Let’s Just Drive
As the skyline faded from view we transcended the absent bustle of a city at dawn into a place not far in distance but in attitude from our comfort. There was a middle aged woman jogging in a sweatband and baggy tshirt, panting as she flailed her weathered arms along the side of the road. And up on ahead tread a young father walking the family dog before the ensuing chaos of preparing an 8 year old for school. And there we were. Just two kids who stayed up all night with nothing much to do. Two people who cared less for what was said than the way it was spoken. We wondered if anyone there thought like us. In fact, it was possible that at that same moment someone else was asking that exact question. Possible, but unlikely. We drove along past the cookie cutter houses and yards with no desire to breach the white picket fences that excluded us until we reached a place isolated from the isolation of the trimmed hedges and the smell of the overclorinated pools of suburbia. It was a small gravel parking lot upon which the scuffing of our feet played a tune of curiosity and anguish. It was late now, probably around 5, but regardless of our fatigue we had motivation. The exploration ensued and new perspectives were found on familiar grounds. We reached an old cement walkway defeated by age and lack of continued necessity. One of the two smoked as the other kicked around on partially exposed brick road admiring the changing hues of the sky at sunrise. The brick of the road was a dirty yellow and it served as a reminder of the past and evidence that biotic or not, everything dies. But that was news to neither of them. The smoker flicked his cigarette into the water as if he had given up hope for the place already and the two pressed on through “road closed” signs and decomposed asphalt. And through a small enclave of branches they found a path a railroad once owned on which they could seclude themselves. Branches and insects clawed out toward them like lonely widows desperate for contact as they hiked along the stones and discarded scraps of metal still talking about nothing, but saying it well. And after some time they came across an iron bridge both anachronistic and striking. Balancing along the remaining planks, they began to cross the bridge, avoiding the wood that looked too rotted to support weight. And there they found what they were looking for while not looking at all and began to be alive, maybe for the first time.
