A Ride to Michigan Pt. 2

Outside at a table, Justin and I sat by a fast-food restaurant on exit 67 after finishing sandwiches and hash browns. I peeled off the lid from my paper cup and softly blew on the coffee, the steam dissipating in the cool morning air. Justin played with the Velcro of his knee-brace, making a slow tearing sound through the outdoor silence. It was six-thirty and Tiffiny and Allen were somewhere on the highway and coming closer. I got out a pamphlet they had given me the other day and began to read its first page.

Justin soon lifted up his head. “I think that's them,” he said with a nod toward a tan van.

He was right. Tiffiny and Allen came out from it and walked over.

“Hey, guys! This is crazy. We were just in Findlay the other day and we came to this same place to eat, too,” Allen said to us wide eyed and beaming. “So how ya been?”

-

With our bicycles' front tires off and bags removed we'd fit everything into the van and set off on the interstate drag to Detroit. We picked up our old conversation as if finding it unbroken just where we'd left it. Towns were flying by us outside the tinted window. I listened to everybody speak, but tried also to focus on the rapidly passing land around us, concentrating in hopes of retaining some mental semblance of the flowing landscape. On a bicycle, changes in the land occur at a crawl. The intimate perception of the earth's subtle transition that a bicycle's pace offers is not only allowed, but is forced on you. Traveling in a car now, it all went by so quickly, allowing little opportunity to sense those less apparent details.

The farther north we came the more industrialized each town grew and the lands in between were more sparse. The interstate rose above the ground, passing over some roads below, and in the distance I saw the spires of Michigan's industry reaching high from the northeast. The colossal forms of mechanical plants and factories always make me feel unsettled. These things cast long shadows, standing tall, man-made with no regard to form, trails of smoke or steam or whatever billowing out from their towering mouths. They are remarkable in power and scale and seeing them looming on the horizon, it is impossible to be unaffected.

Industry shifted to repeating commercial buildings solidly lining every space along the roadsides. Deep city blocks and weekend traffic immediately struck me as foreign surroundings. I hadn't been in a real city for a long time, even if this was only the outskirts of Detroit. The expansive openness of the peripheral lands that we'd been rolling through just the day before had somehow, unconsciously, gotten deep into me. Now confronted by so much business and disorder – buildings lined like bricks in a wall, car streams rushing through grid canals, and thick foot traffic walking the cement slabs – it immediately began to carve against the grain defined in me over the past month.

Tiffiny pulled the van into an alleyway behind a line of small buildings, driving forward about a block before coming to a stop at the door to their office. Allen pushed the buzzer and we followed him inside through a small, dark kitchen area into their meeting room. The area was lit by two lines of fluorescent lights on the ceiling and most of its space was occupied by four collapsible tables which were pressed up against one another to form one large work surface in the middle of the room. On it were strewn folders, papers, posters, pamphlets, and a few stacks of books. There were posters on the off-white walls, but no windows to let in the daylight, more books filling some bookshelves, and a computer and printer sitting in a far corner. Three people sat in the mix of folding and office chairs that lined the table's edges. They all took pause from the paper they were reading and raised their eyes as we entered. Allen introduced us to them and then each of them to us.

Tiffiny and Allen led us into the adjacent room, empty but for four chairs, an unplugged television, and a computer attached to a projector. They brought up their website and played some videos, the first comparing the progression of time to musical harmonies, the second describing of a correlation between the earth's movement through the galactic plane and mass extinctions; the third, a weekly bulletin video from the economist who headed their movement.

Twenty minutes or so after this we'd be reading Phaedo. Allen suggested we go and get some lunch beforehand. It would be a while before we'd get another chance, so Justin and I stepped outside and went to a sub shop at the end of the block. For the first time we had the opportunity to talk to each other alone and so we sat on a bench to eat and discuss our opinions of the videos. With the sound of afternoon traffic sputtering behind us, Justin already began hinting at the question of how long we'd be staying.

Under the artificial light of the big room in the office we took a seat at the table. A guy named Bill passed out the printed and stapled copies of Plato's Phaedo and we waited, primarily in silence, as more people filtered in. When everyone was finally present, Bill assumed direction and spent a few minutes prefacing. “This will be a journey of the mind,” he said before we endeavored into it. He cast parts, and we read the text aloud, pausing at intervals to discuss the points as they came. I looked over fifty pages in and saw Justin was becoming restless, his legs jittering beneath the table. Normally we'd be in the sun's heat, pedaling through plains and open blue space this time of day. Being abruptly confined to a seat so long in the stagnant room felt alien to us both, but at the moment I didn't mind it because of what we were reading. Socrates' immortal death to universalize his beliefs came, giving his humanity for his cause, and following the final passages a solemn silence came upon the company.

In the brief moment we were away from the group, we sat outside in the shade by the door and Justin had me roll him a cigarette. Apparently he was stressing out. We tried to discuss what we thought of what we'd read and the other things we'd heard, but a tide of subtle hostility began to rise between us. Neither of us is the type to argue so we cut our conversation there and stared down at the cement silently dragging on the tobacco.

-

Allen and Tiffiny led us down the street to a bar restaurant afterward. A tall twenty-something kid with glasses named Aaron, who had read his lead role as Socrates most dramatically, joined us. The place was loud and dimly lit, TVs buzzing with the daily business and sports on the walls. Tiffiny ordered two pitchers of amber lager and we each asked the waitress for two of their Sunday chili dog specials. Over the beers and dogs we were pressed back into a lengthy debate of politics. A little league baseball team came in fresh from a game and gathered at a few tables nearby to celebrate their afternoon win. It was weird to see the normal world still operating around us.

Later that evening we were offered couches to sleep on at Aaron's home in the neighborhood behind their office space. His beige living room was adorned with framed Rembrandt and Da Vinci prints. I entered it, refreshed from a brief shower, hoping to find evening peace and solitude or refuge in a lighter conversation, but instead discovered there was no wall separating personal from professional life here. Aaron and Justin were sitting in the living room chairs going back and forth over the legacy of some American presidents, the scrutinizing faces of the equanimous portraits gazing out from the walls.

Aaron grew tired and went off to bed as Tiffiny and a kid named Armando slipped into the room. They picked up the conversation with a mathematical approach, showing us each a geometry puzzle using compasses and pencils while they sipped on their nightcaps.

-

In the morning, back in the office, Aaron began to lead us through another paper. He'd taken the entire day off to go through some more readings with us. Once we'd trudged through the twenty pages me and Justin retreated to a donut shop across the street and quickly came to a consensus.

At the front of their building Justin knocked on the locked door and we tentatively returned to our chairs at the table.

Aaron looked up at us with a smile, his eyes half open over a Styrofoam cup of coffee. “So, I guess you guys want to see some more videos? I've got a few in mind we could watch.”

“Actually, I think it's about time for us to get back to the road,” I told him. “Feels like that time has come.” I perceived in him some disappointment, but he kept it concealed.

“Oh. Well, okay. So, you want to take along some things to read?” I saw Justin roll his eyes for an instant before he caught himself.

-

From his garage we snatched our bicycles and set to wandering through the city streets, reaching out for the unseen Michigan countryside. Riding alongside a stream of bustling vehicles, the familiar expanse of time and contemplation was regained. Retreating into my mind, my body unconsciously pedaling, the cache of information I'd accumulated began to be interpreted with the new found benefit of retrospection.

The rear tire of Justin's bicycle began to lose air after just a few miles. We rolled to a stop on the sidewalk of a residential street corner and laid our bikes down in the grass margin. Across the street a bulldog paced behind a white picket fence, watching us intently and incessantly barking. Sitting on the sidewalk, Justin and I tried to talk through how we considered everything they'd told us, but once again we simply couldn't do it without quickly becoming infected by argument. We never argued like this before. When some difference would come up between us a compromise was easy to come by, but the deep-seated divisive nature of politics proved more contentious. Justin grew frustrated and diverted the blame onto his flat tire. Curtly I demonstrated what he was doing wrong.

-

When the roadsides became shrouded with forest the shadows grew longer and the night came quickly. The forests were thick and swampy, so looking for a place to put our beds out we started down a random dirt road and, fortunately, we soon stumbled upon an open green field. Into layers of red, orange and pink the sun descended. The stars pierced through a mesh sky as I laid down, staring up into the dotted darkness. I found that I couldn't rest without our argument coming to a resolution.

“So, you think the only reason they showed us any kindness was to try and get us to join their movement?” I asked Justin.

“I know you don't want to believe it, but yes. That's what I think. It's just because Tiffiny was a girl so you can't see it, but it was all fake.”

A surprising anger rose up in me, “Shut up. What they're doing is trying to help people. And let's be honest, who are we helping by taking this trip?”

-

I saw that they considered no distinction between showing us all the kindness they had and showing kindness for the benefit of their movement. Their motivation for both were of the same root. They sought to manifest humanity's good. However, their lives were so enveloped by their cause that it was easy to be repelled by their concentrated enthusiasm. They had dedicated themselves so completely to this thing that they seemed to us foreign and strange and we'd felt a distaste for them because of it. They'd lost something of themselves by becoming so deeply submerged. The distaste we felt was not from of any fault of their own, but originated in the shame we felt at the absence of that element in ourselves. Or perhaps it was present, but had simply been given a different label and intention.

I apologized to Justin and we got back to seeking that resolution. The stars rotated about their axis in the black canopy above and I considered the bare sun, hidden somewhere in the west, pulling around the rotating earth. I could look on its perfection tomorrow and be blinded, but no: a plane of perfect white holds no interest for me until it is spoiled by a speck of dust. There is a beauty in humanity's cursed imperfection. Our suffering and blessing are one in the same. But those kids weren't perfect either. We were similar after all. The only difference lied in our methods. They were wholly dedicated to saving the world in what way they saw fit. I was wholly dedicated to feeling its rugged touch on my fingertips while I could and to keep from harming anyone along the way.

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