the long haul. partie deux.
and now the second piece of this thing I found, something I did ages ago. it’ll probably make more sense from from the beginning, knowmsayin.
¶ To stave off boredom I would blow clouds on the windows, rubbing my fingers onto the chilled glass, leaving clandestine messages to passers-by or to no one in particular. The markings would always fade away and then they would just be mine and mine alone, to discover again when I breathed on the right places. Other times, when I had the seat to myself, I would lie back on my long pillow, prop my feet up on the armrest, and look into the night. Long stretches of dark highway were always my favourites, where the tops of pines would swiftly brush the moon as we raced north, and I would feel like we were somehow gliding or floating, but then the orange streetlights would flash by quickly like a roaring train and pull me back to being awake, shattering any lingering stillness. They always planted them in the dozens, those streetlights.
¶ When I was particularly awake, I would watch out for places I’d been. I would remember the seafood market where we bought shrimp once, or the gas station where I filled the tank that first time, or fields where I saw deer at dusk, or the town in Delaware where, at Christmas, the trees in the median would be glowing with string lights. I would count out how much we’d need in toll money before the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.
¶ And I would remember all these places and think to myself that these gas stations, signs, and parking lots weren’t just things that fly by and disappear into the night; rather, there is a kind of permanence to them. Knowing that they were a part of my travels and my experience makes me feel like there is a sort of barely perceptible thread that ties me to these distant and disparate locales. However brief the encounter or however insignificant the event, these places all have their own corners in my memory, their own meaning.
¶ So I stay awake on the bus, until the dawn sweeps away the last shadows and streams in through the streaked windows, until we’re all dropped off on a bright and bare Canal Street, until my relatives whisk me off to their guest bedrooms or plump sofas — and then I slide into a long, soft sleep.
