Journal
Crosses by the side of the road – We arrived back in Korea on Sunday night after a long trip from Dallas and almost a month of travel that began back in Albuquerque at the beginning of November. It was a good trip, even if it did involve a bit more traveling than I am used to when visiting the States. We spent five days in Albuquerque for a conference, followed by three days in Santa Fe and then a week-long (or so) road trip around the southwest that took in Mesa Verde, Monument Valley, and the Grand Canyon, among other sights. I imagine at some point I will try to post a retrospective with a few select photographs from the five hundred I took, but that will not be happening today. I’m still in that mental state where the echoes of a long trip are still ringing in your ears even as you are trying to readjust to your normal life, so it seems as good a time as any to ruminate on that in-between feeling.
I think the amount of traveling we did during our trip made this time feel quite different from previous visits. In particular, a lot of time was spent on the road, especially during the final, eastward portion of the road trip, when I drove from the Grand Canyon to New Braunfels in southern Texas. The stretch from Winslow, Arizona, to Roswell, New Mexico, was the longest one, especially after Google Maps sent us on a wild goose chase in the morning and we then drove through Petrified Forest National Park before driving the six hours and change to Roswell. That was a series of lonely desert highways that cut straight across the landscape and seemed to never end. Much of the journey was in the dark, when all points of reference disappear and it is just the road ahead unfurling into the black emptiness. I began to see things—figures in the road, lights flashing in my peripheral vision. When I told HJ this, she only asked me if I saw anything that looked like a black dog. At one point we stopped in the mountains and got out despite the freezing temperatures to look up at the sky. There, in the utter darkness and silence, I saw more stars than I have seen in some time, along with the hazy glow of the Milky Way. In the five minutes we spent outside of our vehicle, not a single other car passed us in either direction. Despite this awe-inspiring stop, that drive took so much out of me that we decided to split the final leg to New Braunfels—originally a drive of over eight hours—into two legs.
You have a lot of time to think when you are driving along dark desert highways, trying to focus on the road ahead and ignore the phantoms of your mind. There is no place in Korea where you can drive that long and that far and be so utterly alone. I did a lot more of that sort of driving during our trip around the States 23 years ago, but a lot of time has passed since then, and I have grown quite unaccustomed to it. The journey to Roswell was the only one that had me driving a significant amount of time in the dark, but it was enough to make me realize that I didn’t want to do that again; this was one of the reasons we split the following leg in two. Night driving itself doesn’t bother me too much, but there was something about that drive through the desert that got to me.
I know I am not being original when I say that travel is a liminal experience, but the point was driven home to me during that night drive to Roswell. When the light of day fades and everything around you melts into blackness, you feel as if you are suspended between worlds. You can be hurtling along at seventy miles an hour and nonetheless feel like you are standing still. Lights will appear in the distance, so far away that you wonder if they are just another phantom, and then seem to crawl toward you at imperceptible speeds—until they suddenly whoosh past and are replaced by a red glow in the rear-view mirror. Everyone is going someplace, but nobody is there yet. We are simply traversing the emptiness between two points. When you do finally arrive, it feels like waking from a tortured dream.
At the end of our road trip we finally made it to Dallas and spent a week with my family outside the city (more on this later). Then there was one final drive on Saturday morning, when my parents drove us to the airport. The sun had just started to dye the western sky a deep orange as we began our journey, and the glow spread out behind us after we turned west toward the airport. I did talk some with my parents on the way, but carrying on a conversation between the front seats (where my mom and dad sat) and the back seats (where HJ and I sat) was difficult, so I spent much of the time in contemplation. I thought back to the many months spent planning for and anticipating the trip, followed by the whirlwind of the trip itself. Now I was left with only the wistfulness, which is probably why my thoughts tended toward the melancholy.
There was a trigger as well: a cross by the side of the road that came into view as we raced along and disappeared again just as quickly. Such crosses are not a common sight in Korea—in fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a cross on the side of the road here—but in the US they are often erected as memorials to those who have died in road accidents. It was there in my vision for only a moment before it was gone again, but a sadness filled my heart. Whoever died in that accident was in between one place and the next, just as I had been on the road to Roswell, but the difference was that they would remain there, caught in that liminal state and never arriving at their destination. Or perhaps they had arrived after all and I was the one still rushing through life. I suppose it is all a matter of perspective.
I couldn’t help thinking how life is like crosses by the side of the road. Whenever I ponder loss, my mind inevitably goes back to when HJ’s mother passed away. This was of course a difficult time for HJ, but I struggled as well; I left my home and family behind at a young age, so my mother-in-law was more like a second mother to me. The cruelest part of her passing was the realization that, while there were of course many who shared our sorrow, for the vast majority of the world it was little more than another cross on the side of the road. I remember wondering how people could just go on with their lives as normal when our lives had come crashing to a halt. How could the world go on spinning as if nothing had happened? This truth—that, even after death, life goes on for those left behind—would eventually be a comfort, but at the time it was hard to accept. This is what I was thinking of long after that cross on the way to the airport had disappeared from view.
Of course, the cross had not disappeared at all, just as it had not simply appeared in the first place. Its appearance and disappearance were just an illusion, because it was we who were traveling down the road while the cross remained there in the chill of dawn. The cross would be there night and day, through sunshine and rain, a moment and a memory frozen in time and space. People driving by might take note of it, as I did, but most would not, and even those who did see it would soon forget it, their minds turning to where they were going, where they hoped to arrive at the end of their journey. How much of life do we miss by ignoring the liminal spaces we pass through, eager only to arrive at our destinations? How much transformation and growth goes unnoticed because we are so focused on our end goals that we forget that all of life is a journey? Do we really think that when we arrive at some destination we are the same person that we were when we first set foot out the door?
This might seem too melancholy a musing to post on returning from a trip that was mostly filled with happiness. I wrote the first draft on Monday, while the ideas were still fresh in my head. Perhaps they were too fresh, though, as the original version of this entry was a chaotic mess. I had still not yet figured out what exactly it was that I wanted to say—which is, of course, why I wrote this entry in the first place. Like the writer Flannery O’Connor, I often have to read what I’ve written in order to figure out what it is that I am thinking. Last night I returned to this, pared away most of what I had originally written, and expanded on the kernel of what was truly on my mind. Finally, I have returned again today, both to pare and polish further—and to see if what I end up with is really worth saying after all. Not whether it was worth writing, mind you. I’ve rarely regretted putting thoughts into words, since the process helps me think more clearly. The question is whether the result is worth posting. Today, at least, I suppose it is.