Driving 5 — IFSF PUBLISHING

6/7/25

(6:20 am departure Portland)

One Amazon truck after another on Highway 5 driving south from Portland, already on their way to deliver unnecessary things to the world.

I’m in my car too, running with the bulls, imagining that everyone driving south on 5 is driving together, all of us thinking about God, what God is and what God could be, were he or she not God. But of course, this is pure folly on my part, all of us are thinking differently.

(8:23 am Eugene)

None of the mystics--Buddha, Christ, Ramakrishna--had to contend with AI or nuclear proliferation.

(9 am)

The Enchanted Forest is made of plastic. One sea after another opens up box-after-box of Wheat Thins, or is this just my imagination? A case can be made that we don’t know what’s happening to us, that we don’t know what we’re doing! Has this always been the case? Is mankind now in some sort of trouble, the land all dug up, turned over, cultivated over and over and over. The tongues of rural mailboxes hang down as if thirsty.

(9:45 am)

Exit the 5. Stop for coffee in Roseburg, Oregon.

(9:45--11 am)

Curvaceous Oregon, one hill in the distance, three curves to overtake the hill and then three more hills to straighten out the curves. Scotch broom on the hillsides and around the curves--the yellow doors of white flowers are wide open.

(11:10)

Exit the 5 @ Grants Pass. Breakfast at Elmer’s, a chain. People are feeding their tattoos; they seem to be nice people at Elmer’s, the people eating and the people serving the people. The waitress is named Emma who says she wants to read Jane Austen; Emma’s real name is Emerald Rain, so we know, but everyone calls her Emma. She has a small tattoo on her left wrist.

(12 noonish)

The 5 resumes. Driving south I think of all the tattoos I’ve seen so far--arms and legs, necks and ankles seem to be popular places for tattoos. Tattoos are divides, as in state lines, determining identity and allegiance to identity by the tattoo’s manifestation. As I do not have a tattoo, I have no right to make judgments on the tattoos of others, though I so often do.

(1: 16 pm)

Driving once again among the 18-wheelers, running with the bulls on Highway 5, I examine my record as a human being, still finding some things in my attitude and behavior I could tinker with, adjust.

(1:25 pm)

Exit the 5, Weed, California, for gas.