City Drive

There's a certain kind of simulated nostalgia for me when driving the night-struck roads of Mid-Town. The evening air is as cool as the city is impassive, and both contrasted by the bright-fire neons and oil-slick refraction of a million unimportant lights. The metropolis creates a clockwork chaos that gives meaning to the fusion between a man and a machine.
The cars name is Vesper. It's a female name, yes, because she is my beautiful partner. I understand it means "Evening Star". Her electric yellow exterior adds another spot of light the the uninterrupted flow of mechanical luminescence that is The City.
But this light, is mine.
Along the worn ways of the FDR a sudden turn looms into view, and I give my life to her. At speed, any miscalculation will end in an extinguished flare. A quick motion with my left foot and right hand and she realizes whats going on, sheds her speed. Hanging idly, she waits. I put my right foot down and hear her purr. She grabs the ground, trusting me. She feels it like I do. The left foot comes up as the right hand moves again. Then I feel a smooth pull as she responds to my ministrations and takes us through. The broken concrete wall is a few scant inches away, and its the difference between blind faith and a trusting love.
She settles back into her groove, and I settle back into simple feeling. The stereo is illuminated by a shaft of of soft and simple light from a full moon. The speakers give a smooth hum, a blend of retro-synthetic jazz and a saxophone melding into the evening air and bright city lights; together easing all my troubled thoughts under a canopy of un-seeable stars and ever increasing shadow-chasing shine.
There's no room here anymore, under this substitute starlight, for things that aren't progress. Is it a shame, that the joy an unimportant man experiences here is the personification of a construct? The feelings are real though. I can hear her respond any time I want. No longer are we separate from what we create. If all these lights went out tonight tomorrow morning would be all fire and brimstone, the afternoon would be every man for himself, and that night would be the first time someone sees a clear night sky. Is the trade between man and machine even? It would seem so with all our dependence, but I wash her, I wax her. If she's sick, I take her to have problems fixed. And so it is with everything. Like these night bright highways all is communal, all is merging, and all is forward motion.
Maybe that's why there is something beautifully basic and pleasing in taking a city drive. The night is forever young, reborn every singe day, but we are not. Time moves forward, as do society and technology. So in taking the time to appreciate this fusion that we will never be able to avoid, this progress, maybe we can learn to appreciate ourselves. It's simple forward motion.