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Introspective Journeys...
15 years ago
General
...both long and short.
About an hour ago, at 1:30 am, I felt the most compelling urge to go for a drive. I decided to indulge my curiosity. Although I have work tomorrow, I've been switched to the second shift--which means working from 2pm to 11pm... so I had time on my side, for once.
There are few better times than 2am on a Monday night to open your mind to the big picture, and to ask yourself the really big questions. I let go of worldly concerns and let my mind drift, and allowed my car to follow it. Although I'm sure that this activity was bad for my body, it felt so good for my soul.
Roanoke is a funny place, at night, with the streets deserted, all to myself and a few other night owls. I like to watch other people moving around, wondering what their life is like, what it is that brings them out at this peculiar hour; if they are like me, searching for the intangible revelations that only a long drive to nowhere at the wee hours of the morning can provide.
I took this valuable, once in a life-time opportunity (for, it will only ever be 2:00 AM on Tuesday, February the 1st, 2011 in Roanoke, VA ONCE, and never again) to treat my curiosity and mild wanderlust to their own devices. I took a closer look at the things I always overlook, and found myself feeling moved by the beauty of it all... the destructive, industrial, terrible polluted glory of Humanity, sprawled out as it was, suburbs and strip malls outskirting our metropolitan centers for miles and miles. I marveled at how many lives these seemingly inconsequential places were the absolute core of. That Save-A-Lot in the desolate "Roanoke-Salem City Plaza" shopping center, with its many vacant storefronts, near the corner of Peter's Creek Road and Shenandoah Boulevard... Hundreds of people probably work there. Thousands of people probably shop there. Most of them, I will never, ever see with my own two eyes; and all the ones that I do see, I will have no idea.
I felt more connected to it all than I have in a long time. I felt a resonance, subtly, with all the humanity around me, and saw our buildings and machines as part of us, part of our societal organism. Just as snails grow shells from the things they eat, so do we grow our environments out of other materials we otherwise consume. No matter how destructive we may be to nature as it was before, we are, in essence, merely a continuation of Nature's very own pattern, taken to, so far, what seems to be its zenith. That penultimate status is an envelope that we were born to push, and we always will.
I was driving down Electric Road, listening to the BBC reporting over the local NPR talk station frequency about the protests happening in Egypt, watching the lights of the sleeping shops on the side of the road rushing by, and once again, for the first time in what feels like a long time, I am happy to be alive.
Not because of something different happening to me;
not because of someone else in my life;
not because of having a valuable task to perform,
nor because of the worth it will put into my bank account...
but because I was here. I'm just... here... and that's so freaking cool ^_^
About an hour ago, at 1:30 am, I felt the most compelling urge to go for a drive. I decided to indulge my curiosity. Although I have work tomorrow, I've been switched to the second shift--which means working from 2pm to 11pm... so I had time on my side, for once.
There are few better times than 2am on a Monday night to open your mind to the big picture, and to ask yourself the really big questions. I let go of worldly concerns and let my mind drift, and allowed my car to follow it. Although I'm sure that this activity was bad for my body, it felt so good for my soul.
Roanoke is a funny place, at night, with the streets deserted, all to myself and a few other night owls. I like to watch other people moving around, wondering what their life is like, what it is that brings them out at this peculiar hour; if they are like me, searching for the intangible revelations that only a long drive to nowhere at the wee hours of the morning can provide.
I took this valuable, once in a life-time opportunity (for, it will only ever be 2:00 AM on Tuesday, February the 1st, 2011 in Roanoke, VA ONCE, and never again) to treat my curiosity and mild wanderlust to their own devices. I took a closer look at the things I always overlook, and found myself feeling moved by the beauty of it all... the destructive, industrial, terrible polluted glory of Humanity, sprawled out as it was, suburbs and strip malls outskirting our metropolitan centers for miles and miles. I marveled at how many lives these seemingly inconsequential places were the absolute core of. That Save-A-Lot in the desolate "Roanoke-Salem City Plaza" shopping center, with its many vacant storefronts, near the corner of Peter's Creek Road and Shenandoah Boulevard... Hundreds of people probably work there. Thousands of people probably shop there. Most of them, I will never, ever see with my own two eyes; and all the ones that I do see, I will have no idea.
I felt more connected to it all than I have in a long time. I felt a resonance, subtly, with all the humanity around me, and saw our buildings and machines as part of us, part of our societal organism. Just as snails grow shells from the things they eat, so do we grow our environments out of other materials we otherwise consume. No matter how destructive we may be to nature as it was before, we are, in essence, merely a continuation of Nature's very own pattern, taken to, so far, what seems to be its zenith. That penultimate status is an envelope that we were born to push, and we always will.
I was driving down Electric Road, listening to the BBC reporting over the local NPR talk station frequency about the protests happening in Egypt, watching the lights of the sleeping shops on the side of the road rushing by, and once again, for the first time in what feels like a long time, I am happy to be alive.
Not because of something different happening to me;
not because of someone else in my life;
not because of having a valuable task to perform,
nor because of the worth it will put into my bank account...
but because I was here. I'm just... here... and that's so freaking cool ^_^
