Wabi Sabi: The Road Story

I love road stories. “Kneller's Happy Campers” always comes to mind first. Of course I still hold The Grapes of Wrath in high regard. On the Road seems to be the obvious one. If it is, then tell me do the prettiest girls in the world really come Des Moines? I loathed Cormac McCarthy's The Road despite being fascinated with the notion that the father thought his son was the messiah. Road stories are great. They just are.

This is my impression of the road story. These are the elements that I think are important: there is a change of scenery and a destination. The surprising part of this is the notion that the destination is somehow different that expected, usually fails to or far exceeds expectation. Thing about the final scene in Barton Fink when the Barton finally lands up on the Southern Californian beach and the whole experience has somehow left him empty and befuddled the audience. In many ways, in a road story, the road itself becomes alive and as a living entity, it has become a character than both drives the plot, enhances character development and creates all the tension we need as readers.

The other aspect of the road story is the character. A character cannot be the same at the beginning of the story than at the end of it. A few examples from films are Little Miss Sunshine, Drag Across America and Around the Bend. All three of these stories have fractured families taking a road trip for various ends, but in all three cases, the destination is moot. The real reason for the road is to drop inhibitions, leave the characters in their most vulnerable states. Being in a vulnerable position, a character must overcome the environment, interpersonal and inner conflicts. A happy ending for a road story is probably not going to be the destination itself. Think about Jerzy Kosinski's nameless character in The Painted Bird.

When I decided to write the road story inspired by my friends move from Longmont to Reno, I really wanted to relive the road for myself. I tentatively named the project something like SF or Bust. But I changed to Wabi Sabi after reading an article about the art movement as it pertains to pottery. I thought about broken things being beautiful if not more beautiful after being put back together again. I thought about people I knew in the years I was on the road, I thought about myself. Everyone did seem somehow broken, and everyone I knew on the road seemed very angelic. If that's not Wabi Sabi, then I don't know what.

I chose to have two main characters. I also chose to start the story in a small but very fashionable neighborhood in Salt Lake City called Sugarhouse. Many years ago Sugarhouse was very suspect. It was filled with coffeehouses, pawn shops, porn houses, records stores, a coin shop and those weird antique places you see in low rent neighborhoods. The place is completely different now, clean, perfect, centrally located, no longer in the vacuum. I chose the old Sugarhouse. I chose a character who had been on the road for months at this point wandering aimlessly from Maine to Salt Lake. Incidentally, my buddy comes from Maine.

The second character is a woman just slightly older who very casually convinces the young man to take her to San Francisco. Without further ado, the road trip ensues.

To know the rest, read the book.