Driven

There was a time when I thought myself a sure driver. 

Aimless, and at peace with it. Safe, and hating that. But alert. My reflexes could be trusted.

Now, no. All I know lately is that I perceive less. There's thick black cloth across my windshield. I can't discern what's ahead, only the steering wheel, nothing beyond it. 

I can't see, but I can feel. That's no comfort. You can't steer the car to the music on the radio.

But there it is, no choice. There is no map. The feeling, the music filling the car, is deceptive. Like an idiot, you could wrap your car around a tree and kill yourself to the majesty of Fauré's Requiem. (Well. There are worse ways to go.)

All I know now are the controls tight in my sweaty hands, hurtling along in blindness. And it's not night.

I can't stop or slow down, because then I have nothing. More bumps to assure I'm still in motion, more hard swerves, accelerate! More, always. 

Impact...?

Maybe.

When...?

Not now. Maybe in a minute. Wait and see.

...Any moment, oblivion?

What the hell, how to tell? You know until you don't. As good a way of defining oblivion as I can think of.

So no oblivion yet.

So keep driving. Beats pulling over, right?

I stare daily at that obscuring cloth. I know I dropped it across the front of my car. That's the worst of it. I insist upon it being there. Unsure why, or how to remove it. I hate it. It is all menace, no benefit.

Yet every now and again... ah God, it's nice... a strong and kind wind flaps at that cloth, snatches at its corners. I see the pulsing rush of road, its dangers and hearty colors flash very real to me. It's like a flirtation of sight, of a joyous geography and of your place in it, there, just long enough to waken, then gone. 

And you keep on swerving, around crashes imagined or not, holding on like hell to what you glimpsed and how you might arrive there.

It will have to do.

Maybe the black cloth was always there, and I wasn't alert after all.

Maybe realizing it's there is the beginning of being a sure driver.

© Eric Yves Garcia 2014