I get into my car and drive. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’ll know when to turn around—unless. I’m not going to get something, I’m going just to be going; I don’t want to be were I was. I don’t know how long this trip will take. I have some money to buy gas and food if that’s what it takes.

“…I am asking the same questions

you did the ones you kept finding

yourself returning to as though

nothing had changed except the tone

of their echo growing deeper

and what you knew of the coming

of age before you had grown old …” W.S. Merwin

The usual script runs through my mind: I just keep on going—there’s enough gas and food money—until some little town. I rent a room and look for work; at the newspaper, hardware store, the butcher, the tavern, it doesn’t matter. I make up a new name and a story about my past. It’s this story that kills the most time of my drive. I never try to imagine what the life I’ve left behind makes of my disappearance, that’s just not part of the drive.