Sometimes when I drive home at night, and I'm crossing the Indian River Lagoon or the Banana River, the lights take me completely away. My own private Bermuda Triangle, but only in my head. There are different lights and they all have a different effect.
Car lights don't stay with you; they either pass you going the other way, or they drop behind you because they aren't able to keep up. These lights make me think of journeys that we each take. Each car is on its own journey, sometimes moving in the same direction as other cars for a time before it veers off in its path and takes another course. I wonder if the other drivers and passengers, like me, wonder what interesting journeys are being taken in all the other cars. Do they, like me, feel a brief, fleeting connection with the other people on the road? Or are they mindless drones, simply in motion because someone said they had to be somewhere other than where they were? Are they going somewhere they really want to be? What destiny awaits them at the other end?
The bridges are all lined with pairs of street lights, high above the road. On clear nights, these appear to be exactly what they are: lights placed on the bridge so we silly humans don't drive off into the water. On nights when it is foggy or very rainy, they are oh so much more than that. Muted and softened, the glow is more like the spirits of those who have passed before, and those yet to come. They stand steady and stoic, awaiting my passage, reassuring me that I am on the right path and that solace awaits me where I am going. I wonder, if I stray from the path will they move to warn me? I envision them darting out of their lines and clustering around to nest me in safety until I am back on the proper course. I do not ever test their willingness to protect me out of respect for their kind guardianship. Sometimes, I feel I should lift up into the sky and ride along directly between the lights; and sometimes, for just a moment, I believe I really can.
Then there are the lights that shine from the houses, businesses and parking lots along the waterways. On clear, calm nights these lights show as dots on land, but their reflections in the water seem to be trying to stretch forever, trying to reach the far shore but always disappearing before they reach it. These lights take me to a memory. I don't remember where I was, or if I even knew or cared. In the memory, I am very small, maybe a toddler - I really am not sure. I am being held by either my Mother or my Father, and they are standing close together. The three of us are looking across water towards a nearby shore. The lights there also appear as dots on land, but as long lines in the water. One of my parents makes a comment that they look "continental." I cannot clearly remember which voice speaks the words, but I can remember thinking that the word "continental" must be something very special indeed because of the emotion that I feel in the voice that has spoken.
Then of course, there are the lights the universe has provided for us. Those beautiful points of light so very far away in our sky. Oh, the places I go when I look at them. I cannot put the right words on this screen. They cannot compare to what my mind and my heart see when I look at them. I picture myself as a tiny mote of light, smaller than the stars, planets, and galaxies appear to our naked eyes. I travel at unimaginable speeds, well beyond what light speed can accomplish. More like tesseract travel, where you fold into nothingness and appear somewhere else less than an instant later. I move among the stars, the planets, galaxies, dust clouds, black holes. I find the places the artists try to create for us and see them for myself. I become one with each place I go, and carry a little of it with me to the next place, and the next and the next. I meet the inhabitants (yes, I believe that other places support life) and feel the wonder of their life experiences. I feel the effects of the passage of time on the solid and astral bodies that I encounter, and dance with them in their ballroom called a Universe.
There is no need for drugs in a mind that can travel to such places, unfettered and unclouded. My heart and mind can take me anywhere I want to be.
