Feb 11-Lethbridge to Saskatoon
The changes in the landscape along the drive from Lethbridge to Saskatoon are so subtle that it barely feels like we’re going anywhere at all. (Our car on the road is a toy on a string being pulled by a child, and we bump along never approaching her tiny fingers.)
My friend Cory flew here from Saskatoon to reunite with some old friends at my show in Lethbridge and to share the drive back home. He is the perfect companion to share this six-hour suspension, where everything outside the car window is so flat, so lifeless, so unassumingly beautiful that it seems—especially in an age of reality tv and virtual relationships—too real to be real. Within the confines of my car, the prairie gives us time and space to absorb the intensity that has come to characterize this tour: chance meetings, intense conversations, late nights, giddy sleeplessness.
Being a Kerouac fan, Cory inevitably extols the virtues (and I the hazards) of life on the road. Being the goal-driven, destination seeker and organizer that I am, I would usually find it hard to accept that life on the road is just living in the present, a state of being that permits, invites intense but short-lived interactions. But on this travel day, with my poetic passenger waxing on, I can accept a road trip that is just a state of being. Somewhere between Taber and Hanna, the trip becomes a digression. The facts of the story settle down into a form that will yield some sense later on. Today, I can be patient. Today, I can appreciate Cory’s vision of the road, only I forget to express this. In the end, it takes four more days for me to tell him I adore him. It is a lesson I learn: we should all be so much freer to tell people how we appreciate them.
I have a distinct vision of saying good-bye to Cory when I drop him off at his home in Saskatoon. With the last sunlight setting the snow ablaze, I get the distinct sense that, having learned more about each other, having shared this road trip, we’ve both lost and gained something. It would be cinematically over-simplified to say we lost wonder and gained truth. The story will have to play itself out in other ways.
Perhaps this lonely, quiet vision is so memorable because it occurs directly before I was immersed in a weekend-long carnivalesque celebration of family and friends that meant lots of wine and little sleep. Come Monday, rehearsals for the Biggar show begin.
My friend Cory flew here from Saskatoon to reunite with some old friends at my show in Lethbridge and to share the drive back home. He is the perfect companion to share this six-hour suspension, where everything outside the car window is so flat, so lifeless, so unassumingly beautiful that it seems—especially in an age of reality tv and virtual relationships—too real to be real. Within the confines of my car, the prairie gives us time and space to absorb the intensity that has come to characterize this tour: chance meetings, intense conversations, late nights, giddy sleeplessness.
Being a Kerouac fan, Cory inevitably extols the virtues (and I the hazards) of life on the road. Being the goal-driven, destination seeker and organizer that I am, I would usually find it hard to accept that life on the road is just living in the present, a state of being that permits, invites intense but short-lived interactions. But on this travel day, with my poetic passenger waxing on, I can accept a road trip that is just a state of being. Somewhere between Taber and Hanna, the trip becomes a digression. The facts of the story settle down into a form that will yield some sense later on. Today, I can be patient. Today, I can appreciate Cory’s vision of the road, only I forget to express this. In the end, it takes four more days for me to tell him I adore him. It is a lesson I learn: we should all be so much freer to tell people how we appreciate them.
I have a distinct vision of saying good-bye to Cory when I drop him off at his home in Saskatoon. With the last sunlight setting the snow ablaze, I get the distinct sense that, having learned more about each other, having shared this road trip, we’ve both lost and gained something. It would be cinematically over-simplified to say we lost wonder and gained truth. The story will have to play itself out in other ways.
Perhaps this lonely, quiet vision is so memorable because it occurs directly before I was immersed in a weekend-long carnivalesque celebration of family and friends that meant lots of wine and little sleep. Come Monday, rehearsals for the Biggar show begin.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home