Every journey has a beginning

This morning I set out in the dark, ice crystals sparkling on all my car's windows, slush sluicing up around my tires, the heater gushing cold air on fingers still cold from carrying my suitcase from the house to the car.

I felt like the lone survivor in some end of the world film moving along through deserted city-scapes in the eerie green glow of sodium vapor lights.

Feeling guilty about leaving my friend's home so early, yet eager to avoid the impending storm, I turned on the radio.  Smoky blues filled the car, dark music, the devil's music, music to spin tales by as I crossed the great Mississippi.  I wondered if I slid on the ice, would I slide straight into the river below and be swallowed up forever without anyone ever knowing where I was?
  
Silly musings of an overly dramatic mind which of course came to nothing.

For the first hour, snow and sleet pelted my car and then I began to gain on the storm.   As the weather got better the landscape changed into snow covered trees and farms.  I stopped for the first coffee of the day.  Street lights dimmed.  Skies grew lighter.  Traffic increased until by the time I got home I was back in the old familiar world I used to live in.

Every journey has a beginning, but sometimes they wrap around each other in such convoluted ways that it's hard to tell when one is ending and another begins.