In the past, I've used the daylogs primarily to record major things that have affected my life. To that end, yesterday was par for the course.
A Brief But Important Fact to Preface The Major Thing
College Station, Texas (aka "home") is located approximately 90 miles south of Waco, Texas (aka "fiancee's place.") The drive between the two takes roughly an hour and twenty minutes, give or take.
After a fun weekend in Waco, I got up on Monday morning to drive home for finals. I had only gotten four hours of sleep, and I certainly felt kind of dead to the world, but not particularly drowsy. I got in my old Mustang and headed down the road, checking the clock idly as I did (10:21). The entire ride felt kind of zombiesque, and it didn't help that I had:
- driven this road a hundred times before.
- gotten stuck behind a truck going 8 miles under the speed limit.
So I finally broke free from my captive on a two-lane stretch of road just outside of Hearne (approximately 20 miles north of College Station). I had tuned to the classic rock station after wearing out my Shins CD, and Pink Floyd's "Young Lust" was on. The song came to a close, and the DJ came on. He began riffing off of the song, informing everyone in radio land that Roger Waters was now working on a musical, and that it would be ready for production in early 2005. At this point, I kind of tuned out on the guy, as I passed a police officer who had stopped some less vigilant driver.
About ten seconds later, I had an impulsive thought: I've been on the road a long time. I looked down at the clock again, almost in passing: 11:57. An hour and thirty seven minutes. This trip was becoming oppressively slow.
So I look up, and all of a sudden, I'm not sure exactly where I am. Now, if you've ever driven the same road a hundred times before, this thought can be particularly disconcerting. None of the obvious road signs, curves, buildings, or foliage were to be found. (This stretch of Texas highway can be nondescript when it so chooses, but the identifying features exist in muted form.) Then, I come to the first identifying feature: a sign informing me that I am now entering Navasota.
Navasota is twenty miles south of College Station.
So in the span of ten seconds in my mind, I had driven forty miles on a 70MPH highway and passed through my hometown without even batting an eye. It was around this point at which I began to panic.
I slowly exited the highway, and pulled a U-turn at the underpass. I resumed my journey to College Station (now heading in a northerly direction) and tried to gather my thoughts. It was pathetic, really, me trying to remember even driving through a town of over 120,000 people, with 10 exits on the highway. But even right now, I don't remember it.
When I got home, my roommate Mike suggested that I had fallen into a semiconscious sleep but retained full visual and motor coordination (he asked if I could "teach him that trick" sometime.) I jokingly replied that I had been abducted by the Tralfamadorians - but somehow, this fell nauseatingly flat.
Now, I'm not sure why this is a major thing in my life exactly. It had no real impact on me (besides wasting about 45 minutes of my time) and it's the only time that's ever happened. But it raises a lot of questions, both about consciousness and my brain, and even more ominously, my connection to this world. How did I drive all that way while essentially "not here?" I imagine I'll never get the answer to that; maybe that's what bothers me the most.