Doubt

Yesterday was better
Than it is today
And today will be better
Tomorrow they say
--Flogging Molly, “Us of Lesser Gods”

It started raining while I was sitting in Tulsa.  I’d never intended to sit in Tulsa.  That’s just the sort of thing that happens when an expressway gets shut down and the traffic piles up.  Even at 10 PM on a Tuesday.

I have been in four particularly terrifying rain driving situations.  The first was on the way to Michigan in a 1984 Chevy Caprice known as The Beast with my mother riding shotgun.  The second was in a 2004 Chevy Cavalier barreling down 74 on the way back to WIU on a pitch-black night.  The third was in that same Cavalier driving from northern Wisconsin on I-94 with more traffic than I would have preferred.  The fourth was last Tuesday night in a 2010 Mazda 6 on the stretch between Tulsa and Springfield, MO.

Funny thing about pouring rain, interstates, and the middle of the night: people drive stupid when those things are combined.  Hell, who am I kidding?  People drive stupid whenever people drive.  But there’s a special variety of stupid that comes from interstates, rain, and nighttime.  See, there are semi trucks out on the road, rumbling along at whatever speed they’re going to rumble along at.  As they do, massive amounts of rain fall from the heavens and generally land atop said trucks or get blown around in their wakes.  This creates a fascinating situation where, due to hydrodynamics and aerodynamics and probably some other dynamics, there is a veritable curtain of water that all gathers in a specific area behind and to the sides of the giant vehicles.  Any vehicles that decide they want to travel faster than the trucks have to pass through this fluid barrier and are basically temporarily blinded when the water strikes their windshield.

I have learned that the average person panics upon getting confronted by this momentary blindness.  I have learned this through rigorous scientific observation of the dipshits on eastbound I-44 and northbound I-55.  They pull out to pass a truck, they hit that point where they’re suddenly blind, and they hit their fucking brakes.  This then has the added bonus of causing the person who has just panicked due to water blindness to stay in the exact same spot and continue to be blinded by sheets of water sluicing off the back of the semi truck.

Driving in the rain at night is nerve wracking and fraught with danger.  If you have good tires, a stable car, ABS, good tires, traction control, and good tires you’re probably going to be okay.  If you have all of those things and are surrounded by idiots who don’t have any business driving on a sunny afternoon then you’ll probably spend every second assuming you’re about to die.  It’s just the nature of things, I suppose.

Somewhere along the shiny black expanse of the Will Rogers Turnpike it occurred to me that if I were going to pick any moment to become a praying man again, this would be it.  But relying on my own experience, my own awareness, the safety systems built in to my car, and those still-fairly-new tires on all four corners was really all I needed.

Still, I asked Coyote to keep an eye out.  I figured if there was any deity that understood being caught out on the road in a thunderstorm it would be him.  Or Raven, I guess.  I could probably tell a Raven caught in a story right now if I thought about it for a minute.

But that’s neither here nor there.

I have learned over the course of the constant cavalcade of change that has been my life since roughly spring of 2006 that the trick isn’t to focus on the change.  Given enough time the novel will become mundane.  Given enough exposure the surprising will become the commonplace.  Still, change causes anxiety, anxiety causes stupidity, and stupidity causes bad choices.

For all intents and purposes I’ve put myself in that position where I’m trying to get around a truck, I’m temporarily blinded to the path before me, and rather than pressing on I hit my brakes.  There is no more dangerous place to be while traveling in a storm than in that place where you are still moving, but can see nothing and refuse to make progress.  It’s a disaster waiting to happen.

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So come down from your heaven lord
Let me show you hell on earth
Take me back
To the way life's never been
--Flogging Molly, “Us of Lesser Gods”

Nostalgia is a dangerous thing.  Expectation is, too.  One endlessly creates sadness, the other disappointment.

Yesterday looks better than it was.  Tomorrow seems better than it will be.  Both make today look like a waste.

But today is all there is.  Right now is the only basis we have for getting anywhere.  I cannot make decisions based on where I used to be, nor can I make them based on where I’d like to believe I will be.  I have to make them based on where I am right now and where I want to go.

Ultimately, though, it becomes a question of doubt.  And fear, I suppose.  But it’s important to understand what that doubt and fear is based on.

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And it’ll take 2 million years
To lift a single stone
We’ll have to face a billion fears
Just to find we’re all alone
To find just one unbroken stare
Just a single one who cares
Is that all it’s about?
These little lives of ours?
--Local H, “Hand to Mouth”

I don’t feel the same way I used to about Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers.

Before Rogapalooza they mattered to me in a deep and primal way.  I thought nothing of driving hundreds of miles to see them five times in a week and a half.  When they swung back through Texas and Oklahoma I didn’t even think too much about seeing them in Austin and seriously considered finding other thing to do when they were in OKC.

Something had changed.  It wasn’t the band.  It wasn’t the shows.  Hell, it wasn’t even the venues.  It was something about me, something that had changed.

I used to need RCPM.  It was my release, my escape, my muse, my happy place.  Even that has changed.  I don’t know when.  I don’t really know why.  But it doesn’t bother me.  It just is.

There have been many times in my life where I’ve wondered, “What would happen if [this thing] were to change or go away?”

The answer is simple: my world will change, but I’ll get used to it.

This, ultimately, is the essence of faith and the antithesis of doubt.  Doubt is that thing that eats away at who we are and keeps us living small lives.  Faith is that thing that says the world can change, but it will be okay in the end.

It might not necessarily be better.  We don’t live in a world that works that way.  But there can be happiness and fulfillment anywhere.  There can be life lessons in anything.

Yesterday is not better than today.

Today will not be better tomorrow.

Now is all there is.  And the only imperative is to make now as good as it can be.  For that to happen doubt must take a backseat to faith.  Fear must take a backseat to courage.  There can be no other way to make progress in the world.

Comments

[DagoodS]

One of the scariest driving moments of my life was on I-44 between St. Louis and Joplin, Missouri. On a bright, sunny day.

1986, I was driving a 1980 Datsun B-210. It had less horsepower than today’s toasters, but it DID have cruise control. Sorta. Basically no matter what speed you wanted to go, you just mashed the pedal all the way to the floor, and as the landscaped allowed, one could reasonably reach 65 mph. On the uphills, not so much speed.

As you know, the highway is pretty hilly. And there were numerous semi-trucks doing their run. On the up-hills (because I slowed as much as they did), the trucks dodged and swerved around my little car and other trucks. Same thing as we all picked up speed on the down-hills. You know how sometimes cars cut in front of you and it is so close you think only inches separate the bumpers? I was doing that with semi-trucks. Over and over and over. So close I couldn’t see their license plates!

It didn’t help that my car was white. I kept imagining their trucks as long baseball bats, striking this little white puff of a vehicle, sending me sailing like a fat home run.

[sploozer]

Being next to a semi terrifies me. Doesn't matter if the sun is out, it's raining or snowing. I always (literally every time I pass a semi) hear Mr. Salerno in my ear from driver's ed saying, "Don't stay next to them. You don't know what's going on in there. A bee might fly in their window, they swat at it, and you're dead."

Terrified.

That fear will never leave me.

[DagoodS]

Geds,

Any good stories about driver’s ed instructors? In sploozer’s short statement I could swear I accurately pictured the tone, inflection and expression on his face.

A stereotype inadequately explored, in my opinion.

(P.S. My wife is stunningly beautiful. She hit a parked car and ran a stop sign on her driver’s test, flashed a smile and leg, and still passed!)

[Michael Mock]

Worst driving moment of my life:

I was driving from our new house back to our soon-to-be-abandoned apartment. It was winter, and apparently the air was well below freezing. I was headed east at two-something in the morning, planning to get on the highway and head south...

And I made the mistake of trying to clean my windshield.

Whatever the weather was doing, the spray froze instantly on the glass. My visibility went from poor to nonexistent in the space of half a second. The only saving grace was that, at that hour, the road was virtually empty.

So I dropped my foot off the gas, eased it down on the brake, and resisted the urge to try to steer myself towards the right lane. (If I'd tried, I'd almost certainly have driven up on the curb - there's a gentle curve to the street somewhere around there.) I hit something - to this day, I don't know what, but I heard it slap against the front bumper. It left no mark, and when I had the car stopped and the driver's door open, I couldn't see anything broken behind me.

I thumbed the emergency blinkers on, set the heater to defrost with as much enthusiasm as it could muster, and waited. Eventually, I could see again, and I drove on.

I don't know if that's faith, precisely, but throughout that experience there was a strong feeling. If I had to put it into a sentence, it would say: I must let this happen, or I will lose control of it.

[BeamStalk]

Don't go through Tulsa. Exit at Big Cabin (speed trap town) and take highway 69 south all the way to Dallas. Just remember that almost every town is a speed trap, but they are all small. Highway 69 becomes Highway 75 at Sherman, Texas.