Driving a decent distance past midnight is much like a dream. There are not a lot of people around and those who are around are just blurs, unrecognizable. Some of them are freaks, some are maniacs, others are people trying to get home. Most of them are driving fast.
There are these large, strange expanses of road that you never knew were there before without the endless snakes of traffic. Everything is transformed. It is strange, and exciting, and you might even feel a bit relieved until you get to a traffic light and there are several people bunched up, waiting, and that old feeling comes back, and then there is a sort of disappointment. Unless you are the type of person who would rather have people around, and you are further sinking into discomfort the longer you are alone. Then maybe you feel the relief.
There are strange construction projects all along the freeway, blocking off certain parts of the freeway with cones and flashing lights, the lights flashing down the vacant road like there is something terribly wrong, but all is quite right. And the paving machines have huge spotlights that form halos of light around the machines and then the halos slip off into darkness and there is nothing beyond.
Sometimes you have to take a detour into strange shady places and get slightly lost. And the places are always shady. But you somehow make it back to the main road with visions of hoodlum shootings and beatings of wanderers just beginning to fade.
It is an uncertain feeling, but vaguely suggestive of something else, something pleasurable.
