Tired bones, breathless breaths. Weekends telling the youth to live their youth while I still am the youth. Pumping energy that simultaneously deflates. Headlines blaring. Statistics are in. Vaccines are out. Tolls are up. And, the itch, the itch to go, starts to burn. Tingling through veins that travel to feet, leaning in on gas pedals, toe by toe, as they hear whispers of flight. 

GO. Want to go. Need to go. “GO” runs through blood. “GO” is the weight of the world. “GO” is more than to see, to know, to learn. “GO” is unknown because it’s more than everything expected and mentioned before.

But, “GO” is inhibited. Borders are closed, steeled up, as never before, with microscopic agents so untraversable that even Donne’s the flea couldn’t sneak through. So, on-the-spot alternative, responding to itches that don’t quell:

1. Go straight.
2. Stop for no one, well, except if you get pulled over.
3. Invite thoughts to weave through 6 PM skies.
4. Find the sunset.
5. Drive off into it; aim straight towards the mountains.
6. Find their feet and kiss them.

When I was younger, and my friends and I would get lost on our adventure drives, we’d say, “keep going straight. We’ll find something.” Of course, “getting lost” was before google maps became big, so the solution to “go straight” was a substitute – not a safe one – to actually having to read a map. Today, when, despite having no sense of directionality, I turned off the GPS, and kept going straight, turned right when I felt like it, I re-lived “new things can be found in old places.” Turning off directions led to directionality. Music gently blasted, streaming inspiration, shows how fresh experiences can be felt from the familiar; how new sights reshape pre-existing views. No note of streets/ addresses. Wanted the route to live in my mind, as a memory that taught me to sip the beauty of the second. What was noted, though, were the mountains that seemed to smile at me, as they showed off their peaks filled with snow, highlighted by the orange reflection of the sky shifting from the yellowish orange hue to a pinkish purple, leaving behind a trail of a carmine magenta binary.

It’s surreal to feel rather than know where you are. These places aren’t destinations. They’re moments where you express a thought, a prayer, a hope. Can’t tell you how to get there, and if one could, it wouldn’t befit the purpose. These aren’t destinations to go back to. They’re moments to know for the second.

Microscopic agents stop much but not going off into glowing blue mountains, transparent skies, and sunsets fading in rearview mirrors as we gape (yes actually gape) at thinly crescented moons. When you decide to just drive straight, you can juice creativity (what you think is creativity as thoughts line your mind’s crevices) out of each second.

All that said, done, travelled, and driven, gas definitely needs to be topped up. But, it was worth it.