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“Variety Act 11: Mac Bull from Philadelphia in His Frightful Loop-the-Loop Ride in His Car” (1907), Moriz Jung
I think too much. I think too hard. My brain tends to have seven or eight lines of thought going at once; occasionally they interleave into strong braids of perception, but then they’re as likely to fray into twice as many strands as before. Whatever I’m doing — quartering cherry tomatoes, hefting myself up a plastic boulder — I’m imagining doing something else, or doing the same thing but differently, or whispering a Cure lyric or wishing I’d had a chance to see the movie Grand Tour in the theater, or trying to remember the names of everyone in my fourth-grade class.
This is another way of saying that I have a tough time being present. Forget my peripatetic wanderings as a former professional travel writer — that’s too easy an example. No, even today, when I’m essentially sedentary, my work and my home life require me always to be considering what I should be doing next even as I’m trying to focus on what I’m doing right now, and even as I struggle to recall what I’ve just done. Caught between the past and the future, my present tense suffers. I can appear to be spaced out, unengaged. Yoda’s admonishment to Luke Skywalker echoes in my mind: “All his life has he looked away…to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing.” I’m Schrödingerian, here but not here.
This shifts, though, when I’m driving. When I’m driving — as I did last week, on a long circuit of New England which I’ll write about more soon — I have no choice but to be absolutely present. On Interstates and small highways, through the residential neighborhoods that Google Maps considers vital shortcuts, down winding little lanes, I do nothing but pay attention to what’s before and around me. The cars ahead speed up, and so do I. A sea of red glows angrily, and I slow down. On-ramps bring the merge, and off-ramps take me away. I am the cruise control; my way is the highway. To drive, to make the car move as it’s designed to, according to the dictates of physics and the whims of the weather, and in concert with the million other vehicles on the road, is to live only in the moment. You cannot see too far ahead, for the future may shift, nor linger too long on what lies behind. Fifty feet in any direction, maybe a hundred — that’s your universe, the bounds of your space-time. There is only the present.
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When I drive, I can’t think. I can talk, I suppose, and listen to music or the radio or a podcast or an audiobook, and some of what transpires in the car may sink in. But those are accidents. I’m catching strays, so to speak. Because the full focus of my brain is on the drive: the turns, the light, the constant slight centrifugal force. As a driver, I’m a rabbit, alert only to what’s next, what’s next, what’s next. I have no time for complexity. Sorry, gotta hop, bye!
The remarkable thing is that this isn’t stressful. Oh, sure, there can be stresses, when the mess of traffic overwhelms me and I become agonizingly aware of my mistakes and lost opportunities and goddamn unavoidable detours. But those moments are rare, especially on the longer drives. Instead, I feel calm, because I know I can’t stew, I shouldn’t stew, I need to keep my eyes on the road for the next obstacle, the next swerve. When I drive, I’m in the moment. I live in the perpetual present, a time loop that wipes itself from my memory every 10 or 15 seconds. I am nowhere but here in the driver’s seat.
Over time, on the longer drives, this induces a kind of blankness. So many loops go by, and so many loops are forgotten. Often, I wish I could remember more of the moments, and I have to tell myself to inscribe them in the deeper memory banks. On Cape Cod, there was that twisty, no-shoulder ancient way, lined with arcing trees. In Connecticut, the dark-edged cumulus clouds sat against the blue sky above a straight tunnel of highway and forest. A deer leapt a fence at twilight in the Driftless Hills of Wisconsin, and in my recollection it still hangs in the air. Is this what it means to live in the present — to experience only moments, disconnected from (or only frayingly connected to) any larger narrative? What other endeavor could have a more clearly defined beginning and end, and yet for me it’s all middle, a single middle repeated almost to infinity.
What does it say about me that I like driving like this, that I’m happy to stay on the road for hours in this state akin to suspended animation — not acting, not interacting, just existing? This is existence simplified and streamlined, or maybe just reduced ad absurdum. Which version do I desire? To be or not to be? I steer therefore I am. 🪨🪨🪨
