Monday, May 18, 2009

Going West...

...I was heading out down a long bone white road, straight as a string and smooth as glass and glittering and wavering in the heat and humming under the tires like a plucked nerve. I was doing seventy-five but I never seemed to catch up to the pool which seemed to be over the road just this die of the horizon. Then, after a while, the sun was in my eyes, for I was driving West. So I pulled the sunscreen down and squinted and put the throttle to the floor. For West is where we all plan to go someday. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old field pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying, 'Flee, all is discovered.' It is where you go when you look down and see the blade in your hand and see the blood on it. It is where you go when you hear that 'thar's gold in them thar hills,' It is where you go to grow up with the country. It is where you go to spend your old age. Of it is just where you go.

It was just where I went.

-Robert Penn Warren, from All the King's Men

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