So I Turn Up The Sound And You Are Nowhere . . .

"Friends is no use to me, Jack. I've got friends. I don't need anymore. What I need is someone who'll light up the woods so I can find a place to stay." Nearly, Spares by Michael Marshall Smith

"In a very real physiological sense, what we've incorporated in memory from the past also significantly affects how we experience the present and form new memories. 'Experiences are encoded by brain networks whose connections have already been shaped by previous encounters with the world,' says Daniel Schacter. 'This preexisting knowledge powerfully influences how we encode and store new memories, thus contributing to the nature, texture, and quality of what we will recall of the moment.' We remember only what we have encoded and what the brain decides to encode depends on our past experiences, knowledge, and needs." The Mind at Night: The New Science of How and Why We Dream by Andrea Rock

I've been driving on this forest road for as long as I can remember. Maybe there once was a time in which I saw sunlight filtering through the branches. I remember once seeing the moon casting its light, throwing the trees into sharp whites, blues and blacks. But now, the only things that aren't the blurred black shadows of trees rushing by are the sickly yellow beams that flicker orange from the car headlights, the mottled brown road in front of me and the green coming off the digital dashboard clock that's been reading 3:00 a.m. every time I've glanced at it. I think the battery is dying.

This isn't to say it's always been a lonely journey. There were rest stops and coffee shops along the way. I had some pie with friends. The coffee was always hot, the pie sweet, the company warm and understanding. But my friends had places to stay, people to be with. And anyways, a booth at diner is no substitute for a warm bed and someone at your side. So as always, I get back in the car and drive back onto the forest road.

I've had to open up the windows in the last hour despite the fact that there's frost on the windshield. I'm at the point where the coffee my friends packed for me doesn't keep me awake--it just makes me jittery and nervous. My eyes are beginning to feel like they're sinking into their sockets, and almost every other breath I take is a yawn. I try not to count the steady whirring sound of trees that I drive pass. The clock still reads 3:00 a.m. I know that I should stop the car, rest at the edge of the road, and perhaps when I wake up, I'll see the sun and hear the ocean. But you see, the rest stops, the coffee shops, I get this yearning, a yearning for a place to stay. Just as my body is boneweary, my mind is tired of knowing that every rest is temporary and once more it will go on its own into the forest.

I've passed several places before, but, well, the beds weren't for me, or another person had just claimed the space, or they looked fine on the outside but had too many shadows once you walked in. The places where the beds weren't for me made me the saddest. So I just kept driving.

And I've been driving for so long that my heart begins to feel sick, and my mind begins to falter. I nearly crashed, mistaking a gathering of fireflies for a home.

The clock still reads 3:00 a.m.

I know I should pull over. But my heart is racing now and my mind is fatigued, sick with trip, sick with beds that weren't for me, sick with the beds that had been claimed by somone else. I know I should pull over, but my foot becomes heavy on the accelerator. I no longer care if there's a hairpin turn in the road.