exit wounds
something about reclaiming
the thing about deja vu is it’s unpredictable. a sucker-punch on a sunlit day.
it’s as inexplicable as it is unavoidable. the vertigo of misplaced remembrance is nearly enough to paralyze me as i slip into the driver’s seat of A’s miata. it’s blindsiding, the same motions in a different space. unlatch the roof cover, adjust the mirrors, floor the clutch, hear the squeak and give under the sole of your sneakers. getting to know someone’s car is a strange intimacy with a stranger kinship, and there’s an intangible discomfort of once-familiar muscle memory. i’ve lost count of the things i’ve forgotten and the things i’ve never learned again. the first and then-last time i learned to drive stick, i was in a parking lot miles and years away, rocketbunny omamori rocking to the beat of the too-large kicker stuffed in the trunk. “it’s a feeling”, N says, “don’t think about it too much.”
i hadn’t expected to ever be in this position again, and something in me riots at the remembrance. i’d been such a different person back then, still all raw hurt and unconscious naïveté. i’d never felt adrenaline and fear like i did on the mountain roads of San Jose, thundering down windy passes through the trees with the bass reverberating in my bones. that night we snuck out to Mt Hamilton, flying one second and literally flying the next, the screech of wheels skidding on loose gravel, the front of the car driving headlong into the cliff on that downhill turn, suspended in one (twothreefourfive) seconds that felt like a lifetime, with my heart in my throat, fingers white-knuckled on the seat. the crash back down to earth and to reality with a rattling, discordant clang, feet away from the cliff’s edge with the entire front lip gone and both bumpers dangling loose. those nights he’d push 130, 140 in the Palo Alto hills, even though that’s what kept drawing me in. i remember the sudden heat of the airbag exploding against my body and watching the windshield crack and splinter on the road outside Tully. it’s 4am again and in my ears rings the shriek of the skid plate along the asphalt as we pushed the car across the entire street, surrounded by 4, 5 patrol cars in the november rain.
i’d forgotten, in the years in between, the visceral violence of these moments we once lived. how much i had once missed it all, the novelty and the thrill, the romanticization and the desire to feel my own mortality with the wind in my hair and my fingers skimming the chill, to be in the drivers seat again, learning how to clutch in and shift and feel the car rumbling at the ready, running the mountains like i had no care whether i lived or died, music nearly tangible like the ricochet of my staccato heart. driving was more than just a love but a lifeline, and a way to escape.
part of me is grateful that the car i’m driving now isn’t the same one as before. memory comes to me in snippets, pockmarked with frayed seams and gaping holes — the rhythm and violent hum of a cold start, and the timbre of the engine awakening with a low rumble. A reminds me of the fundamentals: finding the rolling point with the clutch, learning the give of the throttle to hold it steady at just over 1000 rpm. left foot down, right hand shift, left foot up, right foot down. N had a habit of always jostling the shiftknob to make sure it was in neutral. i notice myself unconsciously doing the same and all at once i’m barely 20 again, feeling the thrill of hearing an exhaust roar for the first time.
something beneath my skin calms the longer we’re out. memories shift within my mind, resettling as new ones fill the space. it’s a feeling, N once said, and i let myself wholly feel it all anew, recalling the serenity i once found in that crystalline space. the evening is dreary as i meander around the empty lot, nestled amidst industrial buildings and warehouses, skipping stop signs and cutting turns. it’s not as much reclaiming something lost as it is shedding old skin and learning my way around a new body, a new home.
with the top down and the sky spilling in, i can nearly taste the clouds.
ps,
my jdm era was definitely one of the phases of all time, and it feels a little surreal to recall. my friend re-taught me how to drive manual a couple weeks back and i found myself reminiscing. i’ve grown up in a lot of ways since then, and the memories are nearly foreign.
it was interesting to relearn something so personal and weighted with someone new. my analytic tendencies are an artifact of my father: i reason in ordered lists, chronological events, chains of cause and effect. as a result, i struggle with physical learning: how to powerlift, to hit a consistent forehand, to ride a snowboard, to drive manual. i obsess over the objective truth of getting the right form or doing things in the right order, instead of settling into my own skin and adapting those directives to myself. i’ve been trying to get out of my head and into my body and just listen and feel.
i’m gonna be racing up in thunderhill this weekend. will be my first time tracking. lemons is something i’ve wanted to do since college so i’m glad it’s all coming together.
hopefully will be able to write some more on the way up to Willows. been thinking about form and writing style.
as always, with love <3