A Workman's Dream--Snippet 6

....So, I walk to work. It has become a part of me now. I actually look forward to it most of the time. The walking is not what gets to me though. It is the things I see and pass along the way that really get me thinking things I shouldn't be or wishing for things that will never be again, or for that matter, just ever be. All the things I see used to make me angry or bitter, but now they make my loneliness a little deeper and harder to bear. It is liking staring at the sun for me, except without all the adolescent bravado and only the stinging and burning left behind.

    I guess I am making it sound like I make the trek to Mecca or the pilgrimage to Canterbury each day, but its not like that at all. It's really just a three street walk that encompasses only about a mile and a half, or that's at least what I got a friend to measure out for me on his odometer last time we had a downpour here about a month ago when I had to ask for a ride home. I really dislike asking for rides, but people always like to offer; especially married guys with kids. They are always looking for a reason to stay away from home for a little longer, or at least the guys I work with are.

    Even though, it isn't far. it is still a journey I make everyday. And these journeys are things I have been making my whole life. Sometimes, they take me far from what I know, but other times they take me to places I know so well that I miss what I could see because I am only using my own eyes to look around. I know this sounds silly, but it is always traveling. And the traveling may have nothing to do with actually leaving a place. Sometimes, I can be standing in the back of Sears and see an old, red pickup pass by and it instantly takes me to when I was 16 and three states away. I can remember everything about it. I remember the feel of the early morning air, the tingles on my back as I first saw the truck and realized it was mine, the shouts of delight from my sisters and mom as we drove around the block, the reassurance of my father as I jostled the gears and ground them into the column, etc. This remembering is a curse and a blessing for me. It is the driving force for all of my journeys. Maybe, I could say that this is really my story. It is a story of journeys that drive me so deep inside myself that I begin to suffocate on the recollections and only resurface to the present when something shocks me back into it. It is always violent or I would probably never come back because the past is so much better than the present and the future is terrifying.

   Like I just finished saying, its not the actual act of walking that bothers me. It's the things I see along the way.....

Enjoy and be on the look out for Snippet 7,
   David