The country is passing me by. It goes by unnoticed, like some stranger looking for a familiar face in the crowd. It has a story, that big tree out in the field there, once two people young in their lives, still children at heart, made love, and dreamed about it every night there after. All that history disappears, like a strange dream, our stories become nothing, vanish into the ether of memories, locked away forever.
Is this our fate, do we simply exist then not? Where is god? Why doesn't he put a marker here that says, "He existed, and for a moment, his foot touched this pebble." Why is Hitler remembered, and not that little child sitting in his mothers lap? Why does the bus just keep moving, does it ever stop to wonder why it is?
So alone, and so many people around me. The paradox of life, no matter how many people we meet, how many companions we find, are we never not alone. May be its just my fate, to wander the world in search of something I cant understand, and will never find as hard as I may look.
I have met the monks in Tibet, they are as crazy as I am, perhaps we are the normal ones. They look at me funny, sometimes, wonder what it is I am thinking, or just the fact that I think is confusing. How can we not, our lives are too complicated, and too meaningless, if we don't at least pretend to think, then we cease to be, we die before we have been erased from history.
Its premature. Once that happened to me, I was dead, premature. I am still dead, I think, this bus is moving me, and I can't help where it takes me, I just got on, bought a ticket for the next ride out of here, and went. I am trying to find my life; but is letting the bus driver take me there the right way to do it? Perhaps I should have never left in the first place.
She died once too, and then, she never started thinking, and then, she was dead to me, or I to her. I lover her, I don't love who she has become, maybe some day she will be that same girl I met in the restaurant, deciding not to get engaged. I stole her, and perhaps, I was getting to serious, I would have married her, and I am afraid of commitment, for her, I would have killed my self, I would have let her run my life, just like this bus driver, take me where she wanted to go, and I would follow like a little puppy, lost.
I am lost, I have been for so long, and something inside me says this is the way it is supposed to be, I am lost because I am lost. That is who I am, it is my name now. "who are you" they ask, all I have to say is "lost" that is all that matters now.
The headlights just make this life lonelier, the big trucks with the driver, alone, forever. He will never have stability, they are a lot like me, but they decide where they are going, they say, I am going to Maine, and then they go, and make money for going there, and if they need to sleep, they sleep.
Do these people know me, do they care. Will they wonder what I do at home, will they ever see me as anything but some crazy guy typing his life into a little computer? Will I even acknowledge them in the future, I don't know their names, its not like I care. I should. They are people, why should I let history forget them - this isn't how it should be - we should help everyone remember everyone else.
Just going, to nowhere, the only way I can ever make a difference is if I pull this wheel and run us all off the road. They will know me then, but they will hate me. I wish I knew the secret, to make us go faster, the route to tell the driver. Why does he get to take us his way, maybe mine is quicker, more scenic, better somehow. Why does it matter, its in his hands now, I will sit here and let him take us where he will, no one else is telling him he is wrong; why should I? It cant be possible that I am the only one who knows? How do I know the way, I don't even know where we are going. I think we are going to California, but for all I know, Seattle may be the final destination.
Is that where it all ends, Seattle? In the rain covered by the grey of misery and the plastic of micro chips in silicon valley? Does it end in Florida, on the beaches, with the beautiful women wondering about in string bikinis looking for a drink and a fuck? Why do they get all the fun?
So here we are sitting, and soon, the bus stops, and we all get off in a mad rush towards whatever it is we are looking for, and its over, and our merry ways part, and nothing of us remains in anyone else, and that is the end, nothing, nothing for any of us. If we had driven, would it have been any different?