randomps:

The long fucking road to nowhere… Been there.

Freakin’ blacktop highways! Road to nowhere? Maybe, but to me it’s more ‘the road to possibility’. I did a lot of traveling as a child - all those long, straight American roads through the desert. There’s an undeniable romance. That’s part of the reason Terminator 2 struck such a powerful chord, although I didn’t understand why at the time:

SARAH CONNOR: The future, always so clear to me, has become like a black highway at night. We were in uncharted territory now… making up history as we went along.

People look at me funny when I rave about that film’s existentialist beauty. But the sign of a true work of art (for me) is that it evokes intense emotions without the viewer or reader having to know the mechanisms it draws on to do so - how and why the effect is achieved.

This is why: the romance of the open road is always one of the uncertain journey - the uncertain journey that is a metaphor for our lives. It is freedom and the absence of pre-destination - the possibility of all the things we could do, all the things we could see, all the places we could go and the ways we could change them. But it is also the absence of assurance - there is no promise of safety in an open future. Each decision and each step is a risk, and it is our responsibility to accept that risk and own our decisions.

That is the essence of existentialism: the thrill of freedom and the fear of the unknown - the black highway at night; the uncharted territory, where history is ours to make up.

Fuck, yeah.