88/365: 1969-1970

Friday, 22 August 2008.

 

40 Years in 40 Days [ view the entire set ]

An examination and remembrance of a life at 40.

 

For the 40 days leading up to my 40th birthday, I intend to use my 365 Days project to document and remember my life and lay bare what defines me. 40 years, 40 qualities, 40 days.

 

Year 2: 1969-1970

 

The years between 2 and 4 are blurry for me. It's not that I don't have specific memories from this time period. It's just that I don't have a clear sense of when and, sometimes, where they happened.

 

In the clearest memory I have, I have crawled into the back seat of VW Bug (the original, of course) and stretched out toe to head across the back seat. I'm looking up through the window at a white sky, broken by tree tops. Outside, people are moving back and forth between the house and the car, packing up, saying goodbyes. I don't know whose house it is, but from the surroundings, I suspect it's somewhere in northern California. To be able to stretch out across the back seat of a VW Bug, I could not have been more than two years old, which would make this my second oldest memory.

 

I assume this was a difficult time. My young parents were to divorce the following year, mutually unable to handle the pressures of both parenthood and marriage. As far as I know, I was unaware of any of this, but then who knows what lurks in the deepest recesses. As a product of years of psychotherapy, one always suspects.

 

Who am I?

 

I am my secret desire to just keep driving.

 

It's midnight, and I'm hungry. I have no food in the apartment, so I get in the car to drive to the 24-hour grocery store. I turn the ignition, flip on the lights, and pull out of the alleyway and onto the street. The street lamps and illuminated storefronts begin to blur on either side of me, and all I want to do in that moment is keep driving. Past the store. Past the city limits. Past everything I know, and into the night. It doesn't matter where. I just want to keep going and not come back.

 

Usually, I just go to the store (or wherever my original destination was) and return with a vaguely unsettled feeling -- a kind of fearful yearning. Once, though, I didn't stop at the store. I drove north across the city line into Evanston and over to the shore of Lake Michigan. I climbed out onto the point and sat on the rocks and looked at the twinkling of the Chicago skyline. I must have been out there for more than an hour. The wind was blowing, slapping the water up against the shore, and I was lost in the lights and the movement of the waves. Eventually, I got cold and went home.

 

I used to think I did this sort of thing because I was unhappy, but I don't think that's it. This would happen even when I was pretty satisfied with my life... happy, even. Sometime, in the night and on the road, I would feel suddenly like I was under water, and couldn't breathe. Like I had to get out. Not panicky... just urgent. Like the rush of the pavement under my tires could speed me to the surface, where I could suck in the night air and feel unfettered.

 

[ view previous | view next ]

 

Texture Credits

 

"Texture LXI" by ~light-stock at browse.deviantart.com/resources/textures/

"Rain Drops" by ~RapAddicted at browse.deviantart.com/resources/textures/

 

Done