Other things I enjoy

Short drives near sundown, the bottom of clouds painted in dying light, the skeletal fingers of trees frame bits of orange sky mired in a sea of blue black. The spires of old churches rising from green hills where soldiers used to tread, the sunlight drapes itself on half of an old brick and block building. In the foreground, children are sitting on black bikes, half arguing over some part of the now spent day. All this in a mere instant, and so much more that is left untold, while I gaze out the window of my car, music blaring.

That's at least an attempt at describing one of the things I enjoy: the freedom of a solo car ride on any day off. Something about being able to roll down the windows, slide my elbow onto the frame and feel the wind rustling through my hair, sliding across my bare skin, reminds me of endless summer days from long ago, when I'd drive up the coast in Santa Barbara, the sun slipping slowly into the ocean, or so it seemed, purple clouds, and music.

I like driving in the car listening to music at obscene levels. I don't sing well, and I don't like doing it all the time. However, on the right day, the right song can send what one might call a soul into a kind of ecstasy, where it suddenly occurs to me that every bit of the world around me is delicate and exquisite, somehow reminiscent of the scene created in a glass Christmas globe held in a child's warm hands, and I know that I must cling to it, the sparse branches of bare trees, leaves piled in the sluice, magnificent houses standing like sentries over the now darkening park. My God, what a gift to be alive!