Whenever I smell asphalt, I think of Maureen.

I miss the road, and I miss the south. I was thinking about it yesterday in the pre-dream delirium. My memory of the mountains has faded into a dim twilight of of easy rolling hills and high up far away patches of trees; a truck stop on a long, flat, golden plain, with an old sign pointing towards some forgettable town. A white cross on a hill; some house hidden behind some elm trees that I’ll never see inside. Think I’m going to head down there soon. Like, asap soon. As soon as my vacation time clears. Going to shank right this time in Knoxville instead of left, see what there is to see in Alabama and Louisiana. I just want to be alone, and far far away from everything; my natural environment, so to speak. Home sweet abandoned home.

There is one con to traveling, though. A queer phenomenon I have long since noticed– it makes me crave physical companionship in very tiny, specific doses. At first I thought it was just in my body– that tense, ticklish sensation that comes from stretching after 8 hours of sitting behind the wheel, concentrating on the road…but then I realized it was something more spiritual than that. Plowing through time and space, with all the world’s detail rushing past me, I acquire a feeling of….belonging, that I struggle to explain. It’s as though life itself is massaging me with seductive fingers, like the rushing wind in my hair from the open window, and I suddenly find myself the embodiment of everything that is true and real. Never can we mortals be at home in a stationary place; we deceive ourselves into thinking it’s the case, but ever are we traveling…ever are we plowing forward into the great and dark unknown. Living this truth, embodying it, and leaning into it, is one of the highest forms of peace I have ever been able to acquire…and it gives me a rock hard erection like you would not believe.