A midnight drive into the mind obscure
Restless, unable to sleep, I got out of bed, dressed, grabbed my Walkman and keys and headed for my car. Pulling out of my garage I steered the car into the night and the moonlight. Green Day’s American Idiot filled my mind with sounds of punk rock, or is it rock punk? And I drove aimlessly with no destination in mind other than the overwhelming desire for a new beginning. I wanted peace and headed north on a two lane desolate highway winding out of Bakersfield.

I passed lonely oil wells slowly pumping the ground digging deeper and deeper in search of Bakersfield’s lifeblood. I am that lone oil well. I’ve been digging deeper and deeper pumping, searching for that illusive black gold called love, hitting only dry dirt. Standing strong, dust covered, proud, only to watch oil wells close to me gushing in black liquid love. It’s hard to be dry, thirsting. It’s hard to be the only one not bathing in oil.

An orange orchard appeared on the side of the highway as I silently drove. The memory of an afternoon years earlier where two young lovers ran into an orange orchard and made love in the dirt blanketed by sweet citrus smells inundated my mind. I could almost taste the orange with its sweet citrus nectar dripping down my mouth. My hand unknowingly reached up and wiped imaginary sweet drops of stickiness from my face as the memory of past love converged with reality in an empty car.

I passed by little one-horse towns on the edge of this isolated highway I traveled. I drove for an hour or more before pulling over in the parking lot of a Denny’s restaurant. I wasn’t in the mood for people. I wasn’t in the mood to be stared at for being alone. My mind needed rest. I laid back in the car seat and closed my eyes. Lyrics from Green Day’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams spun around inside my head. I heard Billy Joe Armstrong’s wisdom as he sang these words: “My shadow’s the only one that walks beside me / my shallow heart’s the only thing that’s beating / sometimes I wish someone out there will find me / ‘til then I walk alone / I’m walking down the line / that divides me somewhere in my mind / on the borderline of the edge / and where I walk alone / read between the lines of what’s / fucked up and everything’s alright / check my vital signs to know I’m still alive / and I walk alone” Surely he knew the ‘single’ state I reside in when he wrote those words.

I slept for a couple hours, waking up to the cold night air that had seeped into my bones. Shivering, I turned the key in the car and woke a determined engine that had until now been asleep. I headed south towards Bakersfield and home. I drove steadily with great concentration willing my eyes to stay awake, to look, to see my surroundings for what they were. The simplicity of an orange orchard with much fruit to be harvested. An oil field with geysers waiting to burst black liquid at any moment. A solitary road leading me back to my home and an electric blanket where warmth and comfort waits to encompass my body as my mind leaves the obscure and drifts off into realism dreams.

*Creative Non-Fiction published in the 2006 Cerro Coso Community College Journal of Literature and Art: Metamorphoses  posted by Matildakay at 10:32 PM