Reflecting on my recent journey East.
There is something strange about driving – I grew up in cities and never owned a car myself until about half way through my time living in Montana. Even when I was selling cable door to door I was hoofing it up the insane hills of Missoula on a beautiful (read: uncomfortable) Cinelli road bike. I sold a lot of cable that summer. The locals felt bad for me.
Of course, I learned to drive when I moved to America at 18. It was included in the total package of cultural experiences: braving Walmart at midnight, watching Mean Girls, eating your weight in fries, and allowing your indoctrination into the great American pastime of pedestrian hating. Its an easy habit to fall into – once you’re past the thinking-about-everything phase of learning to drive, the road becomes hypnotic, and pedestrians have a way of jumping out of nowhere to break your trance. People hate that shit. What I didn’t guess is that hurtling along at 90 Mph eventually gets boring, and my mind writes as it wanders.
Tying can be that way too, if you take the time to tie the same person deeply, over a long period of time.
With thanks to Suidae for giving me that chance.
The one where youre driving across America Flanked by roadkill and oceanic grasses, you seem to go into the clouds rather than under them. Hollow cities made of grain elevators mark the passage of miles where you find Exit Zero and wonder what's next. The citizen mule deer judge from the fenceline where they make their stand. You get stuck on certain words that flap like plastic tarps caught in the wires of your mind: languid sallow wending. In the expat country people pretend the separation between refugees and (im)migrants- words and categories, without true distiction. Sometimes you stay and judge the leavers, define your staying as noble and new. You eye the three year stint, the old timers drinking at the back of a dive. And then you set out on the road yourself, joining in the human flow with a beat down car. You leave the soft echo of a jukebox playing the Ting Tings in a bar. Each break for gas gives you the chance to buy the local souvenirs or check the mediocre tinder pool. You read each town's Wikipedia like the news, surprised each one has their own to claim. Learn every town out here was home itself for old Wild Bill or Calamity Jane. And in the mirror turned behind you where home once lived, you see a wild sunset Interuppted by a billboard sign.
Driving into work before the sun rises Along a mountain path that follows where a river would, and did I think, some other time flow. Though now replaced with the stream of cars, the massive trucks, and a train car line to shake the dust. And sometimes on a rainy day, before the certain hour comes, their tails reflect in the oily mirror- claws of red like flames against the backdrop of this ancient place. I imagine some science fiction future, where the mundane cars begin to float suspended on their tongues of red. Its beautiful in truth, but a little sad, to see in my mind's eye these racer pods, under the uneasy rain where snow should be already instead. Yet the water pools like pigeon feathers in beautiful swirling piles, where we wanted it months ago and no longer do. And maybe that's always how it is with her, that we run with different clocks.
boshai 