08.16.2007 - 1:29 a.m.

I am driving home at midnight.

I am driving, like I sometimes do, as if I were riding a horse. I ask for the trot, ask for the canter, support him with the outside rein. Bend him around the inside leg. Collection, impulsion, there, there is the balance. I press down on the gas, but don�t let out the clutch until I can feel the haunches gather beneath me for the leap. Control. Or at least, a kind of control�it is the animal driving as much as it is me. Accelerate, turn, balance, letting my hips absorb the motion while my torso floats above them. Extension. Speed. Rush. Fierce, almost painful joy.

This doesn�t happen with people. With horses, with machines, with the earth or its weather, yes. Once in a piercing while, with a few words on a page�but so far as I can recall, no human being has ever seen that expression on my face.

I like it that way. Even though it makes me sad.

-stonebridge

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