by: m. gantee

“There is too much.  Too much happening on the road.”

Another (a Toyota Tercel) moves quick and smooth from the stream on the left to the space in front of my car, fills it up, then moves fluidly forward, leaving a small (and then lengthening) gap, space, emptiness, vacuum.

“…for joining us today,” the voice on the radio is saying, “[static] [static]… House Republicans have demanded… [static] [long static that leaves a space in his words, emptiness, vacancy].”

“And I sit here, stearing this wheel slightly left, now slightly right.  Enough to keep my wheels between the lines with small space to spare between this car and the cars moving alongside.”  Space here, between thoughts.  Space to breathe, to allow the air to do what air will do.  “And if that space collapses, plastic fenders will touch, steel bodies will touch, and touch brings with it force.  And for every force, there is an equal and opposite force.”

Space now between words, to allow for breath.  And, again, breath.

“How does the universe know?  When two cars meet, how does it now the exact depth of deformity that must be impregnated into the steel in order to allow for just that amount of force?  And how, too, does it know that gentler amount of force – the parking of my car along the bridge that spans the Hudson just south of Newburgh and what effect the weight of this very car will have upon the unmoving pavement beneath it?  (The unmoving pavement that, through some unseen magic, transmits the force upward and onto the tires, how? how? how much?)”

The mountains here shield the radio signals that swirl in the stratosphere.  “…and now, for sports, [static] [static]…,” but the intermittent voice of a human coming through the air, tuned through copper wires and transistors, transmitted through the diaphragms of speakers and through the air of this very car is – nice. 

Nice comes from the Lating for ignorant.  I am easily pleased.  I take comfort in human voice.  The Bear Mountain Bridge spans before me now.  I pull off at the foot of the bridge, gravel crunching beneath the tires of this very car.

“…[static],” the car rolls to a stop, “and, Jake, tell us who is going to win this bout?”  And then, the man named Jake, “Well, I’ll tell you, this Mitchel fella looks pretty unbeatable…”

And I sit with the swirl of sound coming from the empty sky above.  Full dark, no stars.  Midnight sits thick outside the glow of the streetlamp above my car.  Thick, empty, but somehow still swirling with voices and sound and ideas.  I sit now in the car that is silent, clicking away the heat of its engine into the dark.  I sit and empty my mind.  Jake speaks through the silence of the car, my dashboard aglow with the accessories.  And they talk about sports and fights and all the good things in life that mean nothing but fill the void on our way between here and there.