As I drove north to Napa, I found my mind drifting. It’s a fairly easy drive, straight up the 5, and so while one should never drive drunk or distracted per se, sometimes one drives… casually? But not casually as in less formally but cause-aly, as in one drives with cause but the effect is a sort of highest hypnosis that permits at least half the consciousness to be thinking of other things than having hands at ten and two and checking the perimeter in the side and rear mirrors every 5.7 seconds.
I had a lousy night’s sleep, weirdly dreaming somebody gifted me an old Jeep Cherokee that had been stored in a garage for years gathering dust. As I drove it in dreamland, the alignment was so off that were I not constantly pulling the wheel to the left I’d be drifting several lanes right within moments. A car crash startled me awake, my wondering at the meaning of it all as well as pondering the old dream logic that of one dies in a dream one dies in life.
I’m not sure what any of this has to do with anything at all… but that was kind of my thoughts as I drove up to the expo for tomorrow’s race. I’ve been feeling tremendously shallow and superficial of late, news stories of pandemics and economic calamities all playing out around me as I wave it all off as serious but not as dramatic and apocalyptic as hysteria would have us believe. I’m no Trumpian Pollyanna, pooh poohing the science nor the need for contingency planning. But I do feel like there’s only so much to be done, and chief amongst actions are basic notions of hand washing, coughing into one’s sleeve, and not going to work/school if one is sick. Of course, I probably would’ve been one of those who shrugged off that “annoying cough” that was going round in 1917.
So much of the world feels so far beyond me at present, like I’m a passive spectator as others play out their roles and go about their lives.
Here I am off on another run, dealing with logistics of getting from point A to B so that I might run from Point C to D before driving back to point A.
Like I said, I’m feeling out of my depth as the world burns around me.
So it was in this frame of mind that I picked up my race bib and enjoyed a wine tasting in Northern California.
What this means for tomorrow’s run… or life’s road, I don’t know. I used to think I knew things but somewhere in the last few decades I realized I don’t really know anything… and I’m not sure anyone else does. And that feels deceptively deep, the sort of late night epiphany a barfly shares with disinterested patrons facing last call.
