I went driving late one summer night to clear my mind and let the wind ease the burning in my heart.
Out I went into the night, past the city lights. Far out.
I knew I was getting closer to my unknown destination with every turn made.
The traffic was getting thinner. Then it was a few cars passing every few minutes. A highway giving way to two-lane roads. Two-lanes giving way to streets with no names. Finally, I found the place I was looking for when I turned down a small dirt road. Just me, the sound of insects and the whirring sound of my VW engine. The moon was almost full and yellowing with age.
I slowed to idling speed and turned off the headlights. Immediately the moon shadows snapped into view. Scores of dark than night shadows, the souls of old trees stretching far out into the road, burst in to view. Opals made of moonlight danced in between the irregular shapes and the stones as I drove over and passed the dark, shadowy fingers.
Houses from another century sat quietly in their yards. Their windows empty and dark, save for a kitchen light here or a table lamp there. Saying, we're still here!
I crept along that dirt road; silent...running.
I had passed it before I even realized. It was darker yet than the road I was traveling.
Another road. Disappearing into the darkness on my right. I stopped and backed up to taste it's exciting offer, and found it quite pleasing.
Of course I turned down that road. Immediately covered by a canopy so dense no amount of moon could break through. I smiled into the breast of midnight.
As I languidly rolled down the road there, in the distance, I saw little white objects like fingernails stuck in the ground. I knew in an instant what I had found. I drove up to the entrance of the graveyard spread almost into a cornfield.
With just a second of hesitation I pulled in. Leaning over the edge of my door and with the convertible top down I looked at the headstones driving slower than molasses.
I read names and dates "Olgen", "1886", "Margery", "1901", and on and on. The moon was bright enough to read handwritten directions on a piece of paper I found on the ground by "Edith Viola".
I had to get out of the car now. That paper called to me like cold beer on a hot day.
Standing there in the farm lands enjoying the new company I was keeping. Meanwhile the crickets kept talking about the dying of summer. The fireflies trying to mate one last time and dogs somewhere far off in the distance asking for friends, food, or to be let in before the night sets in.
I walked among these memories. Stepped over love. Brushed my hands over stoned hearts. Sat next to boxes and bones, wondering what they looked like naked and in bed with their lovers so many decades ago.
After I had my fill of fantasy, memory, loss, resurrection, and acceptance I walked back to my bug and laid in the damp grass next to her.
Looking up at the stars I wondered if we both looked good in the moonlight, or just out of place.
After my body became chilled from the dew that had started to form I got back in the beetle.
I turned the key and crept down the road at a trotting horses pace.
"No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound
Nothing to eat, no books to read..." -the hollies
Just being.
And if that wasn't already enough I found what I was really looking for; a small road dead-ending in a cornfield.
I drove up into the crop and parked. I got out and walked right into the jungle of dark green stalks reaching for the sky. Leaves as long as my arm, reached out to scratch me as I passed. Sweetly. Mother nature running her fingernails over my skin.
It was dense. The stalks growing mere inches from each other. I had to keep my hands out in front to move their green fingers from my view with each step.
For some time I walked, maybe in circles. Deeper into the maze of myself.
Finally, I paused in what i thought was my center. Or was it the center of this cornfield.
Dwarfed by the cornstalks. Their very tops glowing white. Thin grains waving about like water from a Grecian fountain.
silence.
calm. no sound.
I thought; the kind of thinking that leaves Earth's atmosphere for the nearest stellar nursery "this is where I find my love". Again to myself, "this is what I do to look within and without. I have to drive. Walk. Explore. Travel to get to me." and yet, sweet little sassy can sit right where she wants and open the page of her imagination. She finds her passion and her loves in her own mind. Shaped discharges of ink on pounded paper can take her away on journeys. Sweep her up in arms of adventure.
I wanted to be like her, and in ways I already am.
I realize that I could not appreciate her, or anyone without being me.
I wanted to know you more. So I stood there. finding us. Who I am. Who you are to me. What this may be all about.
What is magic? what is mystery?.
:)
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