I think it's time to leave again.
In my first creative writing class, we started the semester with a short piece fabricated from an assigned title. Pete handed them out in little envelopes and we all got something different. The next year I found out where all of those titles came from and I read my story, the one that came before mine. But that night, I left class and tore open the envelope to discover a long slip of paper with three short words printed on it. I Ran Away, it said, small and black, a confession, a consession, and I stopped on the little causeway outside the building called Vollum and I thought, "But I never did."
When I was growing up, I decided early that I had little use for parents. They became my equals, in my own mind if not in theirs, and I tollerated their homes and what rules they infrequently instilled for by doing so I knew that I could guarontee myself safe passage away from them when I graduated from high school. I never snuck out at night. I never tried to run away. I never planned my escape or packed any bags. I just waited.
The story I wrote was more metaphorical. I catalogued my separation from the naive and child-like me, forced by my first love, if we choose to be so dramatic. It was not a bad story and I enjoyed making something meaningful out of that title which I felt was not at all a part of who I am.
And yet now, were I given that same assignment, I would not have to stretch meaning or context. And looking back I see that it has always been so. When I was a child, I forced myself to live by rules I did not understand because I knew that it would make my life easier in the long run. And now that I have aged to the point of making my own rules, I bolt like a frightened cat at the slightest temptation.
My house is empty and I am lonely. I calm myself with thoughts of all my pleasurable drives. The symbolic fleeing of long car rides, fast and curvacious, over changing terrain in changing light, forcing the world's turn under tiny wheels.
Climbing the curves of Mendocino county, listening to Bob Dylan and watching the waves break like razor blades on the blue of the ocean far below us. Plowing through gravel at dawn for the fifth time, finally on the road again after a wintery desert night and leaving a Yoohoo at the base of a mountain for a friend, when compressed air billows up the driver's side window and a loud hissing escapes the tire. Pulling into gas stations at 5am for a hand-ful of Starbuck's double shots, two boys each twice too big for the space sprawled out and sleeping in the back seat.
I've been feeling urges to settle down. The ultimate "down", but not much of a "settle", and I wonder if my newfound drive to get the hell out of dodge is not in some way related.
In my first creative writing class, we started the semester with a short piece fabricated from an assigned title. Pete handed them out in little envelopes and we all got something different. The next year I found out where all of those titles came from and I read my story, the one that came before mine. But that night, I left class and tore open the envelope to discover a long slip of paper with three short words printed on it. I Ran Away, it said, small and black, a confession, a consession, and I stopped on the little causeway outside the building called Vollum and I thought, "But I never did."
When I was growing up, I decided early that I had little use for parents. They became my equals, in my own mind if not in theirs, and I tollerated their homes and what rules they infrequently instilled for by doing so I knew that I could guarontee myself safe passage away from them when I graduated from high school. I never snuck out at night. I never tried to run away. I never planned my escape or packed any bags. I just waited.
The story I wrote was more metaphorical. I catalogued my separation from the naive and child-like me, forced by my first love, if we choose to be so dramatic. It was not a bad story and I enjoyed making something meaningful out of that title which I felt was not at all a part of who I am.
And yet now, were I given that same assignment, I would not have to stretch meaning or context. And looking back I see that it has always been so. When I was a child, I forced myself to live by rules I did not understand because I knew that it would make my life easier in the long run. And now that I have aged to the point of making my own rules, I bolt like a frightened cat at the slightest temptation.
My house is empty and I am lonely. I calm myself with thoughts of all my pleasurable drives. The symbolic fleeing of long car rides, fast and curvacious, over changing terrain in changing light, forcing the world's turn under tiny wheels.
Climbing the curves of Mendocino county, listening to Bob Dylan and watching the waves break like razor blades on the blue of the ocean far below us. Plowing through gravel at dawn for the fifth time, finally on the road again after a wintery desert night and leaving a Yoohoo at the base of a mountain for a friend, when compressed air billows up the driver's side window and a loud hissing escapes the tire. Pulling into gas stations at 5am for a hand-ful of Starbuck's double shots, two boys each twice too big for the space sprawled out and sleeping in the back seat.
I've been feeling urges to settle down. The ultimate "down", but not much of a "settle", and I wonder if my newfound drive to get the hell out of dodge is not in some way related.