Last week friend of mine was hit head on while being driven home after a cruise in Hawaii. Both drivers were killed. Marcia will be in hospital for a week then some time in a convalescence facility. She had just retired from a long government career a couple weeks ago. It's too much to process, it can't be placed into a rational context. We make plans, hit the road, and sometimes the roads have other plans for us. She was hit by a loaded gravel truck a few months ago and escaped unscratched. She has plans to start her new house in Northern Neck Virginia near Heathville (by a large pond where she can go canoeing) but circumstances are detouring her temporarily to Maine where she can recover at her sons home. Her friend Hyomi left a little teddy bear in her hospital bed. She has held it for days.

Around the backwoods I came aboard a camp meeting but was barking up the wrong tree. When they bounced me they handed me a blue envelope that looked bogus, a bluff. The boss showed me the big stick and a cop said cut it out. Cheese it I said and took the buggy. At the creek I was down to corn and crackers but no booze. Dead broke and a deadhead, no dough, I expect it was a fizzle. Now it's fall, my dress is fierce, I need gas. A gangster gladhanded me and gave me some glad rags. I guess a guy goes from gutter snipe to hayseed and buries the hatchet. I quit the hobo rails and took a hike to improve myself. I'm homely, no hootch, but not a hoodlum. Johnny-on-the-spot or joyriding, I don't knock it. Let's go, I'm a light fingered loafer low on the long green but nimble with lumber. I made a pile, I was the main guy, I was making a bee-line but now I'm mending fences. I had pull, then I got pinched. Now I'm a picayune punk trying to pull a leg. It's quite a blizzard I reckon, right smart. I'm a rube who hit rock bottom right away. A scab that salts the mine is a scalawag. I rattled the shack and skedaddled like a scofflaw, small potatoes. But I didn't squeal. Pull up stakes squatter, you might strike oil. I'm a tenderfoot in my own fate. On the trolley I check my ticker but pass the tavern by, it's all up in the air. Vamoose, whoop it up, or wilt, I'm a wind bag and a wire puller. (from the Dictionary of Americanisms)

When I was a kid I traveled to Mexico several times. My mom was born and raised in Mexico City. Outside of the City we met many beautiful people in small towns in rolling hills under Mexican skies that were filled with the kind of clumpy painterly clouds only seen in Mexico. Horses grazed on grassy slopes and donkeys helped carry firewood. Basic needs were met but towns were dark at night except for a few dim streetlights or low lights trying to shine from small windows in thickly plastered buildings. When we crossed the border we experienced real culture shock: acres of paved and empty lots brightly lit to the horizon, roads lined with vacant sidewalks and intense streetlights every twenty feet, closed stores and unoccupied parking garages bright as summer, the abandoned movie set of the American landscape depleted of people.

My home is a retreat from the roads and the fast pace of society. I surround myself with nostalgic images and warm tones of natural objects. I try to keep the tv off. Instead I read poets and historical novels. I have a collection of vases I use for flowers and I have music on occasionally. Eyes and ears are connected instantaneously to the center of conciousness and are avenues that convey either stress or beauty to the soul.

Persimmons showed up at market. I bought two and kept them indoors for a week then put them outside a couple days ago. It rained hard all day yesterday the first time this year but the fruit stayed firm and glossy. Earlier today I squeezed them and one was finally ripe enough. I sliced it open and scooped out coral colored pulp onto a slab of toast. Mildly sweet, edible now and will age perfectly like a small vineyard wine. First come apricots in July, then figs in September, and now near winter persimmons. They remind me how sweet the spring was when it finally stopped raining.

The rains have arrived and already roads are becoming a demolition derby. I've had a few near misses but in ten years driving I haven't had a major accident. A couple cars have hit my vehicle from behind and luckily no one was hurt.
It's as if some people have no sense of risk or fear. I see several accidents a day and I watch the trooper incident site. In places tow trucks just park and wait. One second someone is driving home from work and two seconds later their life has changed dramatically. Then all the fast drivers slow way down as they pass the scene of the accident so they can glimpse something, their heads turned to the side and not looking ahead. They speed up again because they think all the troopers are behind them. Slick roads entice them closer to the next life altering possibility.

If I run down the aisle of the aircraft will I arrive any faster? I was feeling today that I was at the right place in time and space while I was driving and that everything was exactly as it should be. Sometimes when I pass through a wide landscape I feel that there is a higher direction at work and all the little things and creatures are just small parts of a very intricate multi-dimensional tapestry.

My connection is radio. As a kid in the 60s I found cool stations coming out of Berkeley. Everyone had transistor radios with ear pieces, the forerunner. When I lived in the woods in northern California I had a battery radio and when I lived in town I listened to radio because I didn't have tv. In the earthquake of 89' I lived in a cabin in the Santa Cruz mountains, no tv. That night I lit candles and listened to radio. On 9-11 I was making early morning deliveries. Listening to radio I understood we were under attack. At each stop I heard people talking about it. I heard the news helicopter say they had been ordered to land, all airspace had to clear. Driving under wide skies I felt vulnerable. I thought this is how people felt after they heard about Pearl harbor on radio. Our local station has a live show for visiting musicians. Every weekend they broadcast live music like stations did all the time in the early 20thc. There is a jazz station over the hill that plays long sessions between 2 and 6 am. I use it as a soundtrack for the pre dawn landscape.

Time for breakfast. I have already done two runs before dawn. Motorists amid their commute dramas are gripping steering wheels and tapping brakes. I have three airport trips later today. Driving a hundred twenty miles round trip isn't a big production to me, it's the job. I turn on speed control and cruise down the highway in one lane. Rushing cars pass me on both sides. I drive the same pace as sunrise.

My commute is a short bike ride along the cliffs of the bay and through the village. The wharf is small but very busy with fisherman and boating. At night lights reflect on waves and moonlight makes them glow. Now and then I stop by the fence on cliffs edge and listen to surf.

A friend once said few people would equate service with freedom and I agree. It's not a valued vocation. Though some clients are comfortable with drivers others are more distant. Several request me. I'm not here to entertain them or even converse with them. They are tired from traveling so I help them with their luggage. I can focus on driving. The rains started yesterday and there have been a lot of accidents already. I drive safely and drop the client at their residence sometimes after a sixty to ninety mile trip. Then I'm free to turn up the music, sometimes piano jazz from the late fifties.

The fully lit station stands thoroughly empty. Trains glide in, pause, but there is no activity. No one gets on, no one gets off here. The few people that pass through are like extras in short dramatic parts of their own lives. A staff of people working here keeps the platform clean and the light bulbs on. They drive to work because they live east and west of the station. The commuters ride trains north and south.