An Open Road

“Put down the pen someone else gave you.  No one ever drafted a life worth living on borrowed ink.  Get to San Francisco.  Get to San Francisco in defiance of your geography, your ancestry, and the lonely change rattling sad excuses in your pocket. Fuel up on pie and diner coffee and mystic visions and the freedom of not knowing what’s coming next except that you’re burning the road to outrun it.  

Get going.”

Jack kerouac

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https://youtu.be/E_y3DzeDyQs

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Just a distant point of light in the fading of black on the horizon;

*

A city or town,

Headlights…

Or the rising of the sun,

Doesn’t matter,

It’s the darkness you’re leaving behind and tomorrow you’re chasing.

A new day,

A new,

A freedom from all the things that confined and defined your life until you weren’t you.

And somewhere beyond here you’ll find yourself,

Out there in the great wide open of sky,

And wind,

And earth,

And sea that gives birth to everything;

That great last refuge of dreams –

Out into the unknown.

 *

Driving with no more idea of where you’re going

Than how fast your going

With the windows rolled down and wind whipping your hair –

Just knowing you’re not there and you can’t get there fast enough,

Wherever that is

Because that’s where YOU are.

*

Signs drift by promising,

Begging,

Pleading –

And sometimes reminding of all we don’t need and those some few things we do.

Gaudy blarings of bargains and sales and show us the money

Threaded among the street lights

But monies the stuff of dreams –

Another tank of gas and another drive thru window to a life running on empty

When all’s been left behind.

 *

Life takes on a different hue behind a dusty windshield

Beneath rolling clouds

With the radio fading in and out as you count down the miles.

 *

Some things seem to shed with the night in the giddy what if of your going.

As if they can’t touch you and the past can’t find you

If you drive a little faster,

A little farther.

 *

And perhaps they can’t.

 *

Maybe there is a place where you’re new and your old life won’t seep through

And it’s just a dart throw at the map,

But out there,

Somewhere,

Is a place called breath.

 *

Some vast unknown clicks with your soul and says,

“This is the place.”

The road ends,

Journey over,

And rooster tails of dust settle back down

 – Here –

Where YOU are.

 *

Has anything changed now that the headlong rush is over

And daylight washes the darkness away?

You don’t know,

But you know that everything has changed

…because out there somewhere is the place where the road ends and the pages are turned.

You feel the settling of your soul and old stains washing away.

 *

A place where lies are buried with the memories they carried

And you stand quivering in the dawn of your second chance

Waiting for the arms that would enfold the truth of you that the past denied.

 *

But YOU would not be denied.

 *

Life will find its way.

 *

It’s an open road out there.