Tuesday, March 06, 2007

I've done alot of driving lately.

Nowhere exotic, but largely for good purpose, some even exciting in its way.

That is neither here nor there though, the reasons behind these drives, not only less than enthralling for anyone but me are not the point here.

With driving comes time free from distractions with my own mind. (yeah you have to concentrate on the road, but that still leaves alot more free mind space than the bludgeoning forces of tv and the internet.) So long as the roads are not busy, it is dark enough to cut out the outside world (or you are driving somewhere exciting, but for that I refer to my second sentence) and you have great music, then the otherwise dull task of getting from A-B can be time well spent.

You can also be surprised by some of the things you do see; even when driving along the same dull roads time after time. Coming off a motorway junction at 6.30 in the morning, driving up the slip-road, for one moment everything in front of you is cast in emerald blue light, as if the traffic lights, roundabout, road and even the sky all lay at the bottom of the most beautiful azure clear lake. And...well that is the only one that comes to mind right now, but there have been countless moments over the years, glimpsing beauty in the same places that feel like a prison ninety percent of the time and feel like nothing most of the rest.

Thoughts run through my mind, some I go with, draw out, chase down paths of logic and reason, sometimes just chase down no particular path. Others come into mind, provide a moments amusement, even inspiration only to be left on the road behind me. These last ones are the most frustrating and also the greatest, fleeting inspiration from the most unlikely of sources or from the depths of the mind and heart only realised in the pseudo-medititive state of something as monotonous as driving along a motorway. It is these that I grasp at, try to recapture...

And this is where it pays to do more than a little driving in a short space of time, even more so when the driving is done for good reason and the thoughts are bouyed up by the purpose behind the actions. For sometimes, if you pass along a route enough times with the right state of mind you do encounter those moments of inspiration again, still on the road where you left them, waiting for your return. Then, passenger to your soul once again, you can follow these thoughts as was always intended for you and from the pit of banality that is life in your so-called home a new path, idea and direction, a renewed purpose can be found.

So thank you to whoever I may have been driving for; I think I might have a direction to head in again.

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