eor | (no subject)

Usually on the way home I listen to The World on public radio, but on Friday's the local station doesn't carry it, so I played the only CD I had in the van. Being this time of year, it was nearly sundown at 3:30pm. The salt and debris on the windshield (the windshield washer has been frozen solid for 4 days) made it look like I'd been travelling for hours. I was bundled up, trying to ward off the biting cold. The CD is one of my favorite travelling in the van numbers, Simon and Garfunkel's "Concert in Central Park". It's the only Simon and Garfunkel I own. Listening to it in that setting started stirring up memories.

The album first imprinted on me during a trip, as often happens. I had a few cassettes, a walkman, and a few batteries and was taking a train, up the East coast Florida to Boston,MA, then another Montpelier, VT to Montreal, then Montreal to Vancouver,BC, then bus down into Washington and train back to North Dakota, a short car ride to South Dakota, then a plane trip back to Florida. It was an incredible trip, at an incredible time in my life, the late summer of '83. I had just pulled myself out of a fairly bad spiral in the beginning of the year and reshaped myself from madman into eccentric. In the early summer I had met The Love of My Life, who lived 2,000 miles away from me, and the reshaping continued.

"Homeward bound, I wish I was, homeward bound."

At the time I didn't really feel at home anywhere. I was transplanted into Florida and hadn't adjusted to the muted seasons and flat terrain. I making a trip back to terrain that felt more normal, but I could only look, not touch; visit, not stay. When you're not outgoing and would prefer to just listen to music and think, a long trip can be incredibly isolating. I had lots of time to sit and wish, to sit and fixate.

"Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together."

Yes, I was obsessed. Obsessed with a vision of what I thought love should be. I was building visions based on society's ideal mix with my own unformed ideals. I was making a mess of it in 2/4 time and I didn't even realize. But isn't that what you're supposed to do when you're young?

"Then she'll be a true love of mine."

In Montreal I spent the last dime I had to buy a Door's greatest hits that only existed in Canada called "Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine." Yes, I bought it and listened to it until I had memorized it because The Love of My Life had quoted one line from one song in a letter. I told you I was obsessed. It provided counterpoint crossing Canada. The train tracks run along next the lakes in southern Canada. It was overcast, low grey clouds. The occasional rainspatters on the big windows of the empty observation car.

"The snake is long, seven miles,
ride the snake, to the lake, the ancient lake."

I remember more the feeling of the trip than the details. The lakes, melting into the endless plains. A late night stop in Calgary for a welcome shower. Then the stunning climb through the Rockies and falling into the beauty of Vancouver. Then the whole thing in reverse in less grand scale coming back across on the US side. Mainly I feel the rhythm.

"It was late in the evening, and all the music's seeping through."

I still find trains magical in the unique moving isolation they provide, although I haven't taken another trip on near that scale. I'd like to, someday.

"God only knows, God makes his plan,
The information's unavailable to the mortal man.
We work our job, collect our pay,
believe we're gliding down the highway,
when in fact we're slip sliding away."

And so we come full circle, back to a van on an interstate, headed south into the rays of the setting sun. Driving a vanagon on an interstate is always a challenge. When the wind is whipping first from one side then the other, it's can be a hair raising experience. If this were a fictional story, it would end in some dramatic way bringing everything to conclusion in a huge metaphorical splendor. Well, it was just real life in its normal beauty and harshness. The only things slip sliding away were time and miles.

"Though it isn't strange,
after changes, upon changes,
we are more or less the same."