Southbound
The Destiny Inn is now the Rodeway Inn. The roadside psychic off the 5 has been repainted, no longer advertising tarot card or palm readings, but the citadel outlets still put bows up for the holidays. I spent a Sunday going southbound with a car loaded up with belongings that are to last me until 2024 turns 2025.
When there is a need for a solo automobile southbound migration certain things are guaranteed. The pitstop is always in Kettleman City and certain songs get sung and certain thoughts creep up. Thoughts about time and how it passes and how this time last year things were different, but that is only because time did its thing of making the days go by.
Driving from San Francisco to Southern California takes about 6 hours if you travel via the 5. It requires a bridge crossing and about a 4 hour straight shot down the backbone of California. Four lanes are framed by orchards and almond trees and cows and the occasional gas station emblems suspended on 30 foot tall poles. The land is flat, but fruitful. Semi trucks hang in the right lane while passenger cars keep the left lane at a brisk 85 mile an hour pace. It feels like you are passing the middle of nowhere for a four hour forever.
When you look through a car window you are seeing things from a forced perspective that only lasts for a moment because the light turns green or you are driving over 60 miles per hour. I was only seeing what was in front of me until it fell under and then got left behind me. It is all ephemeral and fleeting and gas guzzling. On the familiar stretches of road I looked for what I already knew, as a way to confirm a question I did not know was getting asked. When the grapevine left me in Los Angeles I was stuck in traffic sitting next to exits I used to get off at and see a skyline that used to mean something else. Once I began to leave the boundaries of Los Angeles I expected to see what I always knew to be there. But a year leads things to get repainted and sold and advertise the phrase ‘under new management’ because everything will move on regardless of where you are stuck in traffic.
