“I once had a girl or should I say, she once had me.” I woke up to that line from the Beatles’ Norwegian Wood and didn’t know what to make of it. Was it related to a dream I had earlier in the night? The line kept repeating in my head throughout the morning. Oh boy, this is gonna be a hell of a day. After I finish my coffee, I head to the gym for a short workout. As usual, everyone’s eyes avoid each other. The most social yet vulnerable place we can be is now a sterile but driven environment where all the participants (or “members”) are uber-focused on their workouts or lunges or lifts. I’ve never seen so many people take a simple walk on a treadmill so seriously. I keep to myself, afraid to shatter the sanctity of someone’s regimen or routine or space.

Let it all hang out? Not a chance – better to keep those ear-buds in and avoid all contact. Eyes up: six TV screens blazing with HD images and all sounds turned off. A cave of frost and determination.

I find my first piece of equipment and begin, lifting slowly at first then letting my body get ready and warmed up, then quickening the routine. After 45 minutes on most of the machines, I’m done. I’ve hit most of my muscle groups and run and sweated enough. As I leave the gym, the line returns again in my mind: “I once had a girl or should I say, she once had me.” I look around to see if I recognize anyone at the gym, but they are all people I’ve either never seen before or somewhat familiar faces of those I have seen a few times here each month. I am struck by how many people must be members but don’t show up very often. What do they do? Why join a gym and then only visit once or twice a month? Is that really a regimen? Not that I’m a prime specimen. But…oh well. The signs posted on the walls inside the gym say not to judge anyone so I go to my car and get ready to leave.

Something catches my eye skyward and I feel like I’ve just spotted a UFO but whatever it was or wherever it went, I can’t see any evidence. I am not alarmed, but what the hell? I’m not freaked out, I just want to know if what I glimpsed or felt was real or just a sensation. But it’s gone. I certainly am not going to ask anyone in the parking lot for verification since everyone seems to be in their own trance or mindset. The young mom juggling her two babies with her groceries. The two guys leaving the liquor store with their Jack Daniels and Stoli. The couple walking from their car on the way to the “Pizza Palace.” So I get in my car and fire up the rockets (or so I wish).

As I leave, I get a sudden urge to drive away on a long trip. No going home to pack, just take off, let the car take me where it wants to go. Wanderlust. There’s a word I haven’t used in years. Should I head out west or down south? But reality breaks in and I remember I have an appointment for later that evening. So I begin to head home. I’m not disappointed, I’m actually relieved. I wouldn’t want to begin a long journey on impulse and then find I need to turn around after two hours in the middle of nowhere. My life is good, I’m not escaping anything. It’s just that once in a while, the road whispers to me, the sensation builds and after a while, the road is screaming to me.

There was a time back in 1978 when I did give in to it. I quickly jumped into my car and headed down south. It wasn’t until Delaware that I realized it was futile, just a dream and I reluctantly turned back home. I returned to the same life I had left only hours ago. I do know that if I had completed that journey, it would have changed my life. I know it now and I knew it back then. That’s probably why I turned around. I was unhappy, in a bad relationship. And by not taking that journey, I returned to that relationship. The journey would have shattered it.

But that was then. Now the road can be seductive, offering all kinds of unknowns, mysteries, adventures and temptations. Structures have been established that cannot be broken. Challenged? Sometimes, yes. But there is no need to destroy anything anymore, I realize.

So I drive home, stopping along the way for a few things here and there. A deer darts out from the side of the road up ahead and I see a car slam on its brakes and barely touches the deer as the doe leaps into the air and over the car and safely lands and amazingly, sprints off back into the woods from which she emerged. I sit there mesmerized. Did that really just happen? I can tell from the other drivers’ faces and by all the other cars stopped on the road that yes, that really had just happened. Slowly, drivers shake their heads, smile or stare open-mouthed and we all proceed a lot more slowly to our destinations.

We all witnessed a thing of menace become a thing of beauty and many households will be talking about this little “oddity” this evening in different terms. Some will regard it as a miracle, some as a message, other story tellers will interpret it as a warning. I myself see it as a thing of beauty because I know for the rest of my life, I will remember seeing that deer launched into the air and somehow adjusting mid-air, surviving and then retreating back into the safety of the woods for a second chance. Oh the stories that doe could tell the other does and her children!

Soon I am back home and I am amazed it is only mid-afternoon. It has already seemed to be a long day; a lot has happened. Or maybe not so much. How much time was spent inside my own head? I’d recalled a short-lived trip from 40-plus years ago, imagined (I think) a UFO sighting, worked out for a bit, witnessed the incident of the deer. So yeah, it is still early in the day. It just seems like a lot happened. As I arrive back home, I am tempted to look skyward one more time. Where is that UFO? Am I tempted by another roadtrip, this time to another star, another galaxy? Nah, I’d just like to know who else is up there.

Do aliens have the same jitters, the same unease we all have from time to time? We tend to reason that the Aliens have it all figured out, that they could figure out how to find us and travel here from light years away – before we can even find evidence of life on another planet. So we project they have mastered the Universe while we are still struggling along on Earth.

It’s just another aside, another moment lost in thought. But still, I search upward wondering, is anyone out there? Nothing catches my eye and I do not feel the presence of any kind of watchful eye. After a bit, I head inside my home. Home again. It feels good. I am fortified, reassured by the day, so far. Much has been accomplished although the journey has not been long or distant.

I put the stereo on to my favorite FM station and of course, Norwegian Wood is playing. So I sit down on my sofa. This is too much and I begin to weep. It had all been such a long time ago.

Chris Ebel
2/25/22

Image credit: @ela23