Driving

I’ve been driving myself to school and back since Thanksgiving, now, and although I’m used to it and rely on it, it still feels slightly strange. It’s not that I’m going somewhere on my own – although i=on other trips that still hits me, at this point I’ve made the drive between my house and the high school enough times that the journey isn’t remarkable. It’s not the feeling of responsibility and danger in driving along the winding roads. I can deal with that. It’s the silence.

Don’t get me wrong – I love silence. There’s been plenty of times when I’ve wrapped it around myself and gloried in the beauteous serenity it brings. I’ve worshiped it. That silence is like a delicate web, connecting the space in your chest to all the rest of the world. It is right, there’s no other way to really describe it, and it holds you suspended, part of something huge and elemental and comforting and peaceful. It appears mysteriously and is shattered by the suddenness of people, but it’s memory remains, enough to comfort and center and hold me together. But that’s outside silence – silence that lives, that has energy and wholeness. This silence, though, is different. It’s the same silence of being home alone, the kind you can’t shake, the kind that lurks just over your shoulder and presses down on you, ominously waiting. It can’t be gotten rid of, because it’s not about noise. I know that sounds impossible, but even with music playing or a TV show running or machine parts moving it’s still terribly, ominously silent. It has the opposite effect from the other silence – it doesn’t free but traps, doesn’t calm but tenses. That silence is why I sit firmly ensconced in my kitchen to do my homework; I tried to do it in my bedroom once, but that’s right in the silence’s heart, most of the time.

The silence in my car isn’t that bad. It’s not like being home alone at night in winter. In and of itself, there’s nothing really wrong with it, I guess. It’s sort of like boredom. But it makes me think. So I drive home and I spend 15 minutes thinking and thinking and thinking. Most of time it’s silly stuff, stories and ideas flitting in and out of my head, but sometimes it gets all serious and weird. Those are great descriptors, but you get the idea. The more I think, the more I overthink. I mull things over and convince myself that senseless things are important, and some part of me taunts and torments some other part, and I have sudden inspirations that seem terribly important but amount to nothing. For the longest time I didn’t notice it, but it’s really annoying when driving of all things. If there’s ever a time when you should be focused and present, it’s when you’re driving a car. And yet I just can’t seem to focus on a task like that for the time it would take, and the silence spins off inspirations and musings and distractions out of nothing.