literature

Dark And Stormy

Deviation Actions

vikingjon's avatar
By
Published:
3.1K Views

Literature Text

It was a dark and stormy night...  Well, it was.  It was a deep, dark, heavy-wind-driven-rainy, trees-nearly-falling-down-in-front-of-the-car-on-the-tiny-twisty-road kind of a stormy night.  Water whipped over the car like a jet-spray gas station car-wash, and blowing bushes brushed nearly as close as scrubbing rollers.  So why was I out there in the middle of the night?  Force of habit.  Love.  Meditation.  At this holiday time, I am reminded of people lost along the way and the way we grew up.  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...  Truly, for us it was.  

A good car running well is a beautiful thing, and off she and I went into the December night.  "She" is a 1995 Ford Taurus GL Station Wagon, dark forest green, the kind of rich, rewarding shade that the colour gurus have been withholding from us for the last fifteen years because it seemed too ubiquitous for them, too "nineties".  People want copper, and bile-yellow, and four shades of red, and three shades of white, and "whatever colour of blue we happen to pick today," we are told, but not green, unless it is some kind of psychotic lime.  It is just starting to make a comeback, though, and we will see it again soon, because it is such a classic colour, and nostalgia sells, but beyond that, it is form-flattering, and dark red tail-lights are the complement of dark green.  Perhaps only an artist would know that, or notice.  My car has real fold-flat bench seats and is a real American station wagon, built in Atlanta.  On this night it might as well have been built in Atlantis.  It is a car most of the time, but when I need a truck, it is that too.  They don't make them like this anymore--I wish they did.  When America makes a good wagon again people will buy it.  It can't cost fifty grand, though.  It can't be a dinky little European or asian thing either, we have to be able to PUT stuff in it, nor a big ugly thing that we don't want to be seen in, but we don't all want to drive around in vans, or hatchbacks pretending to be trucks, capiche?  Stop telling us what we want.  If the Taurus or Impala had a wagon variant now, they would be selling well and we would be styling.  I don't want an Explorer, I want a Taurus--wagon.  Missed opportunities, it's the modern American way.  Oh, I still love us don't worry.  As for my car: tonight she was a submarine.

The rain was dumping from the sky, not falling, as I got in and belted.  I filled my pipe with Night Owl, a blend of luscious pressed black Cavendish, milder Virginia flake and vanilla flavours from Georgetown Tobacco.  Fitting, as it was 2:00am.  I don't smoke much.  A few times a year if at all.  I go years without it.  It is a luxury and I treat it like one.  It is a FUEL for thought and relaxation if used in moderation.  Smoking isn't what keeps me up at night, though.  I have what is known as Non-24-hour Sleep/wake "disorder".  The condition is caused by genetics or brain injury.  I roll forwards in time two hours every day, falling asleep two hours later and waking up two hours later, on average.  Nothing stands in the way of this, not school schedules, not work schedules.  I fracture around them and have to put myself back together on the other side almost every day.  A few days out of every few weeks my schedule aligns with most people's, and then I'm off on my own again.  Schedules are like boulders in my stream and my boat is well patched, but I have learned navigation.  It has always been a large problem in my life, but I am happy to finally find out this year that there is a name for it after so many failed "insomnia" diagnoses and treatments. There are a lot of long, lonely nights, but I have had visions in the dark that are essential to the life of human beings on earth, so I am not sorry.  I'll take it, and I'll take long drives down dark roads that hold the secrets to balance, and I have always done this.  What are you doing in the overnight?  That is well.  Somebody has to do that.

About those best and worst times...  By the time my friends and I reached teen age in the early eighties, the light, happy freedoms and blithe hopes of domestic careers of our suburban youths were seemingly slipping away as if into a dream of a dream.  The economy was still trying to pull itself out of the degradation of the seventies and our parents were struggling, but working hard, and into this we were being thrust to sink or swim ourselves.  This was the era of "trickle down economics".  It was like licking moisture from a cave wall--barely enough to keep us clothed and fed, but not a world where an artistic mind was rewarded.  Sweat was rewarded--I did.  Posturing and wearing designer clothes was rewarded--I didn't.  Education was a goal, if not rewarded much either. The yuppies ruled the world by default from the hippies not caring anymore, and having been hounded underground like animals with a boost by Ronald Reagan declaring war.  The Drug Enforcement Agency became his personal henchmen to wipe out the evil long-hairs who had given him so many nightmares and protests when he was governor in California.  He had given himself nightmares by holding onto his 1950 ideals with a Hollywood actor's ignorance of current events and his willingness to use the typical political back-door route to winning favouritism by tossing out equality and assuming a monarchistic approach.  Actors are royalty in California.  Ranchers are royalty in America.  I don't really blame him--like Richard Nixon, he was terrified of real freedom--it didn't compute, it looked like anarchy ("imagine people protesting a WAR, and police BRUTALITY, and black OPPRESSION!") and our jails are STILL full of Reagan's nightmares.  We swam alright--in baths of beer and wine and spirits, and marijuana was as easy to find as a common cold, in spite of the DEA, maybe because of it, because restricted substances become extremely lucrative, in whatever era, by definition of their being banned, and so they are found everywhere, and people choose lives of crime in order to escape from the madness of reality.  They were more rewarding than any Ronald Reagan film by a long shot, and I even liked a few that I've seen.  Thus our spirits were not dimmed, our freedoms were secured by fight, a fight to keep our dreams alive of a better world through peace, and visionary hope, at the same time as we worked as hard as anyone else, or harder.  We were human beings not by inheritance, but by living and breathing peace, love, and understanding, and sharing in the faces of the "Me Generation".  Inside the greater world of "Just say no" our futures were not so bright.  Sweep one problem under the rug, persecute it, while holding out the carrot of unlimited success ("Just say yes to monopoly,") and seize the opportunity to end the Cold War after arming nearly every nation we could that wasn't Soviet, including many who are now our enemies--it was an admirable ideal world for many Americans, that is, if you weren't being swept under the rug, and if you paid lip-service to equality, but didn't live it.  Still is. The money was there, but not the love, not until the U.S. and U.S.S.R. started communicating on a tangible humanitarian level.  I DO give Reagan and Gorbachev credit for doing that, and it only proves my point.  Love is thicker than profits.  Who wants to be a stockbroker?  A banker?  "Not it!"  It was questionable then, and is downright shady now.  But I know it is a few bad apples who are rotting the bushel-- a few million bad actors.  A bank can either be a rock solid part of the community, or a pillar of greed which expects daily sacrifice at its temple doors--by blood if need be.  I can finally say that and there is real evidence on the news every night--finally.  In the eighties everyone thought we were "dirt-ball hippies" and "bleeding-hearts", and that brainwashing is still evident.  They didn't take our warnings that greed was the scourge of humankind very seriously at all.  In fact "you should all be locked up," was the general consensus, and we sometimes were.  I laughed then and still do, only it is to keep from crying at how badly corporate America has done in trying to run the world.

The Grateful Dead and a thousand other bands rolled through town regularly and they still carried the message of world peace togetherness, and truly seeing and being, not ladder-climbing and double-dealing.  Not one of us ever had to say, at a Congressional hearing, "I don't recall selling arms to Nicaraguan rebels who turned out to be murderers and rapists, nor do I remember collaborating with Israel to sell arms to Iran in trade for hostages." (Iran-Contra)  We never had to say that.  Rock and Roll could not be outlawed.  It was the voice of reason and recompense for being the same species as those who don't understand the world, yet try to rule it, those who assume roles and don't know how to act.  It held the truth in a way that schooling and religion and industry and politics were NOT giving us, and that is a major purpose of art.  Incidentally, if you want to hear real music again please rally behind Neil Young's Pono full resolution portable music player if you are interested in seeing music become powerful enough to really move us again.  A viable means of expression in clarity and definition is its own reward, and we will WANT to have something good to play, we already do, we just have players that don't respect us.  Mp3 is like playing with toys.  Hi-fidelity is like playing with giants.  Once you hear music that hasn't had all the life squeezed out of it by digital compression, and actually want to get better speakers with which to hear it in all its glory, there will be a rebirth of "loud and clear" and cool.  I miss cool.  If you want to share, share using speakers, not just mouse-clicks, not mute head-nods where no one knows or cares what you are hearing.  Share it.  There is a visceral social aspect that we are missing today by overcharging for live music, and under-developing portability.  I'm relieved to see that the "headphone generation" is almost over with.  Play it loud!  Music is not just a personal preference, it is a movement.  It is a message.  It is a wave, a wavelength. Crappy teeny-bopper shite is not the best music out there, yet it is the music that's being shared, because kids SHARE.  What happens to that when we get older?  We get selfish and old.  Carve out your place in the world.  Choose your message and stand by it.   "Just say no to banking!"  "Say no to drones!"  "Peace!"   Politicians take note:  Don't sell your message, share it.  Greed does not run the world, it collapses it from within.  Duh.

Behind the wheel the dark and wind-swept world became clearer, and Jimmy Page's guitar wailed.  The rain displayed a movie screen in my headlights and the violent wind blew it into actors with Reagan's smile but without his charm, people whose assignments are to damage people who are already damaged.  The rise and spread of the secret police is a sad reality, not a ghostly play of shadows, not a benign TV show.  It's not a James Bond movie, it is real.  There are more secret police agencies in America than anywhere else in the world.  Ask yourself why.  We place a heavy price on the wantonness of excess and we forget that it is often driven by recess.  Recession of economies drives people to the brink of helplessness, hopelessness, to the drink, to take chances, to play hard and fast and to question the authority which holds the marked cards, the sawed-through ladder, and the bent silver spoon, to throw caution to the wind and fight for true freedoms, not just here, but all over the world.  The effects of this is happening on BOTH sides of the secret coin in America, by the underground who have to hide freedom, because to truly see is to question, and by those sent to watch over them.  It is the same old game, only one side is forced down while the other chooses to hide their power and thus their accountability.  When secrecy takes precedence over human rights, there is something wrong with the system.  Remember Watergate?  No?  Look it up then.  Look around--that methodology is happening again ten times worse.  Industry does not police itself, and corporate investing does not serve the people, it ultimately serves itself regardless of the people and subverts the power of nations to undercut resistance in any way it can wrap its greedy minds around, including influencing world governments AND their agencies.  The people at the bottom just try to survive and then are policed for that.  Think about secret police who serve big business.   What hope of democracy is there in that?   We have it backwards.  We are led to believe that the stock-market takes precedence over human rights, and even the rule of American law.  I don't beg to differ.  I differ, and always have.  America COULD survive with a stock market with reasonable supervisions.  It WON'T survive another slide into slavery and oppression.  Nothing is clearer in the world.  And yet we slowly lean back that way.  Money and power are making slaves of people around the world.  That's why there is suicide netting around the plants that make chips for iPhones (Foxconn).  These truths are illuminated by the headlights of a thousand million drives through this thing we call life.  I am no fresh face to this scene.  We are behaving badly.

I am thinking these thoughts as I roll.  When the financial system crashes the poor still suffer ruin and the rich still say "Oh well, there goes the petty cash."  It loses the thread of a reality which is its own future and lifeline and reason for being: real people investing in real companies in hopes of a real future for all of us.  Today it is only a shell game played by the rich who are ultimately afraid and guilty of their own personal failings and in love with their own power, and so they cheat.  People who are the true movers and shakers, you and me, are always ground between the gears because we are led to believe we are inferior.  In some ways that's ok, because the strong survive and move on and replace the old men and women holding dearly onto an outmoded lie, and in a generation or two things might swing back again but at what price to the overall structure of society, these machinations?  The price is often war.  Our less thoughtful elders create, in their inability to give way to the future, in their subversion of countless of our youth, an undercurrent of desperation that is catching.  Have you seen party politics today?  They all reek of fear.  Why else do we need secret police?  Why else do we hunt people down by remote control in the streets of foreign nations?  Why else do people stockpile weapons in their homes?  Why else does everyone think they need to walk around with a gun or a badge?  Fear.  Perhaps I am too ideal in thinking that freedom really means the right to choose one's lifestyle, and freedom from fear.  It is only true if one joins the side that makes all the rules isn't it?  I am not afraid to be free.  I am not terrorised.  No American should be.  Yet that is how we "lead".

In my car I am alone at night, and the world's own winds and wantonness are railing against order, but I see all worlds from here, and I am not breaking any laws.  I am undaunted.  There is no curfew on my streets...yet.  I am smoking tobacco, a product that made this country--and enslaved it.  But I am no slave to it or any other thing.  I use it the way it had been used for generations before capitalism, as a spiritual boost to my consciousness.  It was industry that spread it all over the world.  Industry that first didn't know, then didn't care, then tried to hide the potentially addictive and cancerous nature of this spiritual plant.  In the end all that matters is personal responsibility and that happens everywhere along the line, from the person picking to the person smoking.  It is not criminal to use tobacco, it is risk and reward--down the ages.  Perhaps Reagan was right if he thought of life as being a moving picture, and we are sometimes able to write our own lines, perhaps it was Shakespeare who gave him that idea ("All the world's a stage, and we are merely players..."), but only to the good of the overall show--otherwise the movie is a flop.  It is hard to be the star, no matter what movie we are in.  We make personal sacrifices in the name of our current project's sturdiness to our overall longevity.  We burn hard and fast in order to light the way for others, to blaze a trail, and sometimes we need fuel.  That is our risk to take.   Industry would have life be nasty, brutish and short for the "extras" in our film so that a few producers can continue to make money.  But that is propaganda, not inspiration.  That is not free expression.  The artists are the inspiration.  There are superstars in any crowd, though, only waiting for their break.  That is America.  It is NOT a few people only who shine.  Some of our best people burn out in revolt, in giving everything for their art, or to change art to reflect the world so we can truly see it, or are smashed into grease for the wheels, but the fans are inspired to live and work for their dreams, too, and that is far more important than status quo.  It generates both hope AND profits for future generations.  Industry is responsible for itself and to itself, to its patrons, and to its nations.  Jumping borders does NOT give free rein, it does NOT absolve responsibility, and this is the ruse right now which creates instability, especially in banking, especially in oil.  Take your money to someone who is not using it against you, who is not using it to buy favouritism that will not help at all when world peace is breaking down--that is your responsibility.  There is no large enough body with clear power to police big business and they know it and think they will come through any damage unscathed.  They are wrong. The people are still right here watching and we are answerable to no one but ourselves if we are sold out, yet we are the first to be drafted when fighting breaks out.  This is balance and we are tipping it dangerously.  We are all over the road.  Our leaders SHOULD be afraid, many of them are guilty as hell.  Stop the car.  Get out.  Take a breather.  Remember where you are.  Remember your training.  Remember balance.

As I drive through the blackness I remember that sometimes we say the good die young, but the good are often fueled by habits that make a dirty and dangerous life bearable.  You can research that all you want, but think of great leaders like Roosevelt and Churchill and Kennedy and you will see that there is a mix of partying and politics, with the result being INSPIRATION and one is not separate from the other.  Study hard.  What if the job is just to survive and put food on the table?  This still requires a zest for life, but in some form of moderation.   We are all personally responsible for moderation.  Each of us is, no matter what we are doing.  Love of life inspires in a way that greed never will.  Greed will inspire guilt, and guilt will inspire shame and more greed will alleviate the shame, but inspire more guilt.  This is a guilt/shame spiral, and in the end it causes destruction.  Humankind does not thrive on piety alone, nor unreasoning profit, nor overblown supergiants of corporation, but on visionary advances in humanity and caring and wisdom, and the visions have a fuel.  It may be love, or spirituality, or it may even be money in moderation, but in the end it must be a sacred undying vision of a better future for more people, a better world for all of our families to live in, not just one with a swimming pool, or our time here has been a non-event.  HOW can we proceed if the balance is constantly tipped by the powerful rejecting the equality and futures of the many?  How can they then expect us to look up to them, to support them, to work for them, to fight for them?  What logic makes them think we will?  They think that they OWN us, because they create a need for themselves, and we fall into that trap, we do.  Our Nation was born to relegate that way of thinking to history, and yet we build up the monarchy of money.  It is mind-boggling that we don't make the connections, and shut our mouths when we find our own companies trading our futures for quick profits.  It is possible to have ethics and not live a life which inspires oppression and needlessly punitive laws to keep us from dreaming, to keep us from being able to move forward with change, with course correction.  It is often the needlessly punitive laws which hold all of us back.  That is NOT what America is.  That is not who we are regardless of how many lawyers we elect.  I'm suggesting that disingenuously moral behaviour is no better and part of a broken reality if we let the people go who are committing the largest crimes against humanity by manipulating the system so that the fewest people benefit and the most actually suffer, but these few continue to hold sway because they are profitable at all costs, until suddenly the whole thing is lost to collapse, because of people turning forcefully against the system, while the tiniest of marginal people are thrown in jail for engaging in survival, a spiritual quest for love, inspiration, and a perception change which highlights the notation of how badly hypocritical we are.  Worse is to ignore and mistreat those at the bottom because they don't meet some misguided standard--whatever it is this week.  Policing the people while letting the worst-behaved corporate and political shyster leaders operate duty-free is NOT a recipe for the success of a nation.  Respect takes a nosedive in that scenario.  The answer is equality.   Not by redistribution, but by responsible balance.  The answer has always been equality, responsible, accountable, democratically balanced leadership and caring.   That's all it takes--responsibility.  That is supposed to be America, giving everyone the same shot at being a star, whatever side you're on, but not to trample everyone else in order to try to be them or to get tickets to see them, if they do become fashionable.  Be careful of blind faith.  The star is no one without the cast and crew, and more importantly they are no one without the fans, and the movie can't get made without money, so therefore we are all equals in importance in this life--period.  The disaffected have no need to rise up if there are no disaffected, if everyone gets a chance, and just does the right thing.  Every political and business leader who has forgotten this asks for their own downfall.  It is just common sense.  The other side of that is that everyone must shoulder some of their own responsibility.  There is no one-way ticket.  If you go big--give back.  That's democracy.

The wind and rain swirl around me on the empty roads and I am leaving the city behind, but my headlamps light the beginnings of the rural dark ahead with a few more scenes.  I see balance in the twin beams, and therein the people of ideas for our successful future will succeed.  Greed is not a higher standard than higher consciousness.  I look around at the decline in ethical morality in business, and in hope, where and when we apply the equation in which profits=happiness.  They do not, not when gathered at any cost, and not at the cost of millions of human souls, and that is the tunnel down which we fall, like the tunnel of beam-lit road in front of me.  That is the dissolution of the standards and quality of American business by using outdated modalities, that we shouldn't have to struggle to redefine every few decades.  Do the right thing in the first place and we don't have to claw our way back up.  Drive a well-maintained machine.  This is us selling our business to our overseas competitors who field slave-wage earners rather than free people, or by only paying slave-wages here.  This is the legacy of usury by our lending institutions and our leaders.  This is the legacy of pricing a college education, which is no guarantee of anything, out of reach except to the elite who will guarantee their children jobs anyway.  We all want things, and yet it is the degree to which we will buy or sell or share our freedom and intelligence that defines us.  Big industry and banking are not wrong for wanting profits, they are wrong in that they too often operate in such a way that it causes the people who really need and do the work, and ultimately the people who patronise these institutions, to suffer inordinately for their entire lives without proper recompense, with a stacked deck.  They are wrong in that they enslave free societies rather than promoting them from within with the responsible use of profits, reinvestment in people rather than rackets, or if they lie and cheat, as they quite visibly do, thus downgrading the morals of everyone in their employ AND their customers rather than rewarding ALL the people and parts of a functioning business and the society which nurtures them, not by equal pay, but by reasonable, real-world, profits-reflective pay--just like those at the top feel obligated to give themselves.  These days we do suffer, and wonder why.  The entire free world is suffering under the strain of corporate criminality and poor judgement.  You can easily find dozens of volumes in bookstores now on how and why this is happening, you don't have to accept my opinion--even though I have lived it.  If I can love my country and still notice all these flaws for years on end, imagine someone looking at us from the outside, who doesn't know what kind of balance and goodness we are truly capable of--what might they think of us?  Do we seem like leaders?

I have been on this road a long time.  I am not frightened by the storm.  Nervous, yes, but we have the opportunity to choose the right road.  So what if it looks dark?  That's what true leadership is about, that's what headlights are for.  America is still the freest country in the world, but there is room for change for the better.  We are the world's leaders in IDEAS not profits.  True profits follow leadership, they don't lead.  How can we lead if we are slaves to profits?  The equation doesn't work.  People come first, and profits follow real leaders giving us opportunities to do good in the world, not thieves.  All of our "great" leaders from the past few decades have made millions pretending to be great and our wheels have been in the ditch for a good while now.  These are shit-poor drivers.  All the profits stolen from legitimate business people and families and invested in shell game banking schemes is gone--it's a write off, because it is all gone in the next collapse anyway.  It was not reincorporated into a functioning society, it was stolen and remains hidden, and ALL the legitimate businesses have to suffer the lack of everyday people being able to spend or to invest in their own hopes and dreams anymore so that we ALL suffer.  THAT is the legacy of poor leadership.  Let someone else drive.  These folks are qualified to drive a wheelchair and that's about it.  A gold-plated wheelchair.  Just get out of the way.  Get one of your slaves to roll you on out of here.  In the past few decades we have been selling out our American ideals and that will always fail.  No amount of justification forgives the loss of life of people whose hopes and dreams are shattered by a failure of our leaders to lead.

This is not a new movie in my headlights.  This is not news to me.  Back when I first started driving these roads in the 1980's I saw millions selling their souls in search of "corporate America" and when I see the price paid in lives at the lack of forward vision by these people whose degrees tell me they ought to know better but are simply lost in their subverted ethical vacuum, I am not at all surprised.  The good times were artificially good because people were trimming too close to the bone.  Now that we are sick there is nothing left to live on.  I don't know why anyone is surprised at the slide we have taken.  The morality has been missing for some time.  I still see it all around me, but the very big corporations started losing their way a long time ago.  I peg it at about 1980, but these trends merely rise and fall throughout history, and you can draw your own conclusions.  What did these people miss growing up, that led them to believe that a pillow of money and a Rolex to rest their heads on at night would protect them from the nightmare of dissolving the ethical fabric of the real world?  "Let them eat cake," they said, and still do.  So be it, loves...  

But so much for the worst of times, tonight I was leaving the city and just wanted to drive.  It is relaxing and edge-of-the-seat exciting sometimes.  I was a delivery driver for five years.  I am a professional.  I wanted to drink too, or rather instead, but didn't.  Haven't in months and months.   Wrangling with the past and future is thirsty work, but my body and mind are ok with water most days.  Anyway I had my smoke, as part of balance and sacrifice, risk and reward.  Spirituality is its own fuel.  I wanted to re-experience a time when a car and a friend was almost all one needed to live an evening of adventure and sharing of ideas and camaraderie, of finding the answers, and most of all hope.  As was once typical of my late friend Scott, and some others, I invited myself out into the teeth of the storm--and accepted the challenge.  I had no board meetings that required my attention or beauty sleep.  The wind was intense.  This was the kind of wind that makes one wonder how anything remains upright in this world, and makes everything howl as though it wishes it wasn't.  As if hurricanes Irene and Sandy hadn't been enough in the last year, this 2012 winter storm would have been a horrible blizzard if the season were as cold as in my youth.  The weather patterns are fluctuating all over the world--another legacy of greed over vision.  Hold on tight, my lads and lassies, it is going to be a rough ride for us!  Are you up to it?  We are industrious in our adaptations, and visionary in our thinking, and I am a rider of waves.

When I was a young preteen and teen I spent some of the summer weeks at my grandmother's beach cottage on The Outer Banks of North Carolina, Ocracoke Island, with the parental folks and my cousins and sisters. We dip-netted crabs, raked clams, and hooked and speared fish, bagged our shrimp fresh from the trawlers coming into port, and life was steady and happy and exciting.  The peoples' friendship was wonderful, their accents were deep and beautiful, and so were the waves.  Bodyboarding had just caught on from Australia and I had a Morey Boogie "Aussie" board with which to carve the curls.  Life is worth living from the inside of a wave.  It is exhilarating and simple.  

Perhaps that was a precursor to my love of driving.  There is nothing like leaning way over and using one's weight to hang the wheel tight and accelerate through the apex of a curve, then leaning back and over to wrest the wheel the other way off into the straight away or back into the next curve, senses alert for every movement out to the periphery.  My friends and I grew up in "The Valley", that is, the Brandywine River Valley, and to escape from the suburb doldrums we inherited our parents and siblings' aging musclecars, or we delivered papers, cut lawns, and flipped burgers and pumped gas or sold trinkets until we could afford one, and drove like little banshees and demons.  Some of those cars didn't make it.  One or two of us didn't either, but those that met their end died free, not like old bears and tigers in cages.  It makes a difference, being free.  You should try it sometime if you've forgotten what being free once meant to you.  Don't go out and drive like a banshee if you haven't done it in awhile, but do something fun.  Fly a kite.  Enjoy life.  We miss those fallen friends whose lives were then and not later full of all the good things in life we further sojourners have accumulated.  Do it for them.  We miss them every day, and we learned restraint from their lesson, and some of our own.

These days, on a night like this, speed isn't the lure.  I was relaxed and purposeful, but my long years of training kicked in a number of times.  There were branches down, there were bedraggled foxes (freedom includes hunger sometimes), and there were deep puddles that didn't need to get vacuumed into my air intakes or to snatch away my contact patches.  I drove reasonably, and it was still fun.  The night held memory though.  A thousand drives with friends haunt the edges of who I am.

Deep friendships and hardships,
And discussions of life.  
What move to make, and what girl/boy to date;  
What maxims to heed and what jobs to take;
What life to lead and what life to shelve;
What is the meaning of heaven and hell?
What to love about love, life, & nature
And how far to delve?
These are all at the ready to find on the road.  
We camped out at bonfires,
We drank in the snow,
We sledded down hillsides and filled summer with glow.  
We danced in spring flowers,
We bedded among trees;
We laughed at fall colours
And cried with dead leaves.
We couldn't chase after time
Down wherever it goes,
But we learned about balance from driving the road.  

The Brandywine (nominally a creek) is the site of a Revolutionary War battle.  General George Washington was given some bad intel about how easy it might be to cross troops over the creek, and where, and was flanked and then routed by the British on their way to take Philadelphia, forcing the Continental Army to retreat, but not its destruction.  The British later took Philadelphia unopposed.  One British estimate "had about 300 men killed, 600 wounded, and near 400 made prisoners" --Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_o… retrieved 2013-01-24.  While there has been some considerable development in the area, its idyllic and historic identity still remain and have been attractive to the Du Pont fortunes (gunpowder was milled on the Brandywine, at Eleutherian Mills, and Nylon, Teflon, Lycra, Tyvek and Kevlar, among many other things, was developed in a somewhat unassuming lab complex across from the old mills, and Bancroft textile fortunes as well, and Jessop & Moore made paper at Rockland Mills www.paperindustryweb.com/rockl… , among others), the result being a large number of estate holdings which repudiate the wanton conversion to suburban sprawl found elsewhere in the region.  This maintains the European rural mill, farm, and estate feel which replaced the original Native American flint-napping and hunting grounds.  A couple of inspired state parks conserve some of the land as well as does a Trust and wildlife reserve.  It seems like a good balance of land use that is somewhat unique, and is a place of rural comfort, nature, and colonial charm, with roads that are conscripted by these land holdings and the natural rocky Delaware Piedmont landforms.  They are twisty and hedgerow lined, cornfield and equestrian-field laced, woodsy and waterway winding.  They are dappled and diving and one's stomach is lurched and retrieved in roller-coaster fashion, both liberating and transmission grinding.  I used to "catch air" off of some of the bumps, but my Taurus and I don't go in for that much anymore.  In any case they have repaved and taken the edges off of those particular hillocks.  C'est la vie.

At 2:30am the world is reduced to the glow of the instruments and the cave-like circle of the lamps washing ahead through the driving sheets of rain.  On the ridge above the river just before I made my descent into the valley, a tube of some sort was illuminated first as a formless blob, then a crisp shape rolling around in the road next to an old farmhouse, where I dodged it blowing back and forth in the turbulent wind across the two narrow lanes, then stopped and ran back to move it somewhere safe.  I had on an old hunting jacket of waxed canvas which I use because it has bird-pockets that hold my camera's lenses, and my Australian cattle drover's hat.  I pretended that a saturated atmosphere almost too thick to breathe was normal, but I knew that I didn't want to be out in that cold for long unless I had to.  The wind was finding every crevasse and exposed area on my body in seconds and filling it with water.  My wool scarf was undaunted.  My vehicle is warm and has a soothing glow and a good stereo and after the next few obstacles of downed branches, I decided to just go around them unless I had to stop.  There were branches every few hundred yards but nothing completely blocking both lanes.  The road crews must have had fun later in the day, but the residents have seen this before.  This was their territory, OUR territory.  No speed demon thrills tonight, it was an exercise in thought, memory and movement against odds.  If I had seen anything prohibitive I would have fixed it or called it in. The wipers barely held sway over the driving rain splashing against the windshield and shapes loomed out of the dark and into the headlights.  The trees swayed disturbingly and then maniacally, flinging pieces of themselves in desperate sacrifice and bushes looked like women running from killers, arms flailing.  Somehow every branch that fell landed in front or behind me as I glided on through.  Any other person might have been concerned.  I suppose I was, a tree on one's head can ruin a whole day, but the road is both meditation and mystery and inspires a self-confidence born in the layering of time that makes experience into a blanket.  It is a balance of risk and reward.  The timid and newbies and foreigners might have been frightened, but they were all sensibly at home asleep where they belonged.  I was challenging the night alone on purpose and ready for what it might bring.  It brought a sense of place--physical, spiritual, emotional, and I was allowed safe passage.

My friend Scott was a storm chaser.  Not the only of my friends who was or is, but Scott loved horrible weather more than anyone else I know besides me.  We did see it as a challenge, not a discomfort.  It was a regular occurrence to get a phone call at all hours to go spend some quality time on the road with my old friend.  Snowstorms were a favourite and he deliberately worked his way up to driving four-wheel-drive-equipped vehicles so we could range farther in more different conditions, but muscle cars with posi-traction and the like, that is, limited-slip gear differentials that engaged both rear drive wheels with good grip were surprisingly effective most days with good rubber.  Tire technology has come a long way with the advent of "all-season tires", but people tend to give too much credibility to what are only partial tread solutions and often just crash, and it is our own faults for not using winter tires.  We don't belong out there unprepared.  In those days I used studded snow tires on my cars, but those are illegal in my state now.  It's more important for people to crash and die than to have to repave every so often is the argument.  Good thinking.  We are expected to wait timidly for the plows and salt trucks.  Some of us don't.  I should probably drive the salt trucks at this point.  Perhaps I will do that on my next break from running a Fortune 500.  That sounds like a good name for a Stock Car race, perhaps I will put that together as well.  All the Forbes companies can sponsor a car.

My friend didn't crash and die.  He was possibly the best driver I knew.  Not an unblemished record, you understand, but I only had to worry when he was mad about something.  My job was to keep him calm and collected, as we worked through myriad issues of growing up into men with passions and responsibilities, and I did my job well.  The favour was returned when I was driving, but by far our excursions were happy and relaxation-filled.  In our more reckless days, when he was driving he would say "shift," and with my left hand I would throw the gear lever into the appropriate notch.  This left us each a free hand for a beer.  Later, on my trip to Britain, I was already trained in left-hand shifting!  I tell you that story in order to tell you this one:  There were predictably few people on the roads during those times, just as there was this more recent night.  Before dawn, in four hours of driving I saw exactly one other car and it pulled over for me to pass, coming the other way on a one-lane road.  I don't recommend any such thing as our antics to anyone now, I wouldn't even consider it, but we lived through thick, thin, and bloody details in order that I can type these words and project the lessons and the memories of thousands onto thousands of others.  There are no guarantees on the road--NONE.  All over America there were boys and girls actually living life in the summer and winter nights.  I don't know what people do now.  I'm sure there is still wonder and carnage.  I can go out and drive and get the same experiences that I did then without the need for anything stronger than coffee or a smoke, and so could Scott for many long years before his untimely death, so that isn't the purpose of being on the road.  The purpose is to understand what limits are.  The purpose is to know the road.  The purpose is to understand the balance of risk and reward.  Use your head as well as your heart.  If you take a risk anywhere in life you must be willing to accept the worst possible outcome.  Sometimes there is too much FUEL in the fires, the car crashes--sometimes the license is taken away, sometimes people DIE.  Is that the risk you are willing to take?  There is time, as there was for Scott and our friends, to change for the better.

We lived hard, did my lifelong friend and I.  His heart wore out and mine hasn't quite yet, but not without learning what we needed to know, not without being able to pass it on.  Fortunately Scott has defied death in a number of ways, and especially in that I am never in the valley without him, and the dirtier the weather the better we still like it.  Dave and CT and Steve, and my sister and Barbara as well as our other friends who are no longer life-equipped join us from time to time, as well as some of our friends with wandering dreams who are still out in the world and doing more mundane things than driving around and remembering the valley.  I feel sure they appreciate my vigil.  I am absolutely sure of that.

I passed a house with a kindly light where one of my sister's friends once lived.  It is one of the old houses that may still serve as a rental now, but which a coachman or some other estate worker may have been able to build for his family, or perhaps a miller or miller's family member.  It perches on the hill up the road from the old Rockland Paper Mill and one could hear the mill falls from there before they finally crumbled in a storm like this several years ago (Isn't it sad that there is no reason to rebuild the waterfall now?).  I suppose it is better for the fish anyway, although upstream there used to be huge schools of creek chubs, smallmouth bass, and carp.  My sister's friend was (and I hope still is) an artist.  One evening just before Christmas we went and spent an hour or so sipping mulled cider and perusing her decorations and wonderful artwork at a somewhat candlelit and informal showing.  Laurie was very soft-spoken and errantly distracted, and I loved a print that was a pen-and-ink drawing of a girl in a loose medieval peasant's dress sitting on a stone wall by a stream under a willow, head tilted and resting on a hand, elbow supported by her knee, with her other hand held out to a mythical unicorn stepping through a flowing stream.  It spoke to me of the land in which we were standing, by the Brandywine and its feeder streams, partly a land of dreams and part real.  How many days had there been idyllic dream-like reveries like this for us all, here by the waterside, and for how many generations?  She described how she had been on the phone with a friend as she drew it, and how it had been almost an idle doodle just spilling out of her head, but I recognised the imprint of our locale.  Such talent!  

The Brandywine is the land of the Wyeth family of artists as well, N.C., Andrew, and Jamie, being the most famous, but I will let history tell their story.  You can find them in the encyclopedia if your fingers feel like walking, or in the Brandywine River Valley Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, near the Brandywine Battlefield memorial, if your feet ever do.  They are every bit as inspired by the land as my friends and family are, and so am I.  It is a good place to live and we have loved and respected it.  I understand those who need to move on.  Sometimes I do, too, but I would return from wherever I traveled to the ends of the world for one more valley cruise.  There is little hope of finding anyone who loves the middle of the night as much as I do, but I am never sure on that count.  There are many things which restrict our movements, but as long as the road is there, I am free.  As long as there is an artist's imagination behind my eyes there isn't a law that can steal it.  There is no ideology strong enough to ungrain my ingraining and if there was I would no longer be who I am.  I think everyone who has forgotten their youth must no longer be who they are, but I don't really think anyone has. There was a time when the road was more important than school, but less important than friendship or work.  I've survived all three and addiction and affliction.  Moderation is the key to all things.  We all must learn to walk before we can run and then to drive all night if need be, to cover enough ground and wisdom that we evolve.

As I picked my way through the torrents and gusts and inkiness, ticking off memories and new meditations, I drove down the very same roads on which my mother had taken me as a teenager, with my driving learner's permit, in fulfillment of the rural route requirement.  I remember her admonishing me to keep the stereo turned down.  It was a birthday present from my oldest sister, a Sanyo with 35 watts per channel, a cassette player and good tuning for the Philly rock stations, and the car had been hers as well, a 1971 Cutlass S Holiday Coupe, white, with a Rocket 350 V-8 engine.  At the time 70 watts was a lot of power and a 350 cubic inch V-8 was as well.  What a car to cut one's teeth on!   I humoured my mother, but in truth the music was helping to calm my nerves.  It always does, although the ambient sounds tell a story all its own.  Those first twisty hours at age sixteen were the beginning of a lifelong love of driving.  I had been in love with the valley since my sisters and I had trailed after my father walking through the woods, he being Gandalf the wizard, teaching us the plants and animals, and the ways of the world, and we being hobbits of the Shire, eager for adventure, but not averse to putting our feet up in front of a fire.  Professor Tolkien was still alive then, when I was small, but the love he delineated in all of his stories for the wildlands and last homely houses and quests for adventure and honour live on and are not lost on me through my mother and father's readings and teachings, and my sisters' love.  I may not be as generous with my own stories as I once was, but there are those out there who still enjoy them.

There is no exciting ending to my tale of wind and wuthering. The sun came up, as it always does, and I hurried home before the threat of more inexperienced drivers cutting through the hazardous roads on their way to work.  The greatest danger in life is the greatest number of people doing the stupidest of things at the same time.  I survived.  My friends live on.  My heart is still free.  The echoes of the lessons of the wailing and whistling wind must still echo through my pages and through life, while the secrets that I find there in the darkened fields and woodlands may not seem clear to you until your next lonely drive.  The water that washed my heart and car has long since run away in rivulets, down streams much older than I, but it is enriched for having flowed around my soul and sparkled in my eyes.  My car still purrs down lonely roads at night, and probably always will.  Like my ghostly and sometimes living friends who ride shotgun in my memory and grace me with old jokes and laughs, I am kind enough to return the favour.  Don't worry, I don't talk out loud to them, but sometimes I'm known to smile.


J. Shidler, Dec. 2102 to Feb. 2013
"And if you feel that you can't go on
In the light you will find the road"
--Jones/Page/Plant
© 2013 - 2024 vikingjon
Comments7
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Bark's avatar
I only had time to skim, but was still impressed. I'll re-visit this one when I have time to soak it all in.