distance

there are fireworks in the distance as you coast along a highway just south of the ohio and michigan border, grandiose lights and colors off to the north, but not too far, you think maybe perusing your phone you could find the town, the occasion. you remember as a kid on late night highway drives home from chicago or detroit wanting to know what each and every overpass lead to, the lights in the distance of cities and towns and countless stories of people existing in them completely unaware of the camry or mitsubishi you were in barreling down the highway. now you're obsessed with finding these fireworks, who, what, where, but google tells you nothing and at 80 miles per hour you're quickly beyond them and unable to assume they're due north of your location on the map. it's not a holiday and you assume county fair or something but in these northern ohio or southern michigan counties west and beyond detroit and toledo nobody really lives. maybe this was always the writer in you, seeing cars go by and wondering the driver's story, seeing these towns light up all miniaturized when above them in a plane, passing over countless decadent rejections of night time darkness, light pollution blaring louder than the sound of plane engines separated from your chair by just a small wall and window. maybe that's why sitting in an airport and having a drink or coffee and just observing was comforting. you'd imagine stories and be curious and observe and as a teen you used to say you liked the idea of people more than people themselves and maybe part of that is still true but then you meet someone wonderful and you think to yourself "gosh isn't that cynical." it's ok though because all the stories are gone. the blog you write in had the fewest visits in years, 5-10% of the traffic it used to get because you no longer put out 6, 7, 8 entries a month, you're now on... you can't even remember. 1.5 years? 2 years? 3 years? since you finished a short story. the other day you had an idea for a story and a blog post based on all these people, all these lights, all these nights and hushed confessions and observations but it was late and the idea was fleeting, just like the fireworks were, as the car motored down the highway, answer to your curiosity lost in the distance behind you, just another slowly unobservable object in a mirror closer than it appears.