When you have a long way to go and a short time to get there, you eat up the miles and stuff down the fatigue. You go hard for 13 hours straight before your co-pilot demands to take over; but, you want to keep fighting the fight, keep on keeping on, no sleep till Brooklyn. Not sleeping is not the problem, sleeping is. You are a glorious bastard, humming with preternatural energy, your mojo fueled by pure will and refusal to ever say die.
Because we’re gonna GET there goddammit.
You’re rotating with two while your convoy is rotating with four and crying for momma. Your will is going to push them on, too, son. Git ‘er done.
Your mind goes blank. What were we talking about an hour go? Fuck if I know, I was just working my jaw. Did I make you a promise? Set an expectation I don’t remember? Don’t come to me next week with an expectant smile and your hand out…I won’t know what the hell you’re talking about.
When the distances are great, insurmountable really, the body becomes the near-perfect machine it is. This foot goes down and these hands pull this wheel around, and that is all.
It is the same hypnosis that gets you through the long flight to China and beyond. You will sit in this hurtling metal tube, watch movie after movie that you won’t remember, and when you disembark in a distant land, the mind snaps back to attention and starts turning on the other sub-systems again. Where have I been for the last dozens of hours?
I don’t know, but it wasn’t anywhere near here…