Traveling West

I woke up this morning in Texas, and all I can think of is driving further, on to the coast of California, to golden Santa Monica, crazy Venice, north to the beauty of Big Sur,  then San Luis Obispo, and that great Italian food, Mendocino is waiting for me, soaring cliffs, crashing surf, a coastline so wild and free you can’t help but think anything is possible.  God forgive me, but I love waking up in a Truckstop asleep in my car after 12 hours at the wheel with coffee and road food, rock and roll music, diesel fumes, the car smelling like a trash can at Jack in the Box, the sounds of huge old diesels turning over at dawn, complaining more than the old dog, belching acrid black smoke into the sky, ready for another day, ready to roll over miles of highway, ready to head it out west another day.  That is what it has always been, traveling West.  West to witness a golden sunset over the water, west to that softer edge of North America, west to the banks of the Pacific and onward, further, under a full moon, under full sail, on a beam reach and with a following sea, with dolphins leading the way, with gulls wishing me safe travels, with magnificent frigates overhead, and at sunset, flying fish on the decks, awash in fluorescent foam, awash in dreams, awash in a vision of someplace new I’ve never seen with a shoreline, more beautiful than any I could imagine, with a sky more precious than air, the fresh new earth, rising up out of continents, up our of coral beds, up out of volcanoes and lava flows, earth, sweet earth, where every great tree, and precious flowers await my hungry eyes, where ever song I hear, is more beautiful than any I could imagine, where I know, if I just keep moving, like the tides, I will rise and fall with each day, sail on, walk on, drive on, and maybe somewhere, beyond here, beyond what I can see or taste or smell, beyond all that I know , all that I can dream, all that I can sing or dance or paint, a place where ill rest a while, and consider the nature of time, the mortality of all creatures, the vast expanse of the universe above me, and watery old earth below, consider the steps before, the time before, the places, before, all the women I’ve loved, all the children I loved, all the dogs I loved, the cats, the boats, the cities and towns, all the crazy little cafes and fine restaurants, the dirty old bars, with beer soaked floors, reeking of urine and blood, reeking of vomit, reeking of a life I once knew and loved so well, reeking of a past that is so close that even now, when the rancid air from the old boards hits my nostrils, I am at once transported back, and I know that counter too, it is long and polished, and behind a mirror, so that you can see what a mess you really are, or how beautiful and young you are, or how old and broken up you are, or how lost and wounded you are, and everyone beside you is the same, and none of them know anything about any of it, have any means of escape from the pain or the suffering, the loss or the want, all of them like me, traveling west towards another sunset, towards the darkness, towards the end of days, towards end of the earth the sea, the air, the fires, towards a river, a stream, a trickle from the base of a rock where it all began and where it all will end, towards nothing.