pick a road any road

Sometimes I wish my life was a movie. So everything could be scripted, planned. So I would have the perfect line to say, always the perfect response at that perfect moment. So the music would start playing, first slow and soft then leading up to the big bang of the drums at an appropriately dramatic moment. So I would know.
Sometimes a movie seems too fake. Sometimes I wish my life was a play. Plays are real, they live, they breath, they walk, they talk, they feel. Plays invite all people, from all walks of life. A play opens it's arms to welcome you in every time the curtains pull across the stage. A play makes you believe, it makes you see. There is no denying what is right in front of your eyes.
I just want to go. Pack my bags, get in the car, and drive straight. As far as the road can take me. I want to see what is out there. I want to experience everything, I want to stop at every seedy gas station and stay at at least one really gross motel. I want to climb a mountain and see what the world is like from the top. I want to canoe down a river and feel the shade of the cherry blossoms on my back. I want to lay on a dock with my hand swinging lazily in the water. I want to run through a field of flowers. I want to lay on the grass in the middle of the rain and feel the water splatter on my face. I want to ride in a hot air balloon and soar above the clouds. I want to go to a butterfly museum and just sit and let beauty fly around me. I want to go bungy jumping and ride a roller coaster just because I know it will scare the hell out of me. And most of the time the things that scare you are the things that end up changing you the most.
I want to see the world. I want to see the people who live in it. I want to breath it, to feel it, to see it, to hear it. I want to be welcomed into it. I want colors and music. I want to visit the Yemenites who camp in the desserts of Israel. I want to dance with Indian women, to be part of the colorful swirling circle that their saris make as they dance together. I want to see and question, and maybe do the answering once in a while.
I just want to keep driving straight even though I know I need to turn. Just some food, some friends, and enough good music to accompany me to Everywhere and beyond. Just us and the road and whatever decides to meet us along the way. Just us and the road and whatever adventures are waiting for us when we get there. No maps, no guides. Just pick a road and we'll follow it as far as it will lead us, we'll see where we end up.
When am I leaving? In my mind I have been gone for weeks. In reality it will have to wait for another time. But when I go I promise to take lots of pictures. I promise to send you postcards full of stories and experiences and adventures. I promise to bring back presents.
And when it is your turn I promise to stand in the driveway and wave until you reach as far as my eyes can see and a little beyond. I promise to read each of your letters a hundred times and to feel each of your adventures as if I did not have a hundred of my own.
And no matter how far I may go on my adventures, no matter how long the road may be, I promise that I will always come home. Because although the world may hold some of my adventure, my curiosity, my amazement, and my knowledge, you hold something else. You hold my heart, and that is something that I will never leave behind.