Imaginary roads

Hidden in the backseat of the 49 Hudson, zooming from NY to North Carolina, I listened in awe to what those two men were talking about. I couldn’t make sense of most of it, and in order to do so I would have to stop daydreaming and actually hit the road with the first soul that would take me away from this corner in Leeds and head south – penniless and with no plan whatsoever. It is much easier to sit under the warm sunshine and imagine myself crossing highways in a freezing December night with Neal and Jack. Will I ever experience the same kind of madness? I very much doubt it. The world has grown a little scared, and I with it.

***

The warm breeze blows my hair on my face and brings me the smell of burnt gas from the scooters that have just driven by. It reminds me of my teenage summers and how back then I feared everything was so damn perfect that it couldn’t possibly get any better. It did. It does. Will it ever be larger than life, worth telling the rest of the world? I don’t know. But I agree with Neal when he tells Jack that ‘Everything is fine, God exists, we know time (…) And not only that but we both understand that I couldn’t have time to explain why I know and you know that God exists’.

Not your God, not anyone’s, but my own. Invented by me. And today it brought me here to this cafe, in the company of this book, to watch the most dazzling sunset I’ve seen in age, reminisce about the past, and dream of the road ahead.