Point
9: Road Trippin'
Friday afternoon, on the Autobahn
Driving driving driving
Through Bavaria
through Württemberg
All the way from Munich to Stuttgart
All
in one go
Churches
on the side of the road
Yellow
squares, endless yellow squares
Blurred by the fifth gear
I paint a picture
One handed
Without looking
It's a two hundred kilometer drive from Munich
to Stuttgart.
Considering driving time, night provides the fastest way, heading
home in under two hours. But that way, you would miss the sight of Sulzemoos and
Odelzhausen, the sentiment of Adelsried and Burgau, the spelling of Günzburg
and Leipheim and the serpentines of Merklingen and Aichelberg. All those tiny
places that form the countryside. All those tiny places that form the sides of
the country.
The picture happened exactly
like I described it, except for the last line. I didn't paint the picture, I took
the picture, one hand on the wheel, one hand pushing the button.
It
is another one in a long series of road pictures. The first in this line, I took
it from the passenger seat, on the first day of a roadtrip to France, in an attempt
to capture the feeling of movement in images. And in words.
Miles
and miles of open road
Unfolding somewhere near the horizon
Coming closer
at rapid speed
To slip through the wheels
To drift away in the rear view
mirror
This Road
Trip to South France, it happened in summer 2002.
Four months after I
been in Paris. No museums during the road trip, though. But my first Hemingway.
Not brought along, but come across on a hotel book shelf. Here's a line out of
it:
Now when he was
lonesome
He would remember Paris
Instead of going there
...- Islands
in the Stream
More
of Paris, after the trip, with Henry
Miller.
And more
road pictures, one year later, while listening to night songs on high ways, on
a Road Trip to
Belgium.
