Then I Could Travel Just by Folding a Map
©Rachel C Johnson
No matter which direction I am facing, while I am driving I feel as if I am heading north. I have no navigation system in my car, so I have to remember where I am going before I can remind myself why the sun is setting to my right. South, west; south, west. I can point it out, but I inevitably have to repeat the words as I drive. I find it interesting that I must remind myself I am driving south in a city where every street is familiar. And I could give you directions, from where you are standing to where I am waiting, north, south, east, turn west on Skelly and keep driving. Yet here I am, pointing east, mumbling streets through pursed lips, feeling all the while as if I’m moving north. Face south, speak south, live north. Move west, know west, feel north. North is calling me, calling me as I drive south toward a house no longer home. And as I stare out the window overlooking rows of houses, ancient trees, tarnished streams. I wake in the morning and instinctively look toward the sky. The sun rises out of sight, southeast of my bedroom window, and the light streams into the backyard just north of my house. Maybe it’s habitual, my intuition of the north. After all, I’ve grown up gazing at the northern sky. The Big Dipper comforted me on long summer nights, and Venus was always visible from my bedside. Maybe I was raised north, belong north—maybe I’m being called home.
May 19, 2007
Author's Note: I dunno, maybe I'm back on track, headed once again in the right direction. Maybe.
I Wish the World Were Flat like the Old Days.
No matter which direction I am facing, while I am driving I feel as if I am heading north. I have no navigation system in my car, so I have to remember where I am going before I can remind myself why the sun is setting to my right. South, west; south, west. I can point it out, but I inevitably have to repeat the words as I drive. I find it interesting that I must remind myself I am driving south in a city where every street is familiar. And I could give you directions, from where you are standing to where I am waiting, north, south, east, turn west on Skelly and keep driving. Yet here I am, pointing east, mumbling streets through pursed lips, feeling all the while as if I’m moving north. Face south, speak south, live north. Move west, know west, feel north. North is calling me, calling me as I drive south toward a house no longer home. And as I stare out the window overlooking rows of houses, ancient trees, tarnished streams. I wake in the morning and instinctively look toward the sky. The sun rises out of sight, southeast of my bedroom window, and the light streams into the backyard just north of my house. Maybe it’s habitual, my intuition of the north. After all, I’ve grown up gazing at the northern sky. The Big Dipper comforted me on long summer nights, and Venus was always visible from my bedside. Maybe I was raised north, belong north—maybe I’m being called home.
May 19, 2007
Author's Note: I dunno, maybe I'm back on track, headed once again in the right direction. Maybe.
I Wish the World Were Flat like the Old Days.
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