The Road Traveled

When I look back on my childhood, I see a series of road trips. It seemed we were always ready to just pick up in the car and drive off somewhere. My mom and all of her friends. I was the only kid. I realize now it’s because my mother was my age when I was seven, and all of her friends, like me, weren’t ready or even thinking of having kids. We’d road trip to sci-fi conventions, road trip to visit her friends, road trip to the shore, even took an on the fly road trip to Canada when we won the Mary Kay car.

Sometimes my favorite part of road tripping was the music. My mom loved Bowie, and Pat Benetar, and I rememeber screaming off key to the lyrics, air pushing through my fuzzy hair. I remember counting waffle houses all the way to Atlanta. I remember playing stupid games, making up names with license plate numbers. I remember Loretta teaching me how to fold an origami bow tie out of a dollar bill in the back seat of Deb’s van. I remember almost driving off the edge of an unimproved road in California. (In California, unimproved = cliff). I remember the yearly stop at the Maryland House rest stop on the way to Hunt Valley Maryland for Shoreleave, which until I attended Otakon in 2001 was the standard by which I based conventions. I remember the hour drive to the shore, which in comparison to all of the other drives felt like nothing.

I can’t count the number of books I’ve read while riding, or the number of miles I’ve traveled, one way or the other, in my life. I usually don’t think of it. No matter how far I’ve traveled, I’ve always returned home. Usually within a weekend, maybe a week, or a month or two for camp in the summer.

I think these road trips inspired a wanderlust in me. When I was a kid, if we stopped to stay with one of my mom’s friends in a place I’d never been, I’d always make it my goal to get lost there. Considering my sense of direction, this was a pretty easy feat for me. Sometimes I’d get lost for a few minutes, sometimes a few hours. I distinctly remember two times my mom and her friends had gone out in search parties, fearing that I’d been disappeared, when in actuality I was simply trudging around an unfamiliar neighborhood, trying to find that funny looking rock or off red wall that was sure to lead me back to familiar ground.

I’ve been lost on foot. Lost on a bike. Lost on roller skates. Lost in the snow. And I’ve enjoyed every moment of it.

Soon, I will be going on my longest, craziest road trip ever. I admit, in some ways, I’ve been dragging my heels about Japan. Since I’ve decided to go, I’ve been filled with this desire to do and experience everything I can at home before I leave. In some ways, I’ve been treating home like a new place, and letting myself get lost here. I’m having such a good time, it’s hard to imagine leaving. But I know that if I don’t go, I won’t forgive myself for missing the opportunity.

I only have this life. I can’t stand to live it one iota less than the fullest.

So the question becomes not if, but when. That’s been a much harder question to answer than I thought it would be. Lately, the answer has been, ‘soon, really soon, but not yet’.  I can feel the currency on ‘soon, but not yet’ running down with every moment.

I’m a walking contradiction. Road trips form some of my greatest memories, but I can’t drive. I’m a writer who’s scared to be published. I want to live in Japan, but I’ve spent the last month studying Chinese. My greatest challenge as a person, I believe, is my lack of discipline, which I believe is best manifested through the obsessive nature of my interests.

When I was a kid, I though the lyrics to David Bowie’s "Glass Spider" were so profound. One of the women in my writers group – http://phillywriters.net put out a question about song lyrics, and as I was thinking through those I loved for their meaning, poetic quality, intensity, etc, and my mind wandered back to the Glass Spider I expected when I looked up the song that the lyrics wouldn’t stir in me that intense feeling of ‘wow’ that it had before. The song would be nothing I recognized. But the lyrics struck me even harder now than when I was a kid.

"Up until one century ago there lived,
In the Zi Duang province of eastern country
a glass-like spider
Having devoured its prey it would drape the skeletons
over its web
In weeks creating a macabre
Shrine of remains

Its web was also unique in that it had many layers
Like floors in a building
At the top of this palace-like place, assembled with
almost apparent care,
were tiny, shining objects,
glass, beads, dew-drops

One could almost call it an altar

When the breeze blew
thru this construction
It produced sounds of wailing, crying
Tiny wails, tiny cries

The baby spiders would get scared and search frantically for
their mother.
But the Glass Spider would have long gone,
having known that the babies
Would survive somehow
on their own.

Oh,
The Glass Spider had blue eyes almost like-a human’s.
They shed tears at the wintered turn of the centuries.

Don’t you hear this wasted cry,
Life is over you
   (Mummy come back ’cause the water’s all gone)
But you’ve seen who’s in heaven. Is there anyone in hell
   (Mummy come back ’cause it’s dark now)
Take care, take care.
   (Mummy come back ’cause the water’s all gone)

Somewhere she glows divine. Somewhere she wakes alone.
But you, you’ve promise
in your lovin’ eye.

God it’s dark now.

Jah Jah Jah Jah Jah
Jah Jah Jah Jah Jah

Gone, Gone the water’s all gone
Mummy come back
’cause the water’s all gone

Stay low on the ground, fire can drive you,
savage and afraid
Spitting the dawn, come come come along
before the animals awake

Run, run, we’ve been moving all night, rivers to the left.
If your mother don’t love you then the riverbed might

Gone, gone, the water’s all gone
Mummy come back
’cause the water’s all gone

In some ways, my trust in myself is absolute. In others, it’s as fragile as a thread of spun glass.