12/11/01

Unfocused Thoughts that Happened on a Bus

I have spent a lot of time on the road recently. Specifically, the interstates between Boston and New York City, where I have a 3 weekend job running lights for a musical. I will be one of the first to admit that spending 8-10 hours a weekend on a bus in order to spend 6 hours pushing buttons is crazy, not to mention impractical, considering the pittance they are paying me. Half of me is scandalized that I am spending that much potentially valuable time staring at the grass verge of a highway instead of staying put and looking for a job and planning out the future, while the other half is overjoyed to feel the wheels turning under the seat and watch the scenery flashing by.

As you might have guessed from the fact that I've written a couple of road trip articles for Violivia already, I enjoy traveling. It's not just the new sights, though, that appeal to my half-vagabond heart, but the very process of going. Trips for me aren't just spaces of time between point A and point J. When you are on the road, you are between places, and your thoughts can go in any direction, from redecorating the kitchen to planning your future life as a superhero (if you are in a car alone its even better because you can talk to yourself too). Nowhere else do you have so much space to think about where you are going or so much perspective on where you have been.

I have always wished that I could be a true vagabond- the cheerful, happy-go-lucky type who picks up and leaves on a whim, without regret or an enduring sense of loss for what they leave behind. Like Theophilus - the title character from my favorite book, Theophilus North - "I dreamt of covering the entire world, of looking into a million faces, light of foot, light of purse and baggage, extricating myself from the predicaments of hunger, cold, and oppression by quickness of mind." Of course, this was before I grew up and realized that my mind is sometimes too slow to process the words "hello, how are you?" let alone deal with hunger and oppression. I am also an incurable packrat and haven't been light of baggage since the age of 5. Still, part of me loves the idea of picking up and leaving for destinations unknown at the drop of a hat, packing up the car and leaving an empty room behind, with an adventure to come. My early dream-stories were peopled with characters that were orphaned or otherwise alone, moving from place to place, making a living as best they could, always one step ahead of a structured life.

As I got older, my stories got darker, and I had visions of America as a maze of highways and country roads - a river of cars, trucks, and trains, that could swallow someone, leaving no traces of their whereabouts. The travellers I dreamed of were driven not just to see new sights, but to vanish, losing a bit of themselves when they leave a place behind, and paradoxically longing for a sense of home that they cannot achieve. This tragic traveller - the girl on the bus, with her head pressed to the window, left-behind faces and voices painting the turnpike trees - is created for us over and over in songs and stories. It comes with the music I listen to, everything from James Taylor to Ani Difranco - every singer who reflects on their time on the road, of hotel walls, roadside diners, and people left to miss them. Leaning back in my bus seat with my eyes on the sky, I can almost fit myself into those songs. I have left enough people behind me in my life to know the way regret will shape my face and make my mouth curl up at one corner in a mask of a smile. To lose myself in the image would be easy - easy to be that sad-song girl, that tragic heroine, but it cannot last. The songs crystallize a moment and a feeling, making that one emotion everything. This pure reflection of our emotions is seductive in its absoluteness. The voice of the song doesn't have the relief lurking at the back of its mind, somewhere next to a shopping list and the address of that new shoe store. As someone who is rarely submerged in any one emotion, it is the simplicity that attracts me. But life is not that simple, and people are not that simple, and emotions are never that clear-cut and tidy. I am too cynical and detached to sustain tragedy, and sometime we all have to get off the bus.

I tend to spend my time on the road thinking of the people I could be, but when the motion stops, I am always back to myself, too attached to my own home, my own faults, and my own ruts to pick up and leave them behind. I believe that there are some beautiful things about consistency. That one germ of restlessness never leaves me, though. My heart leaps at the thought of an 8-hour drive west, the first sight of the mountains, and the star-pattern lights of a strange new city at night. I want to be like my grandma, who just went to Greece last year for the first time. I want to see Budapest, and experience again the loss of self and all sense of time that comes from an overnight flight. And after all of that, I know I will want to come Home.

~chloe