Aesthetic Statement

I delivered a trailer full of carpet scraps to a recycling facility on the north side of Indy, directly across the road from where I used to park my car so that I could get back in the truck I'd previously parked there and vice versa, on and on for eight years or so, back when I was an over the road driver. I felt a visceral emotion.

Nostalgia?

No. I felt again that gnawing anxiety that was permanently lodged in my gut for the decade I spent driving long haul. Talk about a nightmare.

I'm a good traveller, I did it well. I had a home, I just chose to be gone, for money. My heart goes out to every refugee everywhere, whether chosen, and especially if not.

So I'm glad that I'm writing again, even if it is in these condensed little posts, sporadically. I was talking with another blogger recently and realized that one reason I don't write more often, or in longer posts is not that I was then, (in The Reluctant Trucker years) assuaging that gut knot; the pain, but that I spent uncounted hours on the boring interstates and used that time to compose. More often than not I now drive in the quickly changing environment of small highways, byways, or even lanes through the woods, on occasion. I don't have the luxury of composing blog posts in my mind anymore.

Pain is not necessary for art, but time is, unless you're driven. I was merely driving.

So, friends, I was driving across IN 157 north of Bloomfield again today. I don't know what combination of atmospheric properties and light caused the effect, but the farthest ridges were not blue with distance, but positively purple. I also reflected on the fact that it might have been a bad idea to recommend the route as yielding vistas on both sides of the road, even with the trees in full leaf. I realized that as a truck driver I sit a lot higher than most. I'm not sure what you'd see from a car window, or a bicycle.

Take everything I say with a grain of your preference.