Road trip / 公路旅行

最近生活的腳步快到我的心思有些跟不上，我以蝸牛般的速度繪畫著，紀錄著數週前的經驗，但是我的注意力已跳躍好幾個光年。

秋天，金黃色的陽光灑滿大地，伴著涼爽的微風。我在行駛於高速公路的車輛裡，透過窗感受到這個季節的美好，於是我想到去年夏天的公路旅行，我們在傍晚的日落餘暉裡出發，繞過了半個台灣，路途上有晴有雨，行經山和海。這些回憶的片段，在一年多之後的公路旅行，透過窗，像金陽雨落在我雙眼緊閉的臉龐上，我終於能夠平心靜氣地回頭看過去。

圖畫到一半時，我已失焦。還好，這星期看的電影、讀的詩集很用力地把我拉回來。「依麗莎白小鎮」片尾的單人公路旅行、Elizabeth Bishop的「關於旅行的二三問」再再地暗示我要按耐住性子把畫完成。

你沒有聽到我消息的一個多禮拜裡，就當作是我去自己的內心進行了一趟公路旅行，我一切都好。

Lately, the changes in my daily life have been so swift that my mind can hardly catch up with it. I drew at a snail pace, recording how I had felt several weeks ago. However, my attention was drawn away somewhere along the way.

In autumn, the golden leaves of sunshine falls everywhere on the small island, accompanied by cooling breezes. On one short road trip, I witnessed the beauty of this season through the car window and that reminded me of our road trip last summer. We set out in the sunset and drove around half of the island. We were greeted by the sun and the rain. We passed by the mountains and the sea. The fragments of these memories came back to me, like the rain of golden sunshine that fell on my face through the car window on a journey after more than a year. I felt the warmth from the past with my eyes closed. At that moment, I realized that I could finally look back with calm.

When I was halfway through with the picture, I could no longer focus on it. Fortunately, the movie I saw and the poem I read this week pulled me back. The solo road trip at the end of Elizabethtown and Elizabeth Bishop's Question of Travel kept hinting to me that I should concentrate and finish the image.

For the past ten days during which you heard nothing from me, let's say, I took a road trip to me and, I am fine...