Sept. 4
It was picturesque.
8 p.m., coasting down Cascade Road, the sky above me variegated with warm hues, music blasting, and my window open.
It was perfect. Pinterest-y, if you will.
I don’t know what to do when I see the sunset anymore; I can’t take a picture in the driver’s seat, and I don’t want to pull over.
So I just stare ahead, winded by my never-ending day from point A to B to C to B to A. I remember it like I’m there now, but that’s because it’s only been three (and a half) hours, whereas everything else has faded. Faded like the soft, worn material of threadbare clothing, faded like old photographs, faded like a smile a minute or two after the punchline.
That moment is still pristine, still clear, still laughing.
But here I am, reminiscing on how I stared at the sky, watching the earth blur beneath my four wheels.
I never knew the poetic effect asphalt would have on me until I began to stare at it every morning and night, incorporating car karaoke into my daily routine of reflecting and reviewing.
I’ll do it again tomorrow morning, and again and again, my awareness of my habits changing nothing but the colliding pieces of thought I can compile into this column. It won’t be the same as now, though, because it won’t be 8 p.m., and the sky will never look exactly like it did at that moment, which clearly has not passed.
I can’t take a picture in the driver’s seat, but I can write a column with two hands on the wheel.
Because my columns will never be complete, they will always be simplified fragments of my thoughts until I figure out how to be whole myself. I can’t capture the sunset, and hours later, the colors have already faded from my mind. Was it cool blue bleeding into baby pink? Or did the orange from the sun’s rays trickle down into the clouds? I don’t know, but I do know that I was so struck by the allure of the daily routine that my thoughts started to arrange themselves, still fragmented, into something more.
Paragraphs and prose start to write themselves as I race home (while still abiding by the speed limit) before the words leave my mind. It’s all outlined: the pull quote, the intentional one-sentence paragraphs, and the em-dashes are set into place.
Sept. 17
I was on the way home from Patterson Ice Center, my patience exhausted and my muscles tired. In the thrashing sea of verdant green, forcefully parted as if it was red to provide space for the road, there was one orange tree. September is well underway, but the mornings are barely even crisp, and the green of a sweltering summer encases the natural world around me.
So, the lonely orange, like a daisy growing from cracked concrete, took my breath away. I couldn’t stop and marvel, and I couldn’t do anything but try my very best to remember.
I somewhat succeeded, resulting in my messy musings and the promise of more half-complete pieces of my complex perception.
Sept. 19
This morning, Childish Gambino was playing, and as I pulled out of my neighborhood, I was greeted by my favorite types of clouds: streaks of white painted against the good ol’ light, cerulean sky. Just when I thought the painting, with the resplendent gold thread of my thoughts weaving itself into a golden frame, couldn’t be any more promising, the canopy of trees abruptly ended, and the moon revealed itself.
Another out-of-place piece of the world whose presence elicits sentiment.
From the ends of the earth, from the warmth of the sky, from the woods to the gardens to the barren desert to the depths of the ocean trenches, I am rooted in love for nature’s works of art, for the beautiful beyond perception landscapes, and for their ubiquitous, inescapable ways.
