 |
|
Leaving Great Smoky National Park by vehicle, we drove on winding roads past other anonymous vehicles going their own merry way. There were campers and SUVs, but no real crowd built up going in either direction. The vehicles whisked past us, a brief part of scenery that disappeared like the sun behind a speeding cloud, and disappeared before we got to really register them. I couldn't see their faces and had no idea if they were driven by men, women, children or space aliens. So it went in the silent anonymous world of vehicle travel as we drifted past our fellow sojourners. For people who were sharing a common moment and a common activity, there was little communication between the participants. That had pretty much been the nature of what our trip had been like from the beginning. Zooming past people on the highway and never seeing them again, or having stretches of empty road where no one was in sight either way. Quick runs into fast food joints where I briefly saw humans, looking like birds in flight, before I resumed my own personal migration. Cameras snapping, oohing and ahhing and what was in front of them before running to catch the next ooh or ahh. Or, in the case on our trip here within the woods of the Smoky Mountains, a dearth of human life to begin with, as though we had woken up after a nuclear holocaust years afterwards like some Rip Van Winkle and found ourselves to be the only two humans left. A flash of light was what our human colleagues seemed to be on this trek that we took. This is the way it was with most of our travel by automobile. There were people, but no way of knowing them, what they were doing, why they were doing it, where they were going, or anything else about them. The wide open road was just that, wide and open, full of open spaces with miles of solitude in them no matter who else was there on the road. Not a place to meet and greet the people, it was a vanishing act while staying visible on the outside. Anonymity was on these roads, whether there was a traffic jam, or there was no one at all. These contradictions of visibility and invisibility seemed to go along with the whole Americana mentality. Americans are: open minded yet stubborn. They are: friendly but suspicious. Also: good-hearted but violent: have a smile with that gun, now. And of course, they are gregarious, but recoil if they don't have enough space. Anyone would be confused if they tried to put cul-de-sacs and wide open ranges into the same country and tried to equate these cultures as one. But these contradictions themselves, puzzling as individual ingredients, seemed to be what it was like to be an American, or in this case, became the culture itself. What I was finding in this trip is how entrenched that reality was throughout the nation, experiencing the congestion of highways while never really meeting anyone. Which may be what the highway really was all about, getting away. Another contradiction: the highways had originally been created as a means of escape from war when attacked, and now they were a vehicle to freedom. But this really hadn't been intended as a trip to get to know the neighbors down the highway, which just goes to show how American I was in my mentality. Eager to see the world but not too eager to sit and have a conversation. Conversations I could have en masse while I was at home, and I was sick of conversing. This is why I was here, so I didn't have to pretend I was hearing myself when all I was doing was hear myself talk. People were fine, in small doses. An automobile on the highway pretty much insured that kind of strange travel, a community that didn't even care to know that there was similarity in the box one lane over. No, for right now, people weren't much an equation on this trip, just three days in. There wasn't a lot of mingling in truck stops where we went, being amongst taciturn people to begin with and, not being a truck driver, sort of on the outside anyway. This wasn't a place where a casual conversation with a stranger would lead to an invitation to the home to eat Ma's food. If that conversation did take place, it would be cause for alarm. Is there anyone who would like to meet Jeffrey Dahmer for dinner? Distance was the norm here, was to be expected. Yet the admonition to be cheery was a mantra that seemed to be dictated, if not enforced. Witness the "smile" command floating happily in a yellow circle behind the counter of a fast food restaurant directed at the employees. Then witness as one is handed a hamburger by a clerk with a tired frown, pushing the yellow happy command out of his way on approach. American optimism was an ideal. Which was just as well because everyone needed something to look up to. What would everyone do if they actually achieved it? I've heard of Americans who actually felt safer traveling overseas than they do in their own country. This kind of thing is just perception, I would think, and anyone could share his or her own travel disaster or fear no matter where they were in the world. But I could see where the perception of fear came from. Even though there weren't Rambos touting guns prowling every corner of the road, the anonymous feel of an American highway gave the impression that if they were, there wouldn't be enough of the good people around to stop them from committing reprehensible acts. With this mentality, an empty road wasn't necessarily cause for peaceful solitude. It could be cause for fear. Of course, it could just be a symptom of one too many slasher films saturating the popular culture. In my case right now, in my personal perception of the day, this solitude was cause for joy and relaxation. Still only days away from the ridiculous hectic ride for what passed for modern suburban life, the less cheery falsity I heard in the guise of empty words the better, at least for now. I was too frazzled by the roles that were dictated as being necessary for a well-oiled machine, and this individual machine had long burned the last reserves to be well oiled. Solitude was just the antidote for the anonymity the lay behind the chatty world I'd set behind, and at least here the anonymity wasn't trying to be anything else. Contradictions seemed to dissolve from me, no matter what it seemed to an outsider perceiving me as a unit of the culture I was in thought. I passed by trees, by stores, and other people, leaving them all behind, as the only thing of clarity left was myself, a very good thing indeed. |
