The Sensation of Leaving

*Sorry, everyone, for being gone. Life has gotten in the way, and I really am slightly saddened that everyone can understand that. College visits and piles of homework have taken up all of my time... and focus... and energy. So I'm trying to make up for it, kind of. Not that I really need to. You all understand my ways- I don't need to explain myself. You probably understand me to a larger extent than I myself do.

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One of my most favorite sensations in the world is watching the highway zoom by- going forward in one direction. It's when you go away. Those long car rides are hours spent well in the deep realm of thought. It is a way of escape- and I'm not talking about the feeling of the stuffy hotel duvets and that one damn bright streetlight that creeps in through the tiniest crack in the curtains. I wrote a personal narrative on a trip, on this feeling, oh-so long ago, but I could never place it for what it truly was.

I really enjoyed the sensation of not feeling "away" while I was away, two weeks ago, to Tennessee. As I traveled across the county lines, I still felt at home in the world- in myself- in that I carried my "home" with me. It came in the form of friends, good friends- ones I had not seen in so long, yet I still carried their heavy, happy memories in my heart.

On my way home from the city, escaping smoke-filled air and cramped highways, all I could gaze at were the stars shimmering in the sky. Hours whizzed by like the passing landscape and streetlights, but the stars were there all along, along for the same ride I was. The couple sitting beside me was tangled in one another, arms and legs mixed in the midst of summer, but I smiled and had my own intimate conversation with the stars. Indeed, a conversation with the very own heavens that hold all of our dreams, our loves. Those bodies, shining bright!

(I'm going to end this post now, as I have a small, cutesy, pretty lame story about my experience with the stars. Actually, I think I could write a hundred poems, a thousand stories, and a million love songs about the stars. I'm obsessed, you know.)

Mack. :)