It's already over already.

I had this moment the other day: I was stopped at the main intersection in the middle of town, a familiar place, with campus on my left and downtown on my right, and I had been in that kind of driving mode where your mind and the car become one, and all you are is motion. I can't tell whether driving in that state is hazardous, or extra safe--as with meditation, does the mind empty itself, or is it so full as to be sated, or is it filled with an emptiness more powerful than knowledge, than thought?

Anyway, the red light pulls me back into the world, and I look around me, seeing the hamburger place, and the coffee place, and the ice cream place, and the huddle of people waiting to cross the street, and it was like I was seeing it as through my memory, through a visitor's eyes, like I had left and stayed away for a long time, and then come back, and wound up at this intersection, feeling a pleasant sense of nostalgia and relief that everything was exactly as it had always been. I kept thinking of Dylan singing "I'm not there, I'm gone," and feeling like I knew just what he meant.

I've had this experience before, and it usually means it's time to go. But I'm having a hard time deciphering signs and signals, unsure of what is portending what.