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Lcooper
When we got to Seattle, we went out for dinner. I couldn’t help myself. “We just drove here from Boston,” I told our waitress before she had a chance to introduce herself. I loved it. I was amazed by it—by our patient trip, Atlantic to Pacific. On the road, time played a different game altogether. Hours bore little resemblance to the units of measure I knew and recognized: the length of an episode of The Sopranos or This American Life, a Haverhill to Boston ride on the commuter rail, a walk to and from Harvard Square. The word itself took on another personae—gradually losing relevance to my life, to Kristaps’ life, and to our shared experience of landscape. Landscape bookended by ocean.
And so we turned from one expanse to another.
Somewhere in Indiana, we sheded our taut New England sensibilities. It was day 2. I remember because my celebratory rest stop dance was mistaken for mockery; a large barrel-chested man named Rich thought I was irreverently impersonating Indiana’s residents. I rushed to my own defense. It had been an erratic parking lot jitterbug—inspired by the overwhelming excitement of having traveled so far so fast. With this explanation, Big Rich dropped his guard completely and we settled into getting to know a bit about each other. When Kristaps came over with his camera, Big Rich squirmed a bit; he didn’t want his big belly in the photo. It was not long, however before he broke his own rule and Kristaps took a picture of us. Two neighborly strangers—Big Rich’s left hand hanging over my shoulder and his right still preoccupied with a gigantic fountain drink.
Reconciliation.
Digitized Reconciliation
As far as I can tell, that was it. That was the moment time became something else entirely. And we changed with it. Our confidence and certainty of self was indeed bolstered by an awakened endurance—an endurance realized only when outside Northeast congestion
In South Dakota I savored the words of Debra Marquart—my reading pace somehow proportionally in sync with our distance traveled. I finished the poet’s memoir as we entered Wyoming. Her Dakota farm stories recited on Dakota land. I watched in wonder as the four days that followed bled into one another. New mornings followed each of our nights—but without the metered stitches of seam lines.
Does ‘patience’ cease to be ‘patience’ when all desire/sense of urgency is lost?
For what, then, is one patient?
I was glad that it wasn’t a redeye. I had been looking forward to seeing the landscape again, this time looking down from the sky. Once situated in the window seat that I had requested, however, I recoiled at the reality that awaited me—I feared having to witness, indeed live out, a five-hour sacrilege.
