Redoubt Report #001
The following is a bit of text that I’ve jumbled together using thoughts from this evening’s run. I call it a run because I really didn’t know where I was going. It’s not like a circuit—well, I didn’t know where I was going between my home and… my home—but it’s not quite like a race: I just took my time going around and doing what I wanted to do on my own time frame.
Well, being around the hour of one o’clock in the morning, I don’t really think that anyone was going to stop me from driving around aimlessly doing some self-searching.
Letting the Music Die
I made the first part of the trip rather smoothly, driving down Forest having some sort of music or talk radio blasting about in the car. I reached for the knob at first to kill the broadcast, and while I made a turn into a curve in the road, I thought briefly about why I wanted to physically clear the air of noise.
Music has been a huge part of my life. I’ve been with a handful of bands, most of my years I knew that I was part of a team that brought music to people, mainly youth and/or churches. The last couple of gigs that I’ve played weren’t for either of those, but it felt good to play with a group of fellows that really knew what they were doing. I felt like I belonged, and at the same time, knew that I was way too rusty to keep up with them. Fortunately for me, there were some pretty simple songs to play, and I never really had to hit the ceiling of my skill level to play the gigs.
I realized that while I may not be part of a band at this present time, the opportunity may rise again at some point in the future. I rearranged my room and reinstalled my bass guitar cabinet and plugged it back up. For the first time in months, I played through a couple of songs that I used to be able to play. I wasn’t missing all the notes, but if this were Guitar Hero, I’d have failed the song about two or three times over trying to get the finger speed and strength back. Working my job over the summer really didn’t do much to add on to my skills.
I ultimately made the most of my run around without sound coming from the glorified magnets in my car. It was a refreshing feeling to simply be driving around and only hearing the wind (and my car while it idled at a stoplight). It cleared my mind, I had thought, for a moment or two. It felt like it was a good decision.
Short Pump at Night
Granted the majority of the construction is still underway and yet to be finished my any stretch of the imagination, the lack of light was something that surprised me. I took the back road shortcut from Three Chopt to Broad Street that cuts through where most of the new construction is going on, and while I have driven through this area of Short Pump while the lights were all on and it felt like there was a glorious work of modern engineering being done on the land formerly a farm, it brought to light (if you excuse the pun) of how empty it feels.
Sure, on the literal level, it’s nowhere near being occupied, but the sight of it all—driving past one of the townhouse communities to be—just seemed to scream emptiness. Of course the walls may not have been raised and the lights that made the wrapped windowsills glow were running throughout each floor of the building, the whole scene just made me feel empty.
It personally related to me on a level I’m not comfortable sharing as of right now, put perhaps I can explain this at a future date.
Against the Fast Lane
Driving out of Short Pump via Broad, I approached the Interstate 64 junction. I was in the right-most lane at the instant I saw the sign that notified me the lane I was in was an ‘EXIT ONLY’ lane towards Richmond. I hesitated for a moment and thought to myself, “perhaps I should take the faster way home so I could get back and write down what I’m thinking about, else I’ll forget what I am thinking about”, but I didn’t do it. Yeah, perhaps I thought I could remember what I was thinking and when.
Perhaps it was the whole realm of thought that I had been avoiding poking its ugly nose in my consciousness: home.
Going home means I have to limit myself, that I have to be less of the person I am so that I don’t cause trouble or strife with my family. Not that I’m extraordinarily different than how I am, but perhaps my thoughts and my conclusions might be dissimilar to the rest of my home’s occupants.
Making A Turn
I made the turn back onto Parham and cut my run short. While I made my turn, a rather slow and lazy one at that, I was reminded of something I had learned just tonight.
Earlier this evening, I was told that my mother let my sister try out her new right of being a teenager aged fifteen and a half in the state of Virginia: driving under supervision. I don’t believe it’s the same as driving, it’d be naive to consider practicing one’s learner’s permit to be considered on the same level as driving.
Apparently, my sister is inheriting her spirit from my father’s side, whereas one of my brothers have also inherited it. She apparently gave our mother a hard time trying to drive around. Likewise, our mother believes her driving skills are poorer than she had expected.
She hasn’t made an effort to learn the boundaries of her vehicle and she hasn’t learned some of the principles of driving yet, so my mother suggested that I take her out on the road to drive a bit. To her, it’s a win-win. She’d never think of my car being wrecked, but if it were damaged in any way, it’d be the most non-critical (to her and the rest of the family, in any case) automobile to be out of commission.
I don’t think I have anything to worry about, though. She seems eager to correct the mistakes that she had made while being out on the road for the first time ever. I sense she’ll be attempting to impress me as time rolls on with her driving and her knack at figuring things out on the road.
