Miles to go before I sleep Date Friday, April 19, 2024 - 01:55 PM PST Topic Work A nameless journey begins at 6:30am, 34 degrees Fahrenheit, and I have work to do. I leave my home and my town (named after the youngest signer of the U.S. Constitution, I muse to myself) and strike out on the journey which stands in a crowd of identical journeys, notable in no way and unique only to itself as I stand in a crowd of faceless commuters and make my way to the place where I am expected. A faceless radioman taunts me with promises of music but delivers only bits of information about things which do not concern me and have nothing to do with myself or the tasks that lay before me. He speaks, perhaps knowing that no ears are truly listening to him, but still he speaks since it is his job to do so. Sixty-six miles per hour, some time later and my vehicle has finally warmed inside. It has snowed overnight, a light wispy snow that leaves no trace in the grass or on the roads but has turned to hidden ice on the bridges. Winter, it seems, has taken its last dying gasp to utter a word of defiance toward the complacent and sleep-numbed commuters who grumble about how long it is taking to turn warm this year. Winter has used this gasp well, because today it has claimed some small victories. Today the morbid lottery which daily is played to the tune of singing pistons has selected some unsuspecting contestants to win the ignominious jackpot, a day torn from the pages of their lives with a sound of exploding glass and rending metal. Perhaps, I think to myself during a sip of coffee from a nondescript travel mug, perhaps it is more of an automotive autoclave, purifying the strong and destroying the weak or inattentive in its searing and unforgiving concrete heat. Perhaps not, I think, and perhaps even calling it a lottery is giving it too much meaning. My journey is slowed as I pass the wreckage of eight vehicles, slowed not because they obstruct the road but because the river of commuters is drawn irresistibly to view the destruction and count the cars as I realise I have just done. My eyes rest on the figure of a man staring skyward, with the stare that is frozen on the face of every man who has looked into the eyes of death. Poor bastard, he'll be missing some meetings today. I wonder to myself how many times he has passed a scene such as this and looked upon the gathering of objects that have transitioned from useful tools to insurance claims. I wonder how many times he thought to himself that he was glad it wasn't him, or tried to think to himself that it would never be him. I chuckle to myself a bit as I ponder the fascination people have with destruction and death of others, and how they try to deny their own mortality in the same breath. But all of this does not concern me; I have work to do. Work that I do not like or dislike, but simply must be done. The death of a man is no more significant to my path than the sip of coffee that transpired as I passed the spot where he expired and where soon will be a trite pile of plastic flowers in his name, as trivial and artificial as the man they represent. Life in a sip of coffee, a travel mug casket for a plastic flower demise. Soon I pass an interchange between the interstate and a state highway that leads north to a town named ironically a word that means "polite" or "finished" and belies the state of the town itself and its denizens. It leads south to a town which is also ironically named, one whose name means "friendliness toward strangers" and whose residents are among the most xenophobic people in this xenophobic state. It amuses me that these two ironically named towns are divided by the road that leads away from this place, a vast freeway that begins its life with promise in Baltimore within view of the mighty ocean but dies a humble death near Sulphur Creek in Utah, in a place known only as Millard County. Somewhere between Xenophobia and Urbanelessness is the way out and the one desperate chance to escape the place where even God only comes to visit relatives. It seems that shallow life and meaningless death are the themes du jour, and I think the road is trying to teach me a lesson by the contrast of its two end points. An illegal pedestrian breaks the monotony of corn rows, a wizened fool shuffling his way down the impossibly vast distance between signs of civilisation, and I wonder if he is noticing his surroundings any more than I have time to do. He has nothing but time and I have work to do, but I remember when I was a shiftless youth and would observe the most trivial things such as the uneven melting of frost on the ground in the morning. That was many years ago when there was time, but now I have work to do and time is a fading memory. I slow my vehicle again as the road is blocked a second time. This time I wished that I had not looked to see what was the matter, for it was an accident caused by the ice again and involving a truck pulling a horse trailer. Cars and trucks become wrinkled and bent when they are wrecked, but horse trailers look as if some perverse deity had tossed a salad consisting of aluminum house siding and a grocer's meat cooler. It is less a wreck than a debris field, and I joke to myself that I have not seen that much gore since the elections of 2000. As unusual and disturbing as this sight has been, it is gone with the next sip of coffee, as it does not concern me. Besides, I have work to do. Minutes later, sixty-seven miles per hour and the road is clear. I pass through mile after mile of seemingly unchanging countryside, past houses which were simply abandoned in the middle of recently worked farmland, houses which were special to someone at some time. Only their gray and decaying walls can speak of the warmth of the families which called them home, the holiday gatherings that filled the house to the brim, and the laughter and tears that took place within it when it was not just a house but instead was a home. Desolate structure that still stands as if waiting to be inhabited again, I think, someone should tear it down or make it a home, but leaving it to rot is nothing short of cruelty and disrespect. I pass the tread of a blown-out truck tire at sixty-eight miles per hour and it occurs to me that the circle or wheel is a symbol of eternity, and that this broken tread stands as a symbol of eternity lost. It undoubtedly saw countless thousands of revolutions on its journey to where it is now, but finally the task became too much and it broke under the pressure. It lies there, a steel-belted symbol of the fall from Eden and into daily existence, a vulcanised reminder that nothing lasts forever. Rendered useless in an instant, no longer able to do its work and cast aside without regard, it waits for its removal along with other roadside debris. I tap my cruise control up to sixty-nine miles per hour, four miles over the limit but not fast enough to get stopped on my journey to where I need to be. I think about the road ahead, about how I will pass exits that speak of small towns which I will never see, filled with people who will filter out to the interstate on their way to the concentrations of money that the cities represent. The city of my destination lies still ahead, a city named after an Italian explorer who managed to discover a bit of land that was populated before he set forth on his journey but, unfortunately for them, belonged to the wrong ethnic group at the time. He was a man who is remembered because he did his work, ethics be damned. I press a radio button to silence another radioman telling me more things that I do not need to know, and when I look up I realise that another car is entering my lane as the driver speaks to his secretary on a cellular telephone. I brake and swerve to avoid him, only to realise that I am on one of the many secretive patches of ice that winter has given us this morning and that my steering is nearly useless. I slide off of the road, still steering in a vain attempt to get back onto the asphalt so that I do not lose time to this inconvenience. As the last of my wheels roll onto the grass with my speed still in excess of fifty miles per hour, I know that this will likely mean a delay in my commute and could possibly even spill my coffee. I don't have time for this; I have work to do. I have always lived against the odds. If there was a shadow of a doubt, I was standing in its shade. If there was a ghost of a chance, I had called the seance. It was grimly amusing to me, then, that my path took me between guardrails in the median which were designed to prevent the very sort of thing that was about to happen. I rammed a sign telling me that this was one of two creeks with the same name in the area (although one was called "big" and one was called "little"), and I felt weightless as the vehicle fell down ten feet or so into water. The cold water quickly rose as I realised I was pinned inside the vehicle, and I held the breath I had drawn just seconds ago. I could still see the words "Scenic River" on the green sign that I had struck and which was now twisted into the front of my vehicle, and it occurred to me that I knew not if it was scenic. I knew only that it was cold, since I usually pass it without notice on my way to do the work that I have to do. I could see that the water filled my car to just inside the open rear hatch, and that I was only three feet or so beneath the surface. It was enough, I thought to myself, and this will definitely make me miss my obligations today. A sudden sense of peace and calmness washed over my mind, and I probably would have seen my life flash before my eyes if I had in fact had a life and not a series of obligations, appointments, and roles to fill. I could still hear the traffic from the road above, people who were going to meet their obligations today and who had work to do. Suddenly I laughed. I laughed at myself and the joke that my life had been. I laughed all the lost laughter of my lifetime in a few seconds, laughter for which there had never been time, making no sound after my air was gone but laughing still. I laughed because this time it was me. I laughed because I was still thinking trivial thoughts about my life insurance and how somebody was going to have to clear my calendar so nobody waits for me in meetings. I wept as I laughed, my tears and blood mixing with the cold water of a Midwest spring morning as it all became clear to me at once, irrevocably too late. My mind struggles to recall the words to Handke's "Lied vom Kindsein" as now they seem to have been a warning that I did not heed, and I laugh as they fill my last thoughts. I laugh because at last I have no more work to do, and until the darkness takes me I am free. This article comes from Shmeng http://www.shmeng.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.shmeng.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=506