Nighttime Driving

Nighttime Driving
Its late, and again I wonder, like I have so many times before, what I’m looking for as I fly through empty streets, breaking pace only for the red traffic lights that glow like coals in the frozen air. Yes, its winter, and the city is dead, dead with cold and laid out before me like a sheet of ice. I am a night hunter, chasing some nameless thing through infinite silence, silence which opens and closes for me and the sound of the engine, tearing itself to pieces and then forming itself again in constant flux. I wonder, again, what I’m looking for. What draws me from the embrace of my chair, or my bed, into this dark, still night? How did I get here?
It always happens the same way.
Its late, and I feel something, suddenly set in motion in the back of my mind, speaking like a voice which is believed to be distant, but is realized to be terrifyingly close and onlyb whispering. Why? I don’t know, but I don’t question; I obey. I stand, put on my coat. I feel for my keys in a pocket, feel the cold, angular metal shapes against the skin of my palm. I am reassured. I leave. My shoes make their tracks in the stiff snow, which shifts and crunches under my weight. It is the only sound. Now I am in the car. I slide the key into the ignition, I turn it, bring up the growl of the engine, and the mouth from which that whispering voice issues, if it has one, is smiling. I flick the lights on, I feel the resistance of the pedal beneath my foot, and I am gone. Away. I feel the thrill of speed, of putting distance between myself and my previous location. I am running, escaping moments, fleeing the present, trying, as if it were that simple, to burst through its restriction into the future. And again, I wonder, like I have so many times before, what I’m looking for.
Its late, and I wander, aimlessly, but with terrible purpose. The voice in the back of my mind speaks now, tells me everything I could ever want to know, without my asking. Tells me what I am, where I am, where to turn. But never why. I can ask over and over, and never know what I’m chasing, as I fly through those empty streets, as I shatter the air, stiff and fragile with the cold.
Then I find the freeway. I accelerate, again feeling the thrill of speed over distance, the thrill of leaving something, anything, even just bare, salt stained pavement, behind me. And now I am high above it, the bridge takes me upward. To the left is the barren, wasted expanse of the salt foundries, with smoke stacks climbing high to issue billowing clouds into the open sky. To the right, I see the black expanse of the lake, with the moon floating like a pale specter above.
Its late, and now the lights of the city approach, gleaming and burning from amidst tall, impersonal buildings. Maybe I crack a smile to myself, baring teeth to the city before me. In that moment, with the voice speaking its affirmatives, I am whole, I am utterly alone, contained in layers of empty space, metal, and then skin and muscle. And then the reason, the why, the question that no amount of wondering or asking will answer, is abundantly clear. The purpose of the voyage becomes the voyage itself; there is no beginning, no end, the freeway just keeps going and going, a hard, grey continuum. The voice laughs, and I laugh, realizing the absurd simplicity of such an answer. What else could it have been?
But in time I will forget it all. The obviousness of the answer will recede with the feeling, and with the recession of the night into daylight. The voice will recede back into obscurity, I will forget the nameless object of my hunt, and indeed the need for the hunt itself.
Its late now, or early by the standards of some, and my mind will go blank, drawn and stretched taught over emptiness. I will collapse, down, down into sleep. Everything will slacken, unwind, cease to move. Night will fade seamlessly into day, sun will rise, and the cold glass of the air will shine with pale luster.
Oh, its late. Way too late.