When I was a teenager growing up in Maryland, the Bay Bridge was the dividing line between day-to-day reality and something else, something more. It represented possibility, and you could feel it coursing through your veins as you crossed into Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The air felt different. Suddenly there were seagulls and boats and then more bridges—over marshes, lakes, rivers, the land flattening and farmed, the cities and congestion of the Mid-Atlantic metropolis behind you.
The Chesapeake Bay Bridge—four miles of bridge—represents, in all its glory, summertime, youth, a freedom that can be described and experienced—then a taste of the liberation only adults had, now a taste of what we didn’t know we had.
Road life starts with that same feeling. Freedom. Youth. Possibility. Other.
And it goes on like that for some time, for months, until, somewhere in the anonymity (I was, in fact, going to chain motels and coffeeshops for the sheer pleasure of anonymity) and with no ties to people or place, it all begins to feel like too much of that. Too much freedom. Like, not only do you crave some sort of bounds, some limitation, something to anchor you, but there creeps in a desire to rebalance the scales—to rest, stand still, “go home.”
This feeling started to take hold of me sometime after I started heading back East from the West Coast, as if I’d inadvertently chosen a direction for my whole life—“west”—and then once I’d hit it, I had no direction. I felt lost.
I had never considered the idea of too much freedom prior to actually knowing what that feels like in my body and mind. I’d been reaching for freedom so hard for so many years; I thought that was the only goal. And once it came, it came flooding, overwhelming me, to the point where I felt unstable. What is there to ground you when all restrictions are removed? What is there to keep you from floating away into becoming nothing, no one, no where, losing touch with everyone and everything you know? On paper, that might sound like some glimpse of enlightenment, but ultimately, does this feeling feel good?
Masculine needs feminine, spirit needs form, and freedom needs restriction. Otherwise, not only do they not thrive, they might not be able to exist at all. It’s as if when there is a constraint in place, even an internal constraint (really, they’re all internal), we feel the urge to push through it, knowing our obstacle and our direction intimately and sometimes surpassing it altogether, craving more space to grow until we hit another wall. We always want more because we’re meant to expand. It is the natural order of things. But when given a boundless space, it’s almost as if you can get lost inside of it and don’t know in which direction to push—what and where to move toward. There comes a point where you feel so free, you feel steadier when you stumble.
THE PROJECT :: Two road trips across America, in 2008 and 2019, resulted in two extensive travelogues of all the things encountered and experienced. Neither of them felt particularly like a complete book that I would want to publish. Instead, I starting sifting through the writing and other notes from the road to extract portions and compile them into one cohesive book about what living on the road does to you—while also giving you glimpses of America by car. There are also some portions of the country that I’m less familiar with and plan to visit or revisit them in the fall to write those sections … and soon after, release this thing into the world.
writing
ebooks + zines
astrology readings
get postcards and snail mail
send snail mail: 9701 Montgomery N.E. #1057, Albuquerque, NM 87111
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
I always wanted to live out West but never had enough courage and enough money at the same time. But as I read your column, I understood those feelings. Thanks for another beautifully written column. Also, this makes me excited to see that your book is progressing. Stay safe and happy travels!