{"id":4896,"date":"2024-03-07T16:56:29","date_gmt":"2024-03-08T00:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/?p=4896"},"modified":"2024-03-07T17:10:33","modified_gmt":"2024-03-08T01:10:33","slug":"4896-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/4896-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoroughfares"},"content":{"rendered":"

High in the Sierra the Interstate
\ncuts its own course above the dry creek bed,
\nits swerves matching the mountain sides
\nonly where math and matter marry to carve
\nthe slopes I speed along, marvelling
\nat the mileage I make until, below,
\nI catch sight of a strip of buckled asphalt,\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>
\nremnant of a turnpike no longer on the map.\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>
\nThis is how we age. Steep crests once
\nground up laboriously in low gear are
\nblasted into empty air. One highway
\nreplaces another. Weeds take \u00a0root
\n<\/span>in the cracks of the thoroughfare leading
\n<\/span>nowhere. Above, traffic moves swiftly on.<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

A poem that has grown on me or, perhaps better put, that I have grown into.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

In the summer of 85 I loaded my yellow VW squareback with all my possessions and drove up the 5 all the way to Vancouver and then across the Rockies to Edmonton. It was a risky return to academia but the clear result of a midlife crisis, one of several I had and survived.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Now the bravado of the poem as I read it then–onwards and upwards–has modulated into a melancholy more appropriate to someone no longer in midlife, not even subject to #FOMO anymore.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

High in the Sierra the Interstate cuts its own course above the dry creek bed, its swerves matching the mountain sides only where math and matter marry to carve the slopes I speed along, marvelling at the mileage I make until, below, I catch sight of a strip of buckled asphalt,\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 remnant … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Thoroughfares”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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