“Bodhi means being awake, and sattva means a living being…All of us are sometimes Bodhisattvas, and sometimes not.”- Thich Nhat Hanh from The Heart of Understanding
Being one of two people awake between two and four in the morning is oddly electrifying. I knew that I was tired. I hadn’t slept well since the Wednesday before the trip and yet there I was driving with near full faculties. I managed my three hour shift without seeing one shadowy critter. Elizabeth and I chatted about the trip, our relationship, the future, politics, nearly anything. It was great.I drove throughout the entirety of Kentucky. There’s a large amount of personal satisfaction to ticking off a state from the trip’s road map.
Since I was manning the helm I got to witness driving into one of the larger cities that we drove through on the trip. The van rounded a bend high up on a mountain and it looked out over Chattanooga, Tennessee. Fun to say and drive through.
Lights spread from one end of the visible horizon to the other. A grid work galaxy twinkling out with the lights from thousands of streetlamps and porch lights; millions of watts being used to create a static plain of clear illumination.
The streets were congestion free which made me the happiest camper. I despise driving. I loathe driving through cities. I tense up from knuckle to lower back making my entire body immovably uncomfortable. At 3:30 in the morning though, I saw perhaps five other cars which allowed me to acutely enjoy the experience of driving. It also allowed me to live out some of my more anti-social fantasies where I assumed another great plague rolled through freeing up space for those of us left. I did not share this thought with the sleeping van. Though Elizabeth and I chatted about it.
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