Not All Who Wander...

It was the radio that voiced the recriminations that he’d anticipated with such dread. Uncertain as to how best broach the subject, the radio stuttered and then fell silent. If the silence had been truly bad, his recollection of it was not notable. The jarring crunch of static that followed, an injured insect, gone wild thrashing about in the stifling cabin of the car, mirroring the noise in his brain. Radio and the chaos of his mind jamming but never getting into their groove, and in the midst of this punk track was a simple, repetitive lyric.

YOU’RE LOST!

Denial came easily to him. He brought to bear a practical rationale; just because he did not recognise his surroundings, did not mean that he was lost. He nodded smugly to himself as he turned the radio down. The dialling down of the radio was an optimistic act. He fully expected the radio to get over itself and talk to him soon enough. Anything else would be petty and churlish and he had no time for that.

Leaning forward to peer curiously at his surroundings, he reminded himself that this was not his destination. That in the final analysis, his arrival at his journey’s end was all that counted and anything before that was inconsequential. A means to the intended conclusion.

He wished there were a car up ahead. Not any old vehicle. It had to be another car. And a car that he could relate to. A pang of barbed memory threatened to bring him to tears as he thought of his father. It was that man who had taught him that following the car ahead removed a large dollop of uncertainty and brought the person in the driving seat back to where they needed to be. Never had the pursuit of a car that knew where it was going failed his old man. There was a magic in what occurred during these exploits of his. A quasi-logic that could not possibly work, but somehow always did. His regret over the absence of a car in the distance was countered by his certainty that he didn’t have the magic his old man had possessed. Maybe once, long ago, he had. But not now. He was not deserving of such things.

His right foot had an answer, but before he gave it the floor, he waved his left foot through. The clutch pedal went down and he rolled the billiard ball atop the gearstick up into the third pocket, brought everything together and then allowed his right foot to create a reassuring cacophony of sound. He felt that sound as much as heard it. This was an elemental moment. The V8 engine roared and the that roar rose up through him. He’d always felt cars, and in that feeling understood things about them that he’d never brought himself to put to words. Voicing his feelings seemed wrong somehow. Akin to bragging about his exploits with a lover. And there was something sexual about his connection with cars. After all, the sounds and the movements he experienced all came up through his arse and thrilled him in a way nothing else could. 

The solution his foot was bringing into play was simple. The accelerating car was absenting the location that had made the radio scream at him. The quicker he moved on, the less likely he was to be lost. At the very least, he would spend less time lost, and there was no arguing with that. No counter to the battle cry of the charging engine.

A warning finger of ice toyed provocatively with his spine. It did not have to speak. It had already made it’s point. His logic was flawed to the point of brokenness if it were to transpire that he was going around in circles. Finding himself right back where he had started would flay the skin of his remaining confidence from him and the salt of his angry tears would undo him with a pain beyond imagining.

Gritting his teeth he pressed on all the more quickly. Dreading the moment he recognised yet another circular pattern in his life. He had been cursed with an excess of circles. He was a Russian doll encased in ever decreasing circles and no idea of how to break out from the suffocation of all those sarcophagi . Not once had he asked himself how he’d gotten here. Not once had he considered the existence of the circles. Instead he had made of them a myth. He believed in them so vehemently that they were his gods. They were eternal and more powerful than he ever could be. For the entirety of his life he had dwelt within the safe haven of the circular patterns of his behaviour. Rituals and acts to the imprisoning god of the great circle. A submission that was a betrayal of his life. A failure to pay the original debt. The debt he was born into. He owed the world a life well lived, but he’d squandered the opportunity to do so again and again. And now he was paying in the currency of pain and despair.

As he stepped on the brake, slowing the car for a hard, unforgiving corner, throwing the weight of his steed forwards, he imagined the view from above. Stepping on the gas, the car threatening to kick out and throw itself backwards suicidally into the trees, and yet he soared higher and from the perspective of the gods, he saw the road ahead of him snaking around and back into itself. The mouth consuming the tail. A hungry mouth that fed upon him a little at a time as he crossed the finish line that was also the starting line. Stop. Start. A never ending percussive rhythm that hammered nails into the coffin of his own skull. 

At the next corner his right foot went down harder and he clung on for dear life as he experienced the ragged edge. The focus in his eyes was now Herculean. This was his task. The test reserved only for him. There was nothing else. Only his vision. The car went where he dictated. His will led it there. This was how it was to live. There was only the edge and everything else was a distraction. Everything else was meaningless. 

The unceasing ribbon of tarmac urged him on, and he lost himself in the eternal moment. Conscious thought stepped away and something within him rose up to meet the challenge before him. He gave himself in his entirety, and his reward was a peace and fulfilment he had not known possible. He was bathed in true meaning and it washed away the pointless worries that had haunted him all his life. 

There was a bleep from behind the dashboard. He already knew. Even in the dream state that was more real than any breath of life, he had continued to attend to all of his surroundings. The car had tired before he had. It was thirsty. Time returned to the fold and now was the time to drop out of that piece of heaven, ease off the throttle, and become again the thing he had so resented.

Only now, he was changed. Forever changed. He had been touched by the Hand of God and was imbued with a spark of renewed purpose. As he pulled the car into the next service station, he paused for a moment and smiled at what he had just experienced and the destiny he had been gifted a glimpse of.

Now he would admit that he was lost. Now he felt that he could admit that loss. For he was no longer lost and he was no longer blind to the truth. 

His truth.

The car tutted from under its bonnet as it guzzled the petrol from the pump. He gazed along its scarlet flank adoringly. He was as keen to get back on the open road as the car was. More so. The pump clicked and he shook it before replacing it in its cradle. Time to go. Time to revisit those same roads and relish every inch of tarmac, every demanding corner. To find the edge and live on it. To put himself to the test and not to be found lacking. He’d had enough of that lack. The weight of it had ground him down and had threatened to take everything from him.

He smiled again as he pulled the door closed and slipped the seatbelt over his shoulder. Yes he had been lost, but he’d missed the point. He had missed the point for far too long. He would return and he would face the music. And he would dance. 

He turned up the radio and it sang out, loud and clear. A melody that gripped him and shook him awake. Reminded him of what it was to live. A soundtrack pointing the way to the open road, crashing like waves above the rocks of the sonorous V8 engine.

He had been lost long before he climbed into the car and drove away from his life. Today, it had all gotten too much and he’d left what he thought was the source of his burden. He’d thought that he was escaping, but he’d carried that burden along for the ride. He’d driven away with no thought as to where he was headed. He had no destination in mind, but somehow the destination was always up ahead. It had waited patiently for him. Waited an age for him to look up and focus those cold blue eyes on what really mattered, and fight with every ounce of his strength and every fibre of his being to get to where he was always meant to be. 

With a defiant spin of wheels that painted the road with their signature. A signature that committed them both totally to the road ahead, man and machine slipped effortlessly into a state of union yet again. A symbiosis that allowed them to work together seamlessly. He had been seeking connection, and he had found it where it had always been. Found it in a place of supposed solitude. 

He’d needed space. He’d wanted to think. But he hadn’t known what it was he was supposed to be thinking about. The unceasing demands of the car and the challenge of the seductive, weaving road had soothed him, calmed him and opened him up to the world around him. Opened him up to the truth inside. His truth. A truth that we all fiercely guard when we are supposed to give it to the world in order for it to flourish and grow. 

His journey had begun with a crushing grey familiarity, but as he entered a stretch of the world that was filled with the rich colours of life and a vibrancy that could not be denied, he had shrunk away from it. Shamed by his fear, he had tried to block out a landscape that he had made alien with his pettiness and self-centred ponderings. He was lost and it hurt him to admit that he had stepped off the path he was always meant to travel. This road spoke to him of that, and even as it spoke he had dialled up the noise in his head in an attempt to drown out the truth of it. 

Only when he’d thought of his father and the help the old man had humbly sought, the faith his father had displayed in a magic that he had not brought himself to understand, did he cease his lifelong tantrum and calm himself sufficiently to listen. Still himself enough to consider another way of being. Of being himself in the only way he possibly could.

He did not have to break out of the circles after all. That was not how it was done. The circles were there for good reason. He saw that now, and he saw the line that he should take. Climbing onto the circle, he now occupied the edge. Now he could begin. It was all about this mastery. To travel on the border of the light and the darkness. To be the balance between the two sides he felt so strongly within. He was neither of those things and yet by being in the midst of them he was all of it. Both those sides and something more. Something beyond all of what he knew of himself. Something that rose up and was there to be counted.

This counted.

He counted.

This meant something at last.

He meant something and he always had.

The journey was all, when you understood that it was as much a part of the destination as the destination itself. It was not a means to an end. It was meaning. It was life.

The man travelling that road now shone in the way he was always supposed to, lighting the road ahead and the line he now travelled. When he returned, he did not have to say a word. He was no longer lost and at last he was home. Where he belonged.