MotionA line is defined by two points. Points are confusing because they are infinitely small and incomprehensible to our senses. But a line is easy to understand -- at least, as long as you don't look too closely at the start and end. This summer I drew a two thousand seven hundred mile lines from Berkeley, California to Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. I left a girl I was unsure about and wound up in a place that didn't make sense anymore. But along that line, asphalt, thick strokes of yellow and white paint, dirt, and sky were certainties. I travelled with my friends Wayne and Chris. Wayne's line was clear, even more so in hindsight. He was hopping between temporary homes, one in Berkeley, the other in Pennsylvania, as a part of a larger journey to study in Rome for half a year. On the day we left Berkeley, the future stretching out before him was an unending line, lacking the confusion of points. And along his journey he found great love. But then he hit one of those confusing points when he left Italy. He cried for the love he was leaving behind, and (I can only imagine) he also shed tears for the snapped line that had defined his life for so long. Chris is more confusing. Lines define his life and points terrify him. I think he was glad to leave Berkeley for the sake of movement. When he returned to his home in New Jersey he continued to travel to and from the shore like a frightened bird caught inside a house. Now at school, he writes about the minor movements of everyday events as if they were chapters in a never-ending epic. (It makes for good reading, and I shouldn't disparage it: after all, I'm the guy who wrings every possible significance from simple events). We left Berkeley on a cool, clear day. The sky was blue and populated by fluffy clouds. We drove up and down the Sierra Nevada, found route 50, took it up the Rocky Mountains, then hung a left onto route 70, a 40 foot wide strip of asphalt which we followed all the way into Pennsylvania; there was a brief stop in St. Louis for sleep. By the clock, we did Berkeley to St. Louis in 31 hours, and St. Louis to State College in 14 hours. But by the eighth hour, time-by-the minute was meaningless; all that had ever existed was asphalt and the thick strokes of paint marking the road. It was probably a stupid thing to do. No, strike that, it was a stupid thing to do. We might have made a nice pre-mashed breakfast for some lucky Rocky Mountain crows, or been stuck in the middle of Eureka, Nevada, a town whose proud motto is "The Loneliest Town on the Loneliest Road in America." But sometimes you just have to do stupid things. It's being a completely free Kerouac-style Zen lunatic expressing the joy of living as actions become a kind of wild poetry that writes itself. It's the simplicity of the line which dangles between the confusion of points. We started the trip by piling all our stuff into Chris' Eddie Bauer Ford Explorer. Yep, that's right, there is actually an Eddie Bauer edition of the Ford Explorer. It had seen better days -- on the drive to California, Wayne and Chris hit the magic 100,000th mile. It whuffed and chugged when started. The "Check Engine" light was on all the time, and according to the owner's manual this basically means that the Second Coming is at hand. Its engine was engineered to destroy the environment in five years or less. But I wisely decided that I'd better not mock this suburban assault vehicle or else it would get pissed off and explode on us. Or Chris would slit my ungrateful throat. The point is, we loaded our entire apartment into said Explorer. 'Aha!' you may point out, 'an apartment is much larger than an automobile. You must be exaggerating again.' Nooooo... the truth is, we stuffed our entire apartment into this vehicle. I humbly submit that our apartment was only a bit larger than this massive vehicle, we were three strapping young lads capable of mighty feats, and besides, we left some apartment behind for Cherie. Cherie had just transferred to Earlham College from the University of California at San Diego. She would be flying there in about two weeks, and commissioned us to deliver a huge box of her stuff to Earlham. So Chris' vehicle contained three guys, their provisions (Mountain Dew and Wheat Thins), an apartment, and a Giant Box of Cherie's Stuff. The two front seats were reasonably clear, but we had to carve out a little cave in the back which we lined with pillows and dubbed "The Womb." Or if you prefer, "the womb with a view." The driving plan was beautifully simple: the driver drove until the car ran out of gas. Hopefully, this happened near civilization. As the driver paid to refuel the car, the passengers could stretch and relieve themselves. The driver then went to the womb to nap, the womb-person was roused from their slumber to sit in the front seat, and the person who previously sat in the front seat became the new driver. He would insert a CD into the caddie, and off we went for another tank of gas. The United States is 11 tanks of gas wide. That's a far more tangible measure than miles or driving hours. Edward Abbey mentions a similar measure, the six-pack of beer, in his book The Monkey Wrench Gang. For example, the drive from Flagstaff to Phoenix is a six-pack long in the spring, two six-packs long in the summer. Because that's how it is when you're in motion. You don't care about how an outsider gauges your journey because the world is only your line. Long-distance driving is meditation. The road flows under you, but continues ahead of you forever. This fluid cycle emptied my mind of worries about past and future points. I turned the wheel and noticed with detached bemusement that the view of the country around me changed. Although I didn't test whether or not the scenery really changed depending on how I turned the wheel, I began to suspect that the two were disconnected. Conversations came and went in waves. When someone spoke, their words would abruptly jar us from revelling in the sense of floating across America, and we were suddenly aware that we were just crammed into a speeding vehicle. There were some good conversations, but there were mostly long periods of rich silence, filled by the whooshing wind and travelling songs.
Wayne was in his element. A snapshot image: his red bandanna is tied around his head to keep his hair from slapping him in the face when the window is down ('the only bad thing about long hair, dude"). The stereo blasts the Allman Brothers. The air is dry but fresh because the desert had been redeemed by rain an hour ago. He looks across the openness of sagebrush, cracked clay, and eternal vistas as one would look an old friend, his hand beats in time with the guitar solo, he smiles faintly, and it's as though life is a finely tuned instrument and he just found how to play the perfect note.
I'm driving across the desert later that day. Normally the desert is just tan and grey with touches of pale aquamarine provided by stunted sagebrush, but at dusk the desert assumes a more complex palette as the waxing sunlight paints the hills red, shadows draw out the contrast between grey and tan, and shapes are vague and mysterious and thus more vital. The deep sky hovers just above the desert, a forcible reminder of the immensity of both. The road is absolutely straight, has been absolutely straight for 50 miles, and will continue to be straight for another 50 miles. I crest a hill and see the ribbon of the road stretching out before me so far that the road disappears into the vagueness of the land. And I know that no matter how fast I drive, the scenery won't change any faster because the road is so tiny and the desert is long and patient.
It's 4 A.M, we're in Colorado, Wayne pulls into a big truckers' stop. It is bitterly cold. Dawn is a rumor lurking in the pale skyline. I'm glad that Wayne was driving. How the hell can he be so bright and perky? I was actually hoping that Chris would crash back in the Rockies just so I could catch some eternal sleep. We jump out, and immediately jump up and down to stay warm. The cold air feels good even as it bites through my thin flannel. As Wayne gasses up the car, I check out the convenience store for caffeinated drinks and crackers for breakfast. The gas station convenience store is America's temple. 24 hours a day tired pilgrims enter its eternal florescent glow and find solace. Some lonely customers give confession to each other or the sleep-deprived clerk; others find a nitrate-laden hot dog, a rest room, or maps to figure out where/how they fit in God plan. In one corner of this particular store, there is a family of a tired mother, brawny father, and trying-to-look-tough-kids aged 8 and 10 years old. A family on the move, a solid family. I want very much to know their story, to know what brings them to this eternal space, but I am bound to only ask questions about the sacred journey itself, not what brings other pilgrims to the journey. I could ask, "how's the road ahead?" but not "where's home?" because home is a point, and we're just lines suspended between points and as long as I'm on a line I cannot face the points. I buy a Snapple iced tea, some more Wheat Thins, coffee (bad, of course; bad coffee is America's staple beverage), and some other breakfasty things, get into the car, gun the engine, and pull into the sunrise. I'd like to think that I put on Yes's "Heart of the Sunrise," but I probably didn't.
Kansas. We're still in Kansas. Kansas: green, boring. The person in front of us drives at an infuriating 5 miles below the speed limit. Shit. We're still in Kansas.
It's late afternoon, and humid to the point where I expect to see fish swimming through the air. The fact that I started the day hopping up and down in the bitter Colorado cold and that I'm now sweltering in St. Louis doesn't faze me in the least. What does faze me is the promise of good food. Distance is arbitrary, but food is eternal. Wayne, the glorious Infinite Leech, has arranged for us to spend the night with his friend Anne and her family in St. Louis. It takes skill to convince people you've never met to house three stinky, sticky, Kerouac-wannabe-college guys in your house. But Anne's parents are the nicest people I've ever met. They shove a great lasagna before us and show us to their showers (although it had only been two days, the idea of a 'shower' is so alien to my reality that it takes me the better part of an hour to realize that a shower stall is not a novel type of vehicle, but is rather a cleaning device that will help prevent the social awkwardness of killing strangers by merely sharing a room with them.) Anne is an amazing hostess. She greets Wayne enthusiastically (had I been more astute, I would have noticed how enthusiastically. As it turns out, they both had a thing for each other which blossomed into a full-blown case of love two months later when they were studying in Italy. But that's a story for another time.) After we've refreshed ourselves, she takes us over to a friend's swimming pool. Hot, humid, night. Jump, free fall, splash, laugh. A swimming pool -- how did I wind up in a swimming pool? It doesn't matter. Life is surreal and bizarre, I might as well accept that I drove two days to find the world's greatest swimming pool. I laugh, then we all giggle a laugh that rejoices in simply being.
Ye Olde College Diner is now, according to Wayne, 'art deco hell.' To understand the Ye Olde College Diner establishment, you have to understand the grilled sticky. The grilled sticky is a sticky bun prepared with about twice the butter and sugar usually used to make a sticky bun, and then -- dig, if you will, the beauty -- this is deep fried in butter. Dripping crispy delicious grease, it embodies all that is central Pennsylvania. We arrived to Wayne's house last night after three days of travel, and crashed hard. Chris left, and now I'm bumming off Wayne for a few days in his home town of State College. So of course in a matter of hours, Wayne and I ended up at his favorite hang-out spot, which he discovered to his shock and horror had been remodeled. And grilled stickies now cost $1.50 instead of $1.25. I guess home slips away bit by bit when you're suspended between points.
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