The Seductions Of The Road

I’ve developed a fascination for RVs, don’t know why, it happened mysteriously, like a new feeling crawled into me and spread its wings and I began to muse upon the coziness implicit in these creations, a space small enough to pull behind you on the highway but with enough room for a bed and a table and refrigerator and even a bathroom with a toilet, sink and shower. A mobile home. Unattached to any property and the taxes and woes and fussy neighbors that go with that. You see a lot of RVs these days, most of them rundown, dilapidated and sad as a grey day in Ireland. For some the road isn't a choice. It's not a lark or retirement dream. It's a brutal reality. That said, I don't want to editorialize or sentimentalize the gypsy existence thrust on the unfortunate. My fantasy is a different kind of narrative making its highways in my brain. That's what makes it a fantasy. It's a strangely precarious flirtation with the unrooted and nomadic. What a wonderfully joyous feeling that must be to go places change the scenery change the reference points and people change the markets and main streets and stores and still have what feels very much like a home. Sweet. Could be this fascination has emerged from what are very stressful times, or age, getting on in years without any real future, things to strive for, ambitions to feed, careers to pursue, and so on. That world is no longer pertinent. What is relevant now is gently fading into the sunset, learning how to let go of things, not material things, but things like, I don’t know, hard to put into words the deeper feelings, those currents are tricky and strange, but those closer relations, they begin to fade because people die, and that community shrinks, and then you’re left feeling marooned in a time and a place that you cease to understand, the technology is dizzyingly complex, and the people don’t share quite the same values. That’s when being in movement begins its seductions. You turn into a tumbleweed. And it's the simpler pleasures in life, good food, a warm bed, a place to sit and read a book become paramount. It’s a nice fantasy to occupy. And realizable. Tangible as common sage. And so I shepherd those feelings and nurture them with floor plans and maps and the exodus of age.