And when you're on the road....

And when you’re on the road, chilling out in a motel room somewhere in Virginia, drinking a beer, resting and clicking through the cable channels looking for news on the Beltway sniper or baseball playoff scores and updates or week 6 football scores, you’re still stressed, unsure exactly where you will go tomorrow or stop for lunch or if there is even a place to stop; you browse through the collection of roadside pamphlets and the map book and vaguely plot a course, studying the red arrows, the mountain passes and state lines but in reality you’re too tired from all day driving, the rain and traffic until the morning comes which rises like a dream from the fog and the growing light is slitted through the window shades as you roll out of bed and open the door to see the October leaves have not changed yet, clinging to their green flesh— its cloudy, cold but you are mesmerized by the sweet air and soft contours of the hills until you turn, dress quickly, grab your keys and drive off to a nearby gas station beside Interstate 81 and first, buy a coffee sweetened by hazelnut creamers and then you pump the gas, thinking about the sniper again and the eight victims killed already— random killings in parking lots and gas stations and you step back from the pump and the air instills a magic that absorbs into your body and makes it all worthwhile and for a full ten seconds, nothing exists outside the road and you realize that anything worth doing is worth doing well and if you die, then it is a better death to have gone out doing something you loved than to live a life just going through the motions, spinning like a top that is stuck in the same chipped floor tile; while you spend your days living a life full of regret and wishing…. (Journal entry 2002)