There's a connection in my mind which drives itself from the prefrontal cortex at the brow of the skull, arching up and back to the periphery of each hemisphere at the topsides of my brain. It is at this very position, both right and left above the ears, that the energy takes perfect seat.

There's an electricity brewing within me which expresses itself as a gnawing tension in my brain, starting from the front and moving its way upwards towards the rear. The feeling moves about until it finds a home. It's not unlike how a bit at the end of the reins takes perfect seat in the mouth of a horse, nor unlike how the grooves of a screw align in perfection to the precise threading of a nut.

It's most like a clutch in the body of a car as it fits the gear into the couplings of the powertrain.

I can feel the tactile linking of the car's metal teeth at the top of my brain, the churning of the motor heads, and the revving torque of cylinder pistons firing in endless succession and in perfect harmony, violently pulling my whole person towards the future moment.

And so it is, at any stressful point of self-awareness, my mind saves my body from shock's paralysis.

When life frightens me and I freeze up, my mind's eye reaches for the gearbox, shifts me down into first, to second, to third, till my body is moving again, for while my physical self lies motionless, my mental self and the mind's eye will flail like a drowning child, desperate to catch hold of something.

But while the drowner reaches for the pool's sidewalls, my mental image reaches for the shifter, cleaving that car's lever to the left, towards myself, from neutral, tucked hard into the sidewall between first and second gear, and then straight upwards towards one. And the throttle is in, and the clutch is inching out, and this bodily car of mine is inching forwards. And when the gears bite, my brain glows strong. The whole sensation lights my mind with fire. It's a burning impulse down my right arm to immediately advance towards second. It's a burning impulse in my toes to knead the pedals up and down, clutching gas, back and forth, till the engine sings, until my body purrs through whatever tribulation assails me, sending me forth at the speed of joyous light. This is my happy place. This is my place of comfort.

When the whole body is whole in the seat of an automobile, and the right hand is the shifter, up, down, left, right, in every direction and at all times, and the feet are harmonizing to the chorus of a roaring engine, and between the cacophony of gear changes is the sweet nectar of speed, a humming acceleration to, through, and beyond wherever I'm trying to go and wherever I'm needed to move along, both hands at the helm of a tight rotary, and it's as if I'm in control, but really, I'm but following a road paved long ahead of me.

With the right amount of speed and the right amount of torque, my vehicle is glued to the ground, hugging and clung to the roadway, zipping forth to the rhythmic seesaw that are the turns of life. In this convertible, it's the wind whipping through the cabin, but it's mostly the moaning wail of the combustion leaking into our ears and dancing upon our bones, a kind of organ conducting our movements to the song. At this final turn to the right, we were headed again to and past home, a long country club drive and through the wiggles of broad suburban streets that just sixty years ago were rich countryside.

My father's mid-engine made quick work of the journey, and I was slowing again for a gander at the view. So my passenger and good friend asks, "Do you miss your old home?"

My childhood home. I've only really known two homes, and this neighborhood we were now passing had been my first.The vineyards.

"Eli, it's real weird," I said. "I've only ever been able to dream in that home. I mean, whenever I dream, no matter what age I am in my dream, no matter what scene I am having, the location is always one way or another, there, in that home."

"Whoa," he said. "There's probably some deep psychological reason for that. Seriously, what's the psychoanalysis for something like that?"

I don't know. I've only done psychoanalysis once, back in treatment. And I cannot say I found it very helpful. The point of dreams, so they say, is a brain's chicanery, presenting trauma in figurative language so we can work our way through the pain without creating further hurt. If a man, then, is traumatized from a fear of snakes, he might dream instead of snake-like objects, the water hose which thrashes uncontrolled from the spigot of its garden home. And in parallel, the dreamer can work out a solution to this pain without further scarring his mind, without waking him up from the dream. Whereupon wake, you will likely avoid the hurt, burying it for another day where it will fester indefinitely in his subconscious mind. But what my dreams mean for me and why I always dream in the home of my childhood, I do not know. I fear not to know.

So I reply in turn, "Not sure," unsure why my dreams are stuck in the past. Adding, "I prefer to look forward."

And at 50 I punched the gas to 5,000 and we dropped into second, swallowing the road in a devilish blur till the engine capped and we were pushing 100. And by that point there was no use for third already at the bumper of the common car before us.

We drove like this for a while. What could have been hours, what felt like moments, and what was really lifetimes of long gone places we'd since forgotten.

If someone told me I'd been a racer in previous lives, I'd not hesitate to agree. And if they said I weren't, in my denial I'd prove them wrong till the moment of death trying to prove them right.

My brain's addiction for gear changing and the growling of exploding petrol is a compulsion upon my mind. The very ruminations of stick shifting are what save me whenever I'm afflicted with difficult feelings or uncomfortable circumstances.

But on the contrary, to accidentally move the gears with the clutch not depressed, or to stall the transmission or to slip the clutch too soon, too late, to overthink the practice or to not pay it enough attention, all of the wrongdoings that can so easily afflict a good drive, all of it is the highest misery and the lowest hell upon my person.

At that, driving that manual car of my father's is both my saving grace and gravest sorrow. When we pulled in for the day, she, the baby blue Carrera, was clicking and popping with the pattering sounds car engines make after a hard drive: the sound of hot metal cooling down, the sound I'm not too sure sounds good nor is a good sound, but is that noise which most certainly has a reminiscence of completion.

But we're done, we're home, and so is the car in the echoing garage of its chambers, panting like a dog back from a walk, whinnying like a horse back from a ride, crackling like a fire right after its flame.

Before this moment was another moment, a moment when a friend of my mother's was gunning it, driving baby Porsche exactly how my father doesn't drive it, right up to the red line.

"You smell that?" he said.

"Yeah, that's not good, is it?"

"No, that's great. Porsche perfume," he added.

"The Germans so over-engineered these cars you just can't do wrong. Everything of them is to perfection, to drive right up to the limit."

I thought that was the smell of me riding the clutch.

"No." And to quell my skepticism, to justify his expertise, he sings it hard, really makes her sing. Howl.

He assures me he knows what he's doing, knows what he's talking about, how to drive by swinging all three of us, him, me, and the car, to the sides of our seats, skirting round a bend at a perfectly comfortable and completely unreasonable sprint. Everything and one was behind us and we weren't getting caught dancing on the fumes of devil breath.

In that instant, I was sold that the smell the Porsches exude after heavy driving is the kind of springtime fragrance certain trees give when pollinating, the queer and fragrant cleanliness reserved for puppies, newborn babies, and healthy orgasms.

And she, this fully alive yet inanimate labyrinth of motor parts was wafting fragrance in droves, the same fragrance was around us that afternoon.

We closed the top and pulled ourselves out from the coaming, from our seats just inches from the ground. We were bathing ourselves in that scent and I felt we'd done well that afternoon, just as I was too shy to give a grin.

Eli asked, "Can I help you put the cover on?"

"No, I'll let her cool down first."

"Good idea," he said.

But what do we really know about good ideas and cars? We're not mechanics, nor engineers, nor real drivers. We're just fanatics addicted to the drive.

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