On the Road to Connecticut

White-line fever meets epiphany

Yesterday, driving through Newark, I felt a sudden sense of oneness with the universe.

I know, and believe me, I’m as surprised as you are, but I can explain.

Approximately seven hours into a ten-hour drive, a driver enters a hypnotic state. Truckers call this white-line fever, basically, it’s one-part razor-focus to four-parts daze. That perfectly describes the state I found myself in after driving all morning. Sam was riding shotgun; we’d been listening to his Spotify playlist, which consists of Sam’s carefully curated tunes for hobos to hop trains to. I suggested we take a break. The interior of the car had fallen silent, save the muffled thrum of traffic and occasional whoosh-weave of those death-wish drivers native to New Jersey.

To my left was Newark International Airport, where over our heads a Jetblue airliner slowly touched down, casting its shadow over the New Jersey Turnpike like some enormous prehistoric flying reptile. I was suddenly keenly aware that every moving car contained my fellow humans, each with their own unique agenda, and yet, we were as one, flowing in myriad directions. On one side was the Manhattan skyline, on the other, the Meadowlands runways and marshes, eco and urban connected systems bathed in golden late-afternoon light. Collectively, our atoms made up the whole that was greater than the sum of infinite parts, and the way it all synchronized was nothing short of miraculous.

Behind me some asshole flashed his brights. I was already going over eighty but moved over, and took a good look at the jerk as he blew past. The vanity plate, the coiffed hair, the sunglasses… these, too, fit, and made perfect sense. I gave him the finger, nestled still in a sweet interconnected universe where everything converged, the good, the bad, and my ability to make a spot-on critical judgement call between calling out a douchebag or summoning deadly road rage.

This sense of oneness faded a short time later, while waiting in the lawless queue at the G.W. Bridge toll plaza. As Robert Frost so famously observed, nothing gold can stay. But I’ll always have the memory of that shimmering moment on the New Jersey Turnpike when everything connected, and even a flipped bird found its place into the grand scheme of things.