Driving Wheels

I love days when all you need is a strong cup of coffee and Jimmy Barnes playing in The Uterus to get you somewhat motivated.

Today he told me about driving wheels.

How I can be like a shooting star across a desert sky if I so choose. That all I need is a wheel in front of me and four beneath me to venture on out in that unknown beyond and follow the broken miles, live on borrowed time and leave only hotel rooms and broken hearts in my wake.

That there is nothing wrong with going up and down the same road many times, that there's nothing wrong with searching for something you're not really sure you will ever find (or even what that something is).

The highway is your friend. It won't desert you, it won't break your heart or let you down. It will always be there; right over the suburban highway, behind that old roadhouse or calling to you through the window of your house while you lie in bed not prepared to sleep when that highway is calling to you.

The searching will always keep you moving, because that highway stretches forever, linking the bright lights of the city to the emptiness of the outback where only the bravest tread. Patience is a virtue in such a life, but the dreams and adrenaline of not knowing what's coming up on the next 50 km of black bitumen will propel your wheels ever onwards.
Because only the road can tame the rebel within your soul, and it knows that, your wheels know that so they keep driving.

For it's the rhythm of the highway as it rolls on by, city lights as they fade from sight with nothing but blackness ahead and that open road. And however cliched that may be; only you understand how it makes your heart pump and reminds you how you are not going to just be another brick in the big ol' wall, because you belong to the highway. Your highway.

Jimmy tells me about the rodeo, about riding hard and never letting go and I see the flash of the coat of some crazed bronco bucking in the heavy swirl of dust of some outback corral and I can almost smell the danger but am thirsty for it.
Dust so thick it grows like scabs all over the sweaty skin of the people's bodies, they squint out from beneath the shades of bloody, beaten and almost shredded hats, have little materialism to their name, but the smile on their faces is to be envied. Exhibiting their iron courage in literally a heartbeat in the pounding haze of that dusty madness; never to be questioned again with the grave lurking only a heartbeat away in such a blood-fueled moment.

The toddler amongst them is more connected to this grit, this earth, this truth than the businessman in Collins Street has ever been his whole life. He fills his void with long hours, money, superfluous possessions and still has to boast for your validation.
With the testament to a life stewing in ignorance being the satin pillow in his coffin, nursing the head that won't even be truly connected to the earth till it lies beneath it.

That is something I'm prepared to wander through the twilight of my life for. Gamble safety, security, money, friends for. I'd have a home, out on the blue horizon because the rebel will always pound in my soul.

Chasing southern stars in the distant sky, roaming the open plains with mountains high, following the road that goes forever.

In this world of push and shove, I'm terrified of loosing the freedom in my blood.

This is the rhythm of my highway.

Thanks to Barnsie for the fuel......... and the lyrics.