Springs

Colorado is an endless plain, slight tumbles of grasslands full of flowers but endless horizon, until you turn a corner find yourself right at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Climb ten thousand feet into the air, lose your breath, lose your cool, America has changed itself before your eyes again, you are born anew. 

Stop in the little mountain town and find a familiar face, you find her everywhere, and this is the gift. Soak in hot springs, revel in a moment out of the ordinary, try to keep up with the altitude, the dry air, let it remind yourself to you. A young man looks your way enough times at the bar that you know what he is asking, but this is not the time for it. Come back in autumn. 

Go to sleep under a thousand western stars. Tomorrow you cross another border, and make your way home.

Cave

Strange dreams follow you into the Midwest morning, a quiet motel parking lot watching over your deepest sleeps. Over scrambled eggs and midgrade coffee in the lobby, you try to make sense of where you are, but you are too content to worry. A penny appears on the muted carpet as you make your way back upstairs. Because of course it does. You consider DSM diagnoses and wonder if this is what mania is, a conviction that the Universe has turned its smiling face upon you, that now is your time again. 

The schedule says mornings are for work, but all you want to do is write, now. All you want is the road, and music, and billowing clouds across the Kansas plains, all you want is the zen of an open horizon, you fought so hard to get here, you do not want to lose a minute of it to the real world. 

Remind yourself that this is the real world. 

Just because it feels too good to be true
doesn't mean you can't still make it yours.

Missouri

By late morning, you drop her at the airport, a surreal farewell in a strange town, days of incessant chatter abruptly turned to silence along I70. A playlist has been prepared for you, lovingly left waiting for a time when the car would have room for it, when the road would be hundreds of miles before rest. A retired couple at a truck stop marvel at your travels, but you don't understand quite while. At last sunset trickles across the highway and the car slows to a stop, somewhere in Missouri, four states later. You wonder how to make the most of the stillness, but all that appears is words. 

The adventure is upon you, now, America at your feet and everything you own in an old station wagon somewhere in the Midwest. You feel your lungs stretch, your mind wander. It seems too good to be true, 

but I'll take it.

Music City

The little car careens down Kentucky hillsides, all lush, billowing greens and patient corn until the Nashville skyline appears from below a ridge. The big city annoys you, with its criss-crossing highways and pretentious skyscraper shadows. Were you not meant to sit in solitude under the stars? The server at the high-end restaurant in a newly uncovered neighborhood asks where you are from, and the words New York sound foreign on your tongue, like when someone asks where you are from and you tell them the city where you grew up. I am from nowhere, now; I am from everywhere.

In the middle of the night, I lie awake, unable to sleep despite my best attempts. Toss and turn, cursing the late meal, the last drink, the restless mind, until I realize: here is the silence I was asking for, here is a moment to simply sit in the marvel of my steps. Did bartender at the dive bar not cut most of the drinks from your tab? The road is still with you, in all the shapes it may take.

101

It is your grandmother's birthday. Nine years since she passed, and you still carry her in the trill of your laugh, in your delicate warmth in hosting a coffee. You spent 32 years with her voice in your ears; this does not disappear just because the voice grows silent. We live on in the people who love us. We order another round of bourbon drinks, call it research, and watch the early evening sun trickle through the leaves. You spend money like you had it. In the corner of your eye, the road beckons on the horizon. 

You are not there yet, but soon, soon, you will be ready to claim it for
your own.

Triple Crown

By the time the tornado alert tumbles across our phones, we are safely tucked into a tasting room, pretending to find notes of cherry and nutmeg in our glasses. Tree branches fold themselves across the Kentucky highway, but the sun is back before we've even reached the outskirts of town. You feel a soft drawl arrange itself at the outer edges of your tongue, feel a former version of yourself ask follow up questions and let curiosity guide you into small slivers of strangers' lives. She is not unfamiliar, she was just too far away to remember without this feeling in your muscles. The hotel concierge gives you a better room, the bartender spends an hour giving you recommendations, you remember how a smile can buy you anything if you're ready for it. 

You're only on day two and already you fear the time is slipping between your fingers, fear America disappears from under your wandering feet, but it is not true, it is only just beginning to sink into your spine. When people ask where you're from, you still say the East Village, but the truth is you are from nowhere now, the truth is you are from wherever you stand in this moment. The hotel has plush robes and a deep bath tub, the sheets are crisp, the night is silent. A secret lies waiting. 

You have plenty of time to find it.

...and I walked off to look for America

Day one: Columbus, Ohio. Verdant fields, bubbling hills, clear skies. After hundreds of miles of smoke-filled Pennsylvania weight, we breathe a sigh of relief. I bring my plants inside, the scrappy three orphans that I could not leave behind. Impossible pasts lie behind me: two days ago, watching the movers put everything I own into a space no larger than a closet; one day ago, walking around an empty apartment, that looked nothing like the home I had made it, but reminded me of the moment we first met. I cried, and handed over my keys. Just earlier this morning, Canal street waking into its perpetual chaos, the New Jersey Turnpike twisted like a riddle it begged you to stay and solve. 

The last morning on sixth street, I walked out to the river to say my goodbyes. Got caught up in a phone call, got caught up in avoiding the inevitable farewell, pounding its way toward me at breakneck speed. Lost the chance to look for clovers, but thought, just one glance, just one new patch where I've never looked before, just taking a chance where it's given. 

It took me not one minute, and I found it: a five-leaf clover, perfectly wrapped around itself like a flower, or a star, or a miracle. I nodded to the river. I nodded to sixth street. 

I took my five-leaf clover and I got on the road.