I don't wear a watch, but I can feel time frowning at my wrist.
Routine weighs on me so heavily that my chest feels too small for my lungs, and I have to struggle to breathe.

My consiousness is drowning in the dreary ballad of my commute.
The TV in a store window cast the final flicker of glaze over my eyes.
And everywhere I go, billboards stare back at me.

Work every day.
Live off credit.
Shop.

It's hard to trip over adventure without taking a step, so only when I stick out my thumb for that first ride do my eyes open wide while excitement begins to stir underneath my skin so that I can breathe again.

*gasp*

Life fills my lungs and strikes routine from the body of my text.

The hot road heats my feet and stricken from their slumber they dance with careless abandon. Soon I'll catch a ride and the rolling california hills will roll towards me.

Sometimes my ride is amazing like that girl Sunshine who stopped at a friend's house with a vinyard in the back yard, where we sat smiling in the sun with wine soaked teeth.

When I had to go we wished each other truely and without formality or pretense -- farewell.

Off I went with a homemade bottle of '97 pino noir, for happy travels.
Standing on that road again grinning my mind spinning now that I'm light and lost in the california I always hoped to find.
Dancing between earth and sun my thoughts come undone as I move to the rhythm of my heart instead of my head.

Sometimes my ride is a total maniac like that guy Dennis who was fucked up on coke and pot and would

talk talk talk

and then mid-sentence revert to business-like tones to assure me, unprompted, that he was capable of driving.

We rapped on and on and sang out the windows and yelled as we screamed over highway 17.
Hitch-hiking is the one true release because leaning forward into the road ahead we vanquish our vapid stares and life death freedom and even the world seems to emerge from that thin white line that cuts across the continent.

4/4 is not the meter of my life and I can't row to the tempo of a coxen because my cadence breaks beats.
When my bare feet are on a warm dashboard I know that going is more important than getting there and that chaos never died.


You see hitch-hiking sets me free
to be true to myself

No matter where I'm going
or where I'm coming from
when I stick out my thumb for that first ride
and my eyes open wide

I know that cartwheels are my religion.