May 14, 2021:
I no longer require the GPS.
I'm now neither an explorer nor a wanderer. Through repetition I'm a veteran, merging smoothly into the correct lane for each interchange, refilling at the optimal gas stations, smiling knowingly at the blinds where cops try to be clever.
Still. Desert roads remain metaphors for our histories. Empty but full, where the fullness passes so quickly we can hardly take it in, so that our experience is mostly the emptiness.