'The Great Ocean Road: February 25th, 2008'

M. is taking me to the town of Apollo Bay. It's her favorite place; she dreams of having a farmhouse just outside the town one day.

M. and I are cruising along the Great Ocean Road in a big, comfy car we've borrowed. There's some cloud cover, but the sun is bright and so is the blue water that's rolling in far below us. It's only 1:34 P.M. I have four days left in Australia and I can feel the minutes ticking off.

The swerves and swooshes of the road as it hugs the chunky cliff-side have the heady vertigo of dreaming, if you let your head sway with every turn.

It's a happy feeling. M. is an excellent driver. Her hands are steady.

I glance down at the new tattoo on the inner wrist of my right hand, a broken circle. It's a perfectly simple looking design: a single brush-stroke fading out just before the two ends meet. It symbolizes eternity or the moment, whichever way you choose to see it. In reality it's all the same.

I look up, at one point, and I see a dense forest of strange and spindly trees soaring over the hillside, through which I can still see the brilliant blue of the sky behind. What I see dazzles me, in part, because I am wearing rose colored glasses - literally. This is the best way to travel.

This is real. This is life. It will be over soon. This trip, that is. The feeling in my chest is not permanent; soon gone. I've had this feeling many times and lost it just as many. Yet while I'm feeling it, I attach myself to it and allow it to swerve and swoosh me wherever it wants. I trust this feeling completely, as completely as I trust my driver. I am tentative still, however. I have so many aches I've yet to stretch beyond. It's possible to be tentative and trust, strange as it might seem. Just when you think you've supplicated yourself completely and that you can bow no lower before Creation a generous, strong hand will press upon your back and show you that you've barely begun to stoop. You've trusted as fully as you knew how until this point, but now - filled with new awareness - you can trust ever more fully and bow ever so much more deeply. As long as you trust, you cannot fail.

I put my notebook away and inhale another vista on our way to Apollo Bay.

Learn more about this author, Christopher Lapinel.
Click here to send author comments or questions.

---

Add your voice

Know something about Essays: Emotions?
We want to hear your view. Write now!