Rolling shadows of night
At about two in the morning, at my PO box, I pulled out the new CD I’d ordered. Got back in the car, popped it in, and went for a drive.
I headed down to the 101, hopped on and headed north. Hardly anyone else out on the freeway. The songs seemed moody. The nighttime air was kind of hazy. Got off on Mulholland Drive, still heading north through the hills. I was alone on the road. I could sense the hills around me.
Eventually, I hooked onto the PCH, continued heading north. Once you get a bit out, the PCH is fun to drive. It hugs the hills to your right; the ocean is right beside you on the left. I like to head out this way when I need to relax. The drive alone is enough to relax me.
At night it’s different.
You might pass other people, but you don’t see them. Just another faceless driver in the dark. Instead of the world around you, the road is all you see, flashing by and reflecting back your headlights. You can feel the air and hear the wind, but you won’t want to. The air is cool and clammy but the breeze feels oddly warm that time of year. The light cast by the streetlamps stand in pools. There’s nothing moving.
With no one in the car, the music enhanced the mood. No longer relaxing but pensive, anxious. Quite dark, very riveting. The kind of music that you try not listen to because it disturbs you. It sticks in your brain anyways.
There on the PCH, at that time of night, no other cars passed me. I saw no one.
Darkness. Not a soul on the road. The mountains on my right; the feeling of the vast and lonely, empty ocean right beside me. You can feel it next to you. You can’t see it, not at night, but you can sense the emptiness yawning before you. Mist shrouded everything. The music evoked loneliness and despair. The road curved back and forth along the coast. Every so often I see lit oil rigs in the dark ocean beside me. I drove for hours.
Every time I listen to that album, the music brings me right back to that drive.