pedicured

Maybe the idea came to me when I remembered that someone somewhere did a study trying to prove that traffic behaves in many ways like our own circulatory system. There is a ‘beat’ to it and the closer we can get to mimicking the efficiencies of our blood moving around inside us the better off highway congestion will become.

Honestly it sounds like a boatload of crap to me but you never know. My problem with it is that it sounds very much like something the government would be concerned with and any time the government becomes concerned with anything crap is sure to follow. Usually by the boatload.

That being said, the idea that came to me was the sense of purpose blood cells must have barreling through the plumbing. They are not headed to anywhere specifically but it is vital that they arrive somewhere and do what it is they came to do before making a quick stop back at the lungs and then starting  all over again.

In my head an aerial view of the country takes shape with trucks full of produce and tankers filled with fuel moving from point to point in a complex dance of supply and demand.

And then I go out for a drive.

Going nowhere in particular, weaving between the cells laden with oxygen, as I move smoothly through and over the asphalt-covered, slippery-when-wet veins. Pointlessly burning calories with the windows down and the wind in my hair. Zigzagging through the highways and byways without a map, free to contribute nothing to the system as I crank up the radio in a search for the perfect accompaniment to my high-octane meandering.

At this juncture I might add a “or so it seems” but I think that would be disingenuous of me. Sometimes things are exactly what they seem and this is one of those cases. I hear the purr of the engine and I know I am neither helping fight disease or regulating body temperature. I am hauling ass through the darkness and squinting in the light for the sheer thrill of it. The thrill of being part of it all and if I happen to clog things up now and again then so be it. I’m afraid this road will have to bear the weight of an extra participant.

I know I am debris and I’m fine with that. I’ve always lived near the heart and the farthest south I’ve ever made it was the colon but now I’ve cut ties with all that and I’m headed to the extremities. Pushed along by some unseen force, every inch of ground between me and what’s behind me making me feel liberated. Soon it’s all back roads and capillaries and before I know it I’m at the very tip of the longest toenail and I’m looking out at a bright blue future.

Until I get clipped.