Sometimes...
I feel the fear of
Uncertainty, stinging clear
And I...
Can't help but ask myself
How much I'll let the fear
Take the wheel and steer
It's driven me before
And seems to have a vague...
Haunting mass appeal
But lately I'm
Beginning to find that I...
Should be the one behind the wheel

Whatever tomorrow brings I'll be there
With open arms and open eyes, yeah!
Whatever tomorrow brings
I'll be there
....I'll be there...

---

I knew I had to have this YCH the minute I saw it on the front page of FA!

The scene is peaceful, thoughtful... and there's just a certain aesthetic to be appreciated about old, broken-down automobiles being reclaimed by nature. I feel almost like the engine is the ultimate symbol of human civilization. It's expanded our world and our borders by making personal travel easier. It's made it possible to obtain things from afar and share them. The automobile is a sleek, compact, powerful hunk of metal that has, in a very real way, liberated people.

So to find one abandoned in the middle of nowhere makes the imagination wander! How did it get there? Why would someone leave it? It definitely has a story to it, only made all the better festooned by the trappings of nature. Coming from somewhere along Route 66, there's also always been a certain car culture that I've only ever distantly engaged with.

On a personal level, there's another reason why I had to have this pic. The moment I saw it, I remembered something cool that I hadn't in a very long time. Around the time I was 5 or 6 years old, my cousin used to babysit. She was watching over not just me, but a few other cousins on my dad's side of the family.

I don't remember why, but we were all walking down the weathered dirt road between my house and my uncle's. He lives across a river, and just past a rickety and narrow bridge that crosses it was a grove of trees and reeds. We were all kids, and pretty tired of walking. Just then, someone noticed there was something inside that nest of cattails: a rust-eaten, broken down old car! Tisha, the only teenager among us, laughed and said "¡¡Ey, a la ve!! Everyone get in, we'll drive to the Dairy Queen!"

To my kid brain, that had to be the funniest thing in the world. I remember her and her brother as the 'cool' cousins from the city. It was always so chill and interesting to hang out with them. That broken-down car always reminded me of that incident, and I would see it there on the side of the road for much of my childhood. Eventually what remained of its lime-green paint eroded away. It became such a common sight that I eventually didn't even notice it anymore.

At some point during high school, someone bought the land near the river and cleared the area of its undergrowth. The car disappeared too, though I never realized it. The happy memory was all but lost until I saw this.

Climbing atop it and watchign the clouds go by abosolutely seems like the kind of thing my 'sona would do. And hey, now that old memory is one handful of dust that won't escape down the hourglass! ^___^

Go fave the original HERE!
Art by  Bazted