Driving at Night
I will miss home. Always do, even as I love living somewhere new.
Home is driving out to David's place to pick up my paints and brushes and paintings last night, taking a slow cruise south of town, pausing for the stoplight at Brevard, the scent of Kentucky Fried Chicken on the warm night air, damp and slow-rolling, mixing with the car's air conditioning on my skin, cool and warm at once.
Cruising on, the open-air laundromat to my left, a cluster of men sitting out front, watching the cars at the Family-Dollar-turned-bar across the street, then Slim's BBQ, closed, dark, gas stations, the Dollar Store, the DeSoto motel, a momma with her babies in lawn chairs outside her room.
Streets mostly quiet, the streetlights intermittent, then gone. Black sky, black trees, black road, looking for my grandpa's old truck stop property where I used to sit and imagine saucy big-haired waitresses straight-talking the truckers amidst the water stains and busted furniture, but those buildings are long demolished, it's empty now, then the old Joshua Creek packing plant and a lot of trailers, new and clean and empty, waiting, the left turn I always miss, that one-lane road, pulling off into the ditch to let another car by.
Gathering my stuff at David's, talking outside, talking for a long time and slapping moquitoes, dim light and an intermittent breeze. Chase, the bay horse, snorts and paces the fence. The chickens are all asleep. Walking inside to say goodbye to Buttons, the yorkie, who springs onto his back legs and stumbles forward, tongue lolling with excitement. Sissy, the chihuahua, growls and snaps from underneath the table.
On my way home again, slowing to a crawl to avoid an escaped chihuahua in the road, some neighbor's, tags jingling, headed toward a trailer where the TV glows and flickers through the window. TVs glowing blue and white in window after window, narrow houses on blocks with weeds at the edges.
People from the city talk about how slipping into the anonymity of the city amidst a crush of people is something renewing and comfortable. for me, it is this: a long drive at night through achingly familiar terrain, all of it mapped with a lifetime of memories, windows down, the windows are always down, the better to hear the incessant frog choruses providing the harmony for whatever's on the radio. Surfing the radio idly, slipping into whatever identity comes across the waves, in and out, easy: And the landslide will bring you... / Well I remember when - I remember when I lost my mind - / Hey, yer a crazy bitch but you f- so good... / Oh, she don't know she's beautiful... / This is when I'm most comfortable, this is when I'm excited about everything that lies before me - and I guess it doesn't really make sense, but there's something about being invisible, a small dark car on a long dark highway, when anything seems possible but nothing is required.
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I leave tomorrow for Oregon. It's exciting, even as I wonder if I'm making the right decision. Of course you are, I tell myself, you will make it right. There's a lot I didn't do this summer that I wanted to do, and these things always hit me at the end, when suddenly there's no more I'll do it next week. So I'll shift it all to the I'll do it someday pile - backpacking the Everglades, photo-documenting the parts of town I rarely visit, properly organizing my photos, fixing my car's dome light, getting Amoco sweet tea, doing more charcoal sketching, learning more than basic chords on the mandolin, working through my clothes-to-alter pile, visiting the cattle auction, photographing the small animal Friday night auction, lunch or coffee or a drink with old friends and old teachers, calling those people who gave me their numbers who I never called, wheedling old stories from my grandma and amma, perfecting pan-frying, going to Little Gasparilla, catching up with Adam, visiting Mr. Pearce's property to see the spring he discovered... the list goes on. Someday, I suppose.