There’s a certain kind of medicine in those bobbly Hawaiian dancers that sit above the dashboard. Maybe that medicine is constancy. The surefire back-and-forth motion of a pendulum imitating welcome hips that say “Give me your frantic, your lost, your disoriented and your panic-stricken…” or something like that. The first droplets of a drizzle splitter on the windshield. And the hips continue their bobble. 

I’d like to think that with every tick of the odometer I am approaching a somewhere. I think that is what we all long for, and in longing for it that is how we live our lives: with the somewheres straight ahead. If somewhere is behind us, we must be going to a nowhere, and that… that can’t be a possibility.

The dancer dances to a music I am straining to hear. Where is the tempo? (I’ll fake it until I make it.) 70 MPH.

This right here is life. Nothing short of a blinding forward momentum. Dizzying joy pulses my foot onto the accelerator because freedom, for better or worse, is a positive feedback loop filed with invisible loopholes that I can’t think about right now. That would require the dashboard dance to stop, and I don’t think that there is any chance of that ever happening again. 80 MPH.

I was a fool to think I could settle down. I would solidify, become stale. The joints would ache, and the neurons would fire blanks. No, this is for the best. Somewhere is a vaporizing blast of passion that fuels my heartbeat. 85 MPH. I suppose my greatest fear is to arrive. Even the word sounds like a blood-sucking parasite. I’ve seen the arrives take down greater men than myself. The glow dims and the buzzing slows. Bit by bit they arrive until they cease to go. My hip-swaying Sally will never arrive. Back-and-forth, left-and-right, back-and-forth; she’s my muse on this barren trek. Raindrop puddles splunk to the beat. (I’ll fake it until I make it.) 90 MPH.

Infinity is a verb and the horizon, blood-red, passion-filled heartbeat of the day and all, is a lifestyle. She wasn’t a lifestyle; she was too contained, too bounded, and I knew that I would collide with those boundaries in a bone-crunching, blood-curdling disaster. If not tomorrow then later; if not later then somehow. I’m not running; I’m preaching the gospel of Saint Sally. Her plastic, spring-loaded truth is our only salvation. Back-and-forth, left-and-right, back-and-forth. 95 MPH.

I’ll fake it until I make it just to show them the beauty of my infinite horizon. Brought to tears (raindrop dashboard splunk puddle thud) because truth is the only beauty and beauty the only fuel. Somewhere wheresome somewhere. 96 MPH.

The road is the isle, the asphalt more pure than her white dress. Black is an accumulation of life; white is a sad, sorry, solitary absence. White light, black smack, I saw the crack, she cracked the right. My medicine is strong because right beats wrong.  Back-and-forth, right-and-left, forth-and-back, 98 MPH.

I’m not saying she wasn’t beautiful; she was always beautiful until she won’t be. When the bone-crunching, blood-curdling collision disfigures our connection. So I’m preventing the inevitable by hauling myself onward. The rain refracts the light ahead; harder to see but splunk, thud, plop, forward-going no time to stop stop stop I do do do back-and-forth-forth-forth-100MPH—

Faster than thought makes you escape the confines and the confines are all around so I can’t afford a pause. These raindrops are too insistent and Sally punctuates the speed like a metronome. She’s showing me the tempo but I’ll fake it until I make make make 103MPHit.

Give me your frantic, your lost, your disoriented, and your panic-stricken, your chasers, your fleers, your refugees of a world unwanted, your desperados, your romantics, your antics, your cowards, your pioneers, your pacified, your dignified, your disgusted, your parasites, your pilgrims, your explorers, your rambler, and your bachelors: onward we go, into the horizon.