It all comes down to this, my fate in another's hand. I have never been big into deities, but here we are-the day after christmas: a son with The Father at the wheel, his brother in the passenger seat, asleep with my Pendleton flannel on his face like Ali Baba's assassin sibling.
I am all for multi hour road trips, preferably those heading onwards to some bizarre destination, where a meriad of uncouth locals might plunge us into an adventure that even someone like me is not insightful enough to foresee. But here we are, on a straight shot right back to where we came from-Santa Cruz. And I am nowhere near the pilot's seat. I'm sitting right behind it, and the only control I have over this journey is exercised when my thumb pounds the shuffle button on my pocket stereo, looking for the right tune that will remedy the general bad vibes this trip has imparted on me from it's first mile.
It is sweet, no doubt, watching my family bond over what can only be called road rage of the ages. My brother, awake, now eerily resembles my father as he challenges, goads on these other half-stoned post holiday travelers burning rubber home. All of us so eager just to be back where we belong. My brother, my father, they guard this mersaddles' place on the road; staked in the fast lane at a steady 85 mph. Anyone who tails us too close, or blows by on the right is going to be cursed down in a flurry of mad laughter and slurs, then avenged in kind. We blow by a red toyodel not so mini van, heckling and screaming "Do you need my glasses? Do you think they'd help you drive? Hey. Hey!"
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This is where I come from, my family is all around. This hyper awareness of your past severely affects your future. A brother is a version, a 2.0 of you, and when he lines up better with what your father is thinking, some anxiety is natural. It gives you a sense of just how far out you are. Maybe you really are a unique commodity in this family, is that a release? No, now the pressure is on you. Redefine the last name following your first. And here you are, sunglasses and pocket stereo, in a mersaddle that has the family stamp of approval, unlike your funky non-starter Dachshund. Yes, it is a stressful position to be in. But in the same time, where else would you belong? You are the cutting edge of your name, you have alot to live up to, but only you truly understand how important, or what exactly, that is.
This realization is important, but not much is available to you in this surprisingly roomy backseat to realize this new vision. Keep on shuffling, trying to figure what that great new move will be. But shit, there is no wifi cruising through Ventura, and I love my brother and father, but my thought-process is quite removed from theirs at this point. No doubt, it is fun to taunt these clueless roadhawks in cars so big they will never know their own corners, packed with children and gifts and possessions that will never come close to answering that big auld why. But everything we throw out just seems to turn back in, and the picture it paints leaves me ugly, the half-finished afterthought. Just pencil sketches and errant strokes. Unfinished family portrait.
It all beomes quite difficult, coming to terms with all this. Heckling with equal parts introversion? What a tough drink to take. I ponder. They taunt. We round the sheer cliff of a fire-scarred mountain and slip unnoticed into Santa Barbara, as surprised by our sudden entrance as the town is to find these Santa Cruz roadhawks blazing on at a cool 97 mph.
Rounding the corner, my existential meanderings on my place in this family jerk to a halt as quick as the Mercedes hitting holiday traffic. We grind to a crawl, the windows go down, and my father and brother quickly begin cursing this new delay on our trip.
I, however, am finding it harder and harder to worry about traffic or my familial obligations. Or anything at all, for that matter. As the cedes prowls along, the Pacific blue is unfolding on my right. Through my window the deep scent of this salty colossus comes, stirring my nose. It awakens something in me, it's putting me in my place. Waves pound the shores as we roll past. Set upon set of waves in constant bombardment of these perilous acres of land we so carelessly drive over. On such an ernest, hurried run. I can run, I can strive. Thrive. Survive. Or falter. Die. And the waves keep rolling on, in endless assault.
It's getting harder and harder to be worried about what I'm not or what I could be when the realization hits: nothing I build could ever withstand this eternal assault. I lack even an iota of the time needed to mount a defense against such force. A more egotistical man could be driven raving mad by this realization, confined to the back room of a treatment facility, flailing in tears and lamentation every time an orderly turns on the tap. Stop! Silence the sound of that infernal water!
I gain only empowerment from it. Knowing exactly what I am, the not-so-grand ceiling of the upside and potential of my being makes me giddy with possibility. Anything I can dream is as full and complete as anything anyone else could want or expect of me. Zero divided by zero means sweet fuck all, over and over again.
The traffic is clearing, and this silver mersaddles, insulated against gunfire, prying eyes or any threat imaginable, is back up to it's prime speed. I am no longer the enigma in the back seat, eyes glazed over with brooding. No, my head is out of the window, drinking in the breath of the pacific. The wind is hitting me at a merciless speed, trying to steal my hat, my glasses, my breath. My smile is so wide my teeth are drying in a cast. My comrades look back occasionally, laughing and shaking their heads at this enigma of a blood relation. Life makes sense. Life is what it should be.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Limitless potential. Limitless potential is hitting me at 110 mph of wind resistance, square in the face. And nary a bug in the teeth to knock me off my cloud-car. But this ethos is always hard to maintain when you start to recognize familiar territory. The ocean is something else. I have visited the same beaches dozens (hundreds?) of times and never seen the same tides, waves and sets. The ocean will always be changing, never the same. An infinite realization of limitless potential.
But around the time I hit Salinas, I am going to hit the wall. The wall that has written all over it: I am not all that I could be, but the reality of what I am. I have driven this road, passed that fruit stand, beaten this path before. And I am headed back to the life that lead me to today. I am not the sea. I am a line that has been drawn, with the current point heading back to where it started, my home town.
Ain't nothing like your home town to bring you down, a wise man (Steve Earle, ahem) once said. And it does tend to bring me down when I return from a class-A adventure to the same city. Same house. Same dreary job, or lack there-of. Same well worn streets.
Where is it? Any second, any mile now, it should hit. Those home town blues, even harder to take without an instrument or stiff drink. Castroville. Here we go. Moss Landing. Any minute now. Watsonville. Hmm, still I float on carelessly. Right about now I should be not so delicately soaring down from dream world into real world, with a sickening thud as my head hits the bottom.
Yet here I am. This giddy smile has not left my face. Not even quivered. The OCMS on my pocket radio still sounds just right. I am still just as happy in my skin. But why? Happiness? Totally irrational!
It's about the time we hit the big curve that whips 1 onto 17 that the memories float back. That night at the Del Mar. A midday drive up to Davenport, the muffin-massacre. Bookshopping in Santa Cruz. Any number of sunny strolls as the waves broke, and I was too distracted by someone else to notice my old friend Blue.
Jesus-Allah man! Could it really be? Could this be it? Your first time coming back into town, knowing that this person you have waited four days to see, that she is just as excited to see you as you are to see her? That it's that simple? Are you that lucky?
Too many questions to answer, or to ask for that manner. The only thing that matters is that you'll see her later tonight, one of the first as you step through that door home. Maybe you don't have to be infinite, or ever-changing. Maybe you just have to be who you are, and Jesus man, maybe that truly is good enough for her?
Too many questions to answer indeed, but this windsweep hair and bug stained smile speak volumes.
