business. They sing to me and tell stories and I tell them mine and time passes as if life is standing still.
I know their rhythms and the energy of voice tone. I can translate all of where we stand in a downshift second and target tonight’s mood. I translate the cuss required of a missed gear. The dog that still won’t give up an inch of his share of a cramped sleeper berth. The home stretch of dropping time zones and missing pages of log books that leave sleep always the rarest of commodities. The truckstop food that went straight through. The throughway that wasn’t even close. The after effects of grease and the tastelessness of it. The shitstorm of I-80 in Wyoming and that the Rockies can reign down on you any damn time they like and that it don’t matter that its not that time of year. I know all the ways a single day can ruin a good run.
They tell me of that too long exchanged glance at the Fargo Petro, the scale that just had to be closed-and that thank God for once it was. They tell me of someday getting off the road and getting back on the road and that one turnstile fits all. They tell me of a Montana Cowboy on the make. They tell me of mixed signals and ones they're sure they got right. They sigh when they are tired, begging me to stay on the line. They cry over heartbreak, and sing when love came quickly. They pass as straight and sometimes don’t care if they don’t. They fix their log books, and call when they can’t. They call from the break down lane and from the shippers dock delayed. Sometimes they call just to tell me that they are finally on their way although where they are really going is anyone’s guess.
Tell me the mile marker and I can see it in my head, just as my own spent mile markers catch the headlights, burn, and then turn crimson in the glow of tail lights with no one on my back door breaking open the dark. The horizons of these mountains are always my guardian, my keeper and my guard, and the truckers I know are the best soldiers of all that fortune. I wish familiarity their way. They wish new medical advances mine.
The road is lonely and comforting, hostile and familiar, dark and illuminating always all of this at the same time. So when the phone rings, and I am just getting on the road, and the moon is a no show, it is Chase, or Mikey, or Kevin or any number of others who will light the way on the moon’s behalf. The laughter will come easy, as the night falls around us. With each new lyric or lullaby, a song that I might be the first chosen to hear, only the hum of our tires accompanies those movements in their rhyme. But, in the end, it is all the accompaniment they need.
Because when the gear slammers, freight shakers and the chicken haulers sing to the road, the chorus is heavenly indeed. These are the stanza’s of the unsettled and the still got no place to go. At least no place that will keep them satiated. These are the songs of the grass is greener set. These are the tunes that I know by heart. These are the songs I still sing back to them, especially when no one I know back home is listening. These are the songs I have been singing nearly all my life.
And regardless of which state of my life that I am writing from-stationary or just passing through, these are the lyrics I have always sung best.
1 comment:
Ah. So you drove your way through relationships, refusing to stay long enough to see any of them clearly...and finally your body forced you to remain still enough to really look.
And without clear physical vision, forcing you to go beyond seeing to knowing.
Issues in our outer energy fields, when left unhandled, work inward until they manifest in the physical body. And then they refuse to be healed until the issue is handled.
But this essay--beautiful and moving as always--suggests you may have worked through the issue. I hope so, as that means your eyes may now be healed. And then you can resume driving--if you still want--but NOT use trucking as an excuse to not relate to others.
Ironically, your most beautiful writing oftens presents these snapshots of people seen briefly, cherished briefly, then left to recede in the rear-view mrrors. I think people find it refreshing, because on your worst day you see more clearly than do most people on their best days. And these snapshots remind us that the shiny surfaces of people we ourselves know, are often so different from the unlighted interiors that we've since had to live with. It's good to be given a shake, to remember that knowing someone deeply can't and shouldn't replace consciousness of the shiny exteriors.
Anyway, I can't imagine finding you annoying after a few days! But maybe that's because I am also an introvert who does well socially but finds doing so a bit of an effort.
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