Observations from Driving

I have an essay that has been churning in my brain for quite some time—thoughts on the relationship between popular media, culture at large, and relational expectations between spouses. I hope to have it up by the end of the weekend.

In the meantime, however, I will content myself with two recent observations from driving.

As I have noted a few times recently, driving often provides an opportunity for reflection that we would not otherwise enjoy. For my part, I spent 50 minutes to an hour in the car every day: more than ample opportunity for reflection, if I will but take advantage of it. Sometimes I do; other times my mind drifts along like dandelion seeds on the breeze.

Two days ago, I was thinking—hard. Not about driving. I found myself reacting to other drivers' behavior at a barely conscious level. At some point, I began observing my own mental processes as I drove. The human brain is a fascinating thing. I could on the one hand be thinking quite serious about my wife, ministry to friends and neighbors, and how to relate to foreign exchange students, and on the other hand be correctly processing and interpreting immense quantities of data regarding other car's relative positions, velocities, and likely future behavior.

I could anticipate, on the basis of small motions of people's heads, slight alterations in their speed, and other factors barely perceptible at a conscious level, what the cars around me were going to do. Remarkably, given th complexities involved, so could every other person driving down the road at 70 miles an hour. Not one of us suddenly guessed another was doing something they weren't, slammed n our breaks, and caused an accident. We all kept driving, largely oblivious to the marvelous dance of neurons going on inside our brains.

It's stunning, really: these small, finite minds are nonetheless capable of processing and correctly interpreting incredible amounts of information without even being consciously focused on those particular data points. Especially with years of experience, we begin to subconsciously recognize and react to cues happening far too quickly and subtly to ever process them consciously, and so we all stay alive as we barrel down the highway in steel and plastic contraptions at speeds certain to harm and likely to kill a human being.

My second observation: I entered the north side of Norman yesterday afternoon, and the overwhelming familiarity of the drive arrested my attention. I make that drive daily—occasionally, even more frequently. It has become routine to the point that I no longer really see the fields and warehouses passing by; I see only home and my wife's arms waiting for me.

It was not always so, of course. I remembered driving into Norman four and a half years earlier—driving into Norman by myself for the first time, at the beginning of the second semester of my freshman year of college. It was a strange and almost surreal experience. I had left my home behind in Colorado, and was driving home to Walker Tower in Norman. Somehow, my life had changed, in ways I could not yet define. I only knew my world was different than it had been, could not and would not be the same. I did not know the turns.

Over the years that followed, that feeling intensified, even as I made that drive more and more frequently. Trips to Oklahoma City became less rare, and I had soon driven home along I-35 more times than I had ever driven on I-25 in Colorado. My home was Adams Tower, then Walker again for another two years. My friendships solidified, even as they changed. My world shifted on its axis in more ways than one.

The changes did not slow on graduation or marriage. Colorado is no longer home, however much I love it. A comfortable little apartment in Norman where my wife waits eagerly for me is home. I-35 is no longer a strange sight, the turns unfamiliar, because I drive it twice a day. The world has changed again, and will change again until it changes once for all.

All that from a drive home.

3:01 am

I have been up most of the night. Duty called. The hours have gone relatively quickly; the silence and solitude have been pleasant.

I was driving a little after midnight, a gibbous moon hanging low in the southwestern sky, pinprick stars dotting the sky even with city lights all around, and thinking of the night ahead of me. I am almost done with the night now, the sun is rising outside, and grayscale tones of night are coming aglow with color. I am still thinking about the night, though.

When awake in the middle of the night—when 3 am rolls around in the quiet darkness—we watch with the sort of expectation that strains to see the slightest hint of color in the eastern sky. We wait for black velvet to ever-so-subtly turn blue—because that means the night is ending. That first moment grows and spreads imperceptibly until the whole sky is aflame with color, clouds blazing orange and pink and the sky a stunning mix of gold and white and blue, until the sun itself comes burning over the horizon in a spray of fire.

That first hint of changing color is a long time coming at 3 am, though. The glimmers at horizon's edge are illusions or tricks or false hopes: city-shadows cast skyward, or moonlight shining on the tops of faraway clouds, or imagination coloring the darkness. Weary, middle-of-the-night minds see dawn long before it comes, are disappointed at how it tarries. Daylight comes in its own time, not the schedule set by a heart longing for an end to darkness. But it does come.

We who follow Christ wait in the dark. When the clock reads 3 am, it is easy to ignore the glimmers on the horizon: we know they are illusions. No clock measures down the hours till he comes again, though; no almanac proclaims the time of his arrival. Christians always wait urgently and hopefully, because the dawn could come at any time. Time and again someone cries out, "Look! First light!" Time and again we strain our eyes to see, and realize that no: this is no second coming, no dawn to end the night forever. The cry was a mistake. Still: the dawn could come at any time.

When it comes, it will not be a glimmer, barely perceived. The age of darkness will not end like nights do, slow and subtle and sure. The sun will leap over the horizon in one blinding moment, darkness crushed out of existence in an instant.

It is 3 am, and we wait with baited breath. He could come at 3:01.

A Long Process

I finished the duet. Or at least, I finished the semi-final rough draft of it. Four and a quarter minutes of music for clarinet and cello, a dance movement, written in about a week and a half. (That's why I am up late right now, and why I have not done much blogging in the same span of time.)

I will post a link to the piece once I get the recording of the actual performance of it (presumably in a few weeks). I have good sound sets... but they are still sound sets.

Yesterday was our one year anniversary. I will try to post some reflective thoughts on that occasion later this week. Tonight we enjoyed some of our cake, which was surprisingly good a year later (it was very well sealed).

I have a stomach ache. The two, gladly I suppose, are not related; I had the stomach ache first.

We will have another friend staying with us for a few weeks soon: the one and only Megan Tevebaugh, who is now counting down the days till her impending marriage to the equally unique Anthony Plopper. They will be living in the same apartment complex as us; it should be a wonderfully fun year (even as the next few weeks promise to be particularly fun as well.)

Sleep calls me now.