"Runaway Vehicles Only"

I saw this sign, well, I’ve seen this sign probably hundreds of times as I’ve driven various routes from here to there, but I saw it again the other day while heading north on Highway 5 from L.A. to Redwood City and it read completely different than it had previously. It read as an invitation.

My heart beats at its steadiest when it is pumping to the rhythm of the road moving under my wheels. My veins, like pistons, pounding in precision as the scenery zips by in a a blur of green tones, brown tones, a glimpse of the ocean or anguine coastline. I’m at my most content, my happiest, my most blissful when I am in between two places, in between a previous location and a new destination. I wish so strongly to soak it all up, for there to no longer be any image of myself, but for myself to become a sort of mirror ball of all the things I see, all the things my eyes drink in. I wish only to project the very nature in which I - which we all - exist. In anonymity and awe of the world that surrounds me. To give credit where credit is due.

I feel as though the only change in the majority of my days is the change in the size of the screen I stare at. I want, earnestly, to divorce myself from the world of people, at least for a little while, people moving along, single file, completing tasks, pressing repeat on the cycle. I need to unload.

I was recently discussing my recent solo trip through Sedona, AZ with some friends and a kind old man heard me telling the story of camping, being harassed by bears and badgers and skunks and being so alone. I was, to put it simply, at the very mercy of the elements. He asked me “Could you feel it, could you feel the Earth?” No one had every asked me that before, they always asked, more or less, how I felt while I was out there. And I stopped and thought, ‘yes, I could it feel it, I could feel the earth,’ and how little it was concerned with whether I existed or not.