Day 8
Last night as we were driving away from the sun and into out our shadows, we saw just how quickly the night can fall if there is no vegetation or other context. Gold became red became black and suddenly we found that we were driving on a silvery ribbon over a deeply uninteresting non-reflective land. Those green highway signs with town names and the occasional cross roads that seemingly go from nowhere to nowhere else, are just about all that this part of the world was prepared to give us. Believe me when I say that it's not markedly different during the daytime.
Another night; another unfamiliar ceiling and I don't know about you but I got another air conditioner that wasn't working and another ceiling fan of Damocles that I daren't switch on. I do not know who James and Louise are but I am sure that they will take their argument along with them as they also travel along the highway.
This morning I made something that purported to be coffee but mysteriously managed to taste like exactly nothing in particular. I do not know if that is better or worse than everyone's favourite brand of instant disappointment: International Roast.
I note that our wee little Bellini Tiger GTi looks ready and raring to go but given that it is literally a machine that always looks exactly the same, that can purely be put down to the fact that we have a need to anthropomorphise everything; including objects. As we pack our luggage in the trunk and speed off into a new morning, I'd like to pause and think about our wee little Tiger GTi and the effort that we are demanding of it, or rather, the effort that we demand of it and our relationship to it.
Humans have a remarkable desire to name everything. The very first job given to Adam in the book of Genesis is to name all of the animals but I think that that goes for just about everything and not just animals. We give ships and trains individual names for identification purposes and while things might have brands and model names to tell you what a thing is, some of us have individual names for individual objects.
King Arthur's sword was called 'Excalibur', the fastest steam train ever was called 'Mallard', 18 of the 19 space capsules that went around the moon had names with the first one to land called 'Eagle', and the first nuclear bomb which was dropped on other people was called 'Mighty Boy' and was dropped by 'Enola Gay'.
We tend to name objects which we are heavily invested in and which transcend being just appliances. I for instance have owned cars called Mustard, Mintie, Rosallini, Big Blue, Chiko Roll, Stich, and Vanellope. I do not think that our Bellini Tiger GTi which is now hurtling across the desert on a ribbon of black at 144km/h will get a unique name but it is worth considering that we give names to cars and trucks but not microwave ovens.
I imagine that you, there is a great contrast between the grey green tufts of scrub that we are whizzing past and the red dust that extends everywhere as far as our minds' eye can see. You know that you are in a place where there isn't very much of note when place names are called things like Breakfast Creek or Wednesday Camp.
I know that this is probably going to sound ridiculous, given that the landscape hasn't changed in hours but coming up ahead of us, is the border between West and East Rollania. This isn't to say that I have entire political entities within my mind but I am cognizant of the fact that different lands are very much demarcated by seemingly incomprehensible borders, which have been put there by both time and circumstance. In this case the border crossing is so arbitrary that we may wonder at all why it is even there.
The same could be said for a bunch of border crossings in the world. Perhaps one of the greatest causes of conflict yet invented in the history of the world, has been the drawing of borders on maps without the slightest regard for the inhabitants who actually live in the nations concerned. One only needs to look at the former Union of India or the criss-crossing of lines across the Middle East to appreciate the destruction which results.
We are currently on this road trip through my mind because of an imposed border between a past which we used to know and an uncertain future which none of us really know what it's going to look like, except that whatever happens, capital will reorganise itself to take what it can from the people who do real work for a living, as it always has done. The future will not look broadly different from the past, even though at the moment with uncertainty before the face of a common and unseen enemy, we have for a time relearned how to be a bit kinder.
Here we are at the border finally and I have to say that it is something of a disappointment. This is just two white signs that say 'Welcome To East (or West) Rollania' and a half hearted attempt at a very small fence on either side of the road. This border seems really arbitrary because it is.
Point 895, Point 898, Thursday Gully, Four Stone Ridge, Point 896, Gregory's Pack... Fulchester Road (which probably goes to Fulchester Station), Point 927...
A tree... five kangaroos... they are definitely loose in the large paddock... probably Patterson's Curse...
M400... M350... M300... Point 976...
We have come to a point in the road where there are a bunch of raised painted lines. There is a shuddering through the car and a big red sign that says 'Slow Down' for seemingly no apparent reason. We pass a sign with a picture of a former arrow, telling us that Highway 9 heads north and Highway 1 heads southeast.
Out here, given that the landscape hasn't changed, a three way forked box junction is really exciting. As we come to a stop, the only sounds are the quiet murmur of the Tiger GTi and the ticking of the turn indicator. We turn right.
M195.. M190... M185... the little mileposts are now coming at 5km intervals. I think that the word milepost is a sensible skeuomorph of the language when you consider that kilometerage sounds plain daft.
Eventually, scrub turns back into fields, which turns back into fields with trees, and with the fall of night, we see a set of buffers and a tram parked in the middle of the road.
There are houses now.
There are more houses now.
A lawnmower shop, a car yard, more houses, a Woolard's supermarket, the illuminated sign for the Ship O'Fools pirate burger chain, actual traffic, a lorry.
We can practically drive into the centre of town at Marshfield. For a city of imagined millions, it is like a very big country town that got out of hand. I've booked us into the Linton Hotel which is just on the outskirts of the central business district; so when we get there, you can take our luggage inside and I'll go and find a car park.
You're free to run around the city at night but I'm going to get some kip. Will I dream? That's a wild thought - thinking about dreaming while asleep in a world which we've imagined and which only exists in my mind for the purposes of an imaginary road trip. The nature of reality is pure subjective fantasy.
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