From Robert Penn Warren’s All The King’s Men
I was headed out down a long bone-white road, straight as a string and smooth as glass and glittering and wavering in the heat and humming under the tires like a plucked nerve. I was doing seventy-five but I never seemed to catch up with the pool that seemed to be over the road just this side of the horizon. Then, after a while, the sun was in my eyes, for I was driving west. So I pulled the sun screen down and squinted and put the throttle to the floor. And kept on moving west.
For West is where we all plan to go someday. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: ‘Flee, all is discovered.’ It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and see the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire. It is where you go to grow up with the country. It is where you go to spend your old age. Or it is just where you go.
Image courtesy of therese desjardin studio
West is where you go when she breaks your heart and you don;t think it will ever heal; West is where you go to find your elusive “self”; West is where you go to find your destiny and try to unite it with your talents.
Warren did not add these and perhaps they are not worth adding, but I know where I went when my heart was broken, and I doubted it would ever heal (it did).
Warren was an Agrarian; the only one who’s writing I really enjoyed. Thanks for reminding me.