Large generalizations and travel time

I think sometimes I try to make large generalizations while I'm blogging. Maybe only while I think about blogging. I think about blogging more than I blog. Way more. If I could blog while I'm driving I would blog a lot. Anyway this time I'm going to try not to make my observations relavant to anyone other than myself. Maybe other people already do that. Maybe they don't.

Lately I've been thinking about what time is me. By that I mean when in the course of doing the things that I do every day, or indeed any given day, am I really me. The real me. Sometimes I just do what I do because I have to.

What do I love? I love drawing, and painting, especially while I'm listening to certain music. I love writing, but writing seems to scare me into not writing. I love singing. I do it in the car. Which brings me to what I seem to really love. Driving. Driving nowhere, usually on the back roads, reflexively looking for birds. Sometimes I look for deer. Sometimes for woodchucks or rabits or cows. Yes cows. Any sign of life. I usually do this in the evening. Often I go riding after work. The light is best then. Or in the morning. Usually I don't know where I'm going. Exploring is a part of it. I pick a direction and go that way, until I have to come back. I don't know when I'll have to come back when I leave, and I don't know while I'm out there. Often, just one more hill, or one more turn in the road leads to another turn or hill that I just have to see, and see what is past it. It commonly involves fast food. Because I'd miss the light if I stayed home and made food. Eating is important, but what I eat and where do not seem to be. But that turn I follow, on some two lane road, that opens up into a valley filled with afternoon light and a blue sky behind green and yellow mountains, that seems important. I don't know for sure if this driving is a compulsion or me being me at my most me. I wish I did. Lately I don't find many things to take pictures of. I haven't rushed home with a camera filled with invisible treasure in a long time. Sometimes I think that photo's potential is why I go. Its something to look forward to. I have to have something to look forward to. When I have that thing, that good thing that I know is coming, hopefully a good photograph; when something I did, holds together with a life of its own, I get that feeling that I've done something that will last. When I've produced something. Then I feel good. I want that sense of accomplishment.

This is true in drawing or painting too.

But sometimes I wonder, if the sitting there and drawing, while listening to music that I love, or sitting there driving, while singing with my favorite driving music - sometimes drawing music and driving music are different, sometimes the same, but what I'm wondering these days, is, is that time while I'm just doing the thing, not producing, but just being ... is that me? Do I drive because I have to drive? Because I'm impelled to look for that thing to create? Am I looking for beauty, or just feeling insecure about being in the world without producing?

Today I want to think, that that serenity, adventure, calm, wonder, joy and awe of seeing the great green state of New York while my favorite music plays - that that moment is me, is who I really am at the momemt I'm most me. I hope so.

When I have time and money that's what I do. When I can do anything, that's what I do.

Does this relate to a universal truth? Who knows. Do other people look forward to a time or a condition that is truely knowingly themselves? Is there something more to take from this? I don't know. All I know is when the days are perfect, like they have been lately, I go driving, camera bag in the passenger seat, Sarah Maclachlin, Brian Eno and JJ Cale, or some mix tape on the CD through the foothills of the Catskills or through the green hills surrounding the fingerlakes (if I have a lot of time) living in the moment, and trying to capture it.