edabass

But they've screwed up text entry in art submissions again.  So. Each person carries within a mountain, seen first in childhood, far-off and cloud-crowned. Perhaps it has a name; it needs none. For its shadow is enough to dark our paths forever. All the rituals of our lives, fleeting joys and tiny tragedies shall not suffice to raise a foot along its snowy slopes.

Some days, I just wake up, and hear some piece of music, or see some brilliant cloud pattern that makes me just want to get in the car and GO. Don't know where, don't care, for however long it takes 'til I get there and, maybe, if I feel like it, back. I'm of an age when a lot of people would write it off as a midlife crisis- if it weren't for the fact that these fits have come over me off and on for several decades.  Maybe it's running away, but I think it's running towards something. What? No idea. If I knew, I'd probably already be there.  I've never actually done it, though- so I have no clue.

Comprised of Interstate 86 and 'future I86' (known to simple New Yorkers as Route 17), the Southern Tier Expressway is an east-west artery that runs from Buffalo to Binghamton.  Often poorly paved, twisty, and under 'improvement' since roughly the dawn of time (like every other highway in the state), it has three attractions over the more northerly I-90:  Some truly lovely vistas, a complete lack of tolls and, usually, very little traffic from one end to the other. This most recent trip, as I battled the winds of yet another series of apocalyptic thunderstorms battering everything from Buffalo to U. Penn, something kind of magical happened o