The road

In writing, the road is a symbol for journey, and I've been thinking a lot about journeys lately. A road to Canterbury is what structured Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and the theme extends all the way to the trip to the beauty pageant in Little Miss Sunshine. It's a framing device, tapping that story-telling subconscious that we all have, that we understand. It's the road in the parable of the Good Samaritan or the path to enlightenment, the symbol of change but also of commitment. I could muse on this all day, but it would be better to read Joseph Campbell.

In short, sometimes you don't know where you're going, you just can see the road to get there, and your job is to just get on the path. Recently, when I interviewed Doug Klesch for Go Triad about his project, 99 Americans, he talked about looking for something, and hoping to find it on the road.

The road frames Klesch's project both literally and creatively, and it extends farther beyond the horizon than he once could even conceive. And if we really commit to the road, all our journeys will take us places that would not even be imaginable at the start. I'll see you on the road ...