I wish I could.
And so I move on, around the bends, barreling through the tunnels. The grinding engine, wobbling wheels and the incessant screeches of a serpentine belt needing replacement phase me not. If I can just go a little farther, a little faster, maybe all that’s behind me will lose its resolve and stop its pursuit.
I only ever really feel at home when I’m in motion. Until I can keep at it, I’ll let the wind cut at my face when I can.
