Fast Car

Everyone has a place that makes them feel perfectly content with the skin that they are in. Whether it is your home, your town, or the rooftops of downtown antique buildings and sandwich shops, the world is your backyard for at least a handful of minutes.

I've found a lot of these places when fulfillment was hard to find, and then I realized that within these hidden avenues are the places that fulfillment is born.

My recent discovery is a 45 minute drive down highway 30.

If I drive at exactly the right time during the evening, the sun literally looks like it is plunging into the ground to recharge for another day.

There are these massive trees that erect in bunches and hug the roads to keep me warm and if I look deep into them, beams of sunlight cut through their branches and silhouette birds in their most peaceful state.

After heavy rains, the water collects in puddles and sometimes the deer gather around them to rest.

This is almost like someone accidentally taking a wrong turn or finding a loophole in the everyday grind of reality and stumbling into sincerity.

It is so perfect and precise that if I could just take snapshots of what I see, I would sell them for millions of dollars, and businessmen and women with handbags who are married would buy them for their summer homes and use them as discussion pieces.

There are very few towns on highway 30.

The only ones that I see are the small towns where you lose cellphone coverage and your heart gains a few bars.

Little craft shops and feed stores scatter the edges of railroads and there is a produce market or two.

I have made it a tradition to stop at a corner store that I have grown fond of in Shiro, Texas every time I make the drive.

It is the halfway mark of my destination and I usually use this time to recollect my thoughts.

Shiro, Texas is a place where old people go to retire and grow little organic home gardens, not because it is a growing trend, but because it is all they know.

I have come to the conclusion that Shiro's corner store has mastered the perfect cup of coffee for a reasonable price. So, for one day, I ditch the overpriced lattes and syrupy beverages for a one dollar cup of black coffee.

Leaving the parking lot of the corner store is the last step of leaving my comfort place.

I can inhale and exhale easily because I know everything is okay with me.

Just me, the road, and my God.

This whole journey brings me as close to reality as can be without having to even touch the surface.

I have learned that God can be heard through complete silence.

I have learned that there is no speed limit to how fast you can see genuine beauty.

It's in every cell of me, the road, and my God.