A Simple Drive

And he thought about it a moment, then left it alone. It would join the millions of other incomplete thoughts piling endlessly into a self-collapsing void of oblivion. But what did it matter? For all of his ideas on life and love and meaning and the fates of human societies, people were still dying. A mother's illegitimate child would still suffer from a curable illness, the bread would still be burning, and friends would still be saying goodbye. The entire fate of mankind would saunter by like a slow parade, so that the whole world can marvel at its sad comic display. Whatever musings he could provide on the subject lost any meaning once they reached the edge of the private universe of his car.

It was bitterly ironic being irrelevant. That's what you learned in school. When one learns from the myth developed by generations of sages and liars which is History that man is a unique being, that every individual is a separate ego, only to realize the futility of his own quest for uniqueness, Irony bites down through the nerves and blood to the very core of his being (some call it a "soul") like the encroaching cold of an eternal winter. It was like the irony that made your chest bleed when the girl you've been infatuated with for years still dates "the other guy", the one as dumb as a mule and twice as good looking. It was like the Irony that killed magnanimous men with cancer in three months time. It was like life, like being in love. That's what you learned in school.

He considered that place now, the same place the chest-thumping boasts of proud men fell hollow among the boughs of honey maples that hang like wispy garlands for forgotten memories. Learning that place was like watching yourself become a ghost, feeling yourself fade away until only your voice was left to fill your clothes and mark the place you stand. All you can do is wave an empty sleeve at all the things everyone refuses to hear. But you never realize that that same place is fading to you. Eventually, everyone disowns everyone, until only the honey maples inherit the task of watching the watchers, sylvan sentinels bearing silent witness to the futile drama that unfolds before them.

But it didn't matter, because people would still be dying, the bread would still be burning, and old friends would still be saying goodbye. One can think thoughts until he dies. But once time and life give way to the apocalyptic vortex of money, absurdity, and meaningless opinions that is the eternal fate of mankind, and you have to stand before a God that wasn't as high up as you presupposed or as far away as you would have liked, and you have to finally admit, "I am a liar and a fake. I have become Judas. I have become death" and you say "goodbye" for the last time, you will finally understand life was nothing more than a silent car ride on a moonlit stretch of I-81. And at that moment of clarity will flay your consciousness as if it was the flesh of incarnate tenderness and the exposed nerve endings will dance with the energy that is like life. Like being in love.