If you're tired enough, everything is a metaphor

Very little sleep, then up early to drive from the hotel to PDX.

Wet fog coats the city, and the instructions I'm holding are new to me. I head into the damp darkness not knowing if the path I'm on will take me anywhere.

I'm in luck: the instructions work. I find the entrance to the freeway and think I'm good to go, only to discover that I must cross a high, winding bridge in the fog and the dark. I hurtle over the city, looking at but still separate from everyone and everything in it.

I make it across the bridge and merge onto a wide highway jammed with fellow travelers. I wonder where they're going, if they're also tired, if they're heading away from or to home, if they wonder about me.

My journey ends at the airport, where of course I'm only beginning another one.