Do you think that's such a good way to do it?
You should have seen the way I lived.
Sometimes I wonder if you still do.
Is what you are doing a need or a desire?
I need you. So, if you are ever gone, I will either change into something that doesn't need you, or die.
You'll die anyway.
Neither of us know that.
Well, how do you know you'll die otherwise?
...
...Ah.
You say I'm doing the things you want to do,
and I say you're doing the things I should do,
But both of us know that our hearts
are a little too strong to quit our paths so easily.
My thoughts extend like vines through the things you've said. Like kudzu, I guess.
Racing through the featureless pasture of state roads, the only thing breaking them up are horses. I think my hands went numb, but I didn't really notice. Out here, I realize I have nothing to think about. My head is empty, but it won't stop echoing and clanking like a tin shack in the wind. We'll see if I don't run out of gas before I get to a 91 octane pump.
(hottest truck driver ever sighted around this location. Like, why are you a truck driver-hot.)
"When you tinkle, don't sprinkle." -Sign at G________ Mercantile
I found hot cocoa, grilled cheese, and chocolate chip cookies. The lady busted out a frying pan and got the sandwich done right in front of me. Surrounded by sarsparilla, saddles, canned goods and wood construction, I felt like I was in a place where people play it straight, all the way to their graves. There's some kind of thought nagging at me, but I don't know what it is. Maybe it's because I sit here next to a guy with glasses, hat, and flannel shirt, where I sit in black armor and bang away at my keyboard. The difference creating a magnetic force, a pull or a push that I'm feeling. Or maybe laying the bike down knocked a few more rocks out of my head, and I'm all imbalanced. This one's gonna bother me for a while.
Ah, who the hell am I kidding? I miss you.
--
Say what you like about it, but as I rolled over the New M_______ border into O______, as the land lost its roughness and gained an edge, I sat up, looked around, and felt a calmness arrive. I saw endless pastures, grain elevators (remember, they're explosive, right?), and cattle. Horses, irrigators, and pickup trucks. This is the only land with a sky big enough to let in the tornadoes, and it does.
A few thoughts did overtake me. I remember this girl A______ said something to me, in my freshman year. She said, "T______, listen to me. Pay attention. Girls only take one shit a year, and it looks like diamonds, and it smells like roses." I believe this to this day.
I thought about D_____, as I do occasionally, every year. I'll go back to this grave before I hop off the continent again, lay flowers on his grave, cry, and say "I couldn't get to you in time before your fuse burned out, man. I'm sorry." or something like that.
But the weather is warm, and I'm making good time. Somehow, I'm still alive, and somehow, I'm still going. I'll continue through these lands, and cross the M__ River. I'm pretty sure there's something waiting for me on the other side.
I remember when I started this trip, I didn't really have a plan, and was insistent when pressured to keep it that way. I was delayed, and I revved up before I could get going, spinning my crank. And when I started out, I had no rhythm, but enough cojones to keep on pushing. That didn't get me far enough, and so I came back to you, 避雷針, for that conversation you were waiting to have.
I dragged myself back, spent three days and two nights in motionless turbulence, until I took off again. I still had nothing, but I had the beginnings of a rhythm. Now, the wind beats at my head, and I just melt around the bike.
I won't say I have anything left, and I won't say there's anything in my future. Because it's not for me to say. But now there's a hand behind the throttle, and a light behind that hand. Who knows if I've found something. But I'm going somewhere.
Love, joy, and admiration,
and a lot more,
but it's a start. Be safe.
-T.
Windsong: a madman rides a rocket across america
Summerchild that sits by the water
Weaving sunlight threads in his hands
The golden river that day a shelter
A stream where he could make pebbles dance
You looked around you, nobody had taken
Any notice of what you saw
Against the evening sky a formation
A million black birds looking like one
Live long
Save ten years to remember
Live long
Hold it in front of your eyes once more
Live long
Save ten years to remember
Live long
Hold it in front of your eyes
-Kings of Convenience - Live Long
--
I've never seen so many cows in my life, all together. On the right side, they all sat in mud and loafed in front of their troughs, looking at the cows on the left, who busily munched in the fields.
Not too much further on, in fields that made the land green all the way up to the horizon, were K_____' windmills, spinning in little wave patterns, at the same speed. I guess that's the difference--P____ S___' is a fucking tornado by comparison.
"KFRM 550 AM: Full Time Farm Radio"
"Pray to God for Mercy! pray pray pray"
"Smile! Your mother chose life!"
-Signs
Every time I see that last one, I always crack a smile and then laugh. Because it's true, my dad didn't want me, and my mom did. So she hung on to my brother, and me in turn, and things have gotten to be the way they are. Thanks, huh, Mom?
I wasn't calm enough to go 65 (I've never been in a coma), and so I got burned by a state cop. Why is it always the state guys and not the county ones? Nicest cop I'd ever met, right up until he handed me my shiny new ticket. I guess I'm giving him a hard time; he didn't ask about the duct tape on the side of my windscreen, or the stubs where mirrors would be on a street-legal vehicle. But damn, man, I was only doing 78 in a 65. Lucky for him (and me, I guess) I hadn't decided to top out the bike in K________.
I passed through K____, the center of the Continental __. 1561 miles as the crow flies in either direction, from S_ F____ to N_ Y___. But I'm not a very climactic person, so I kept on rolling. Besides, the heart is a little up and to the left, as they say.
I finally got loose from lower K____, and started seeing the grey, articulated skeletons of trees that let you know you're on your way to M_____. I stopped because I had too much in my head to carry anymore, too much in my bladder, and my day's wedgie was reaching the critical point. Cops always put me in a perverse mood.
Maybe I'll survive this silliness.
I rode into my crisp, clean shadow this sunset. I hadn't really realized it until I got to K______, but I've been on the S___ F__ Trail for a while, now. Here, in K_____, everybody waves or nods at you from the steering wheel, which might eventually make you think there's something going on, if you don't clamp down and assume that's it's K______, and there's nothing going on.
There's a sign at Great B_____ that just says, "Jack Kilby | 2000 Nobel Prize Winner | Physics" No shame in coming out of K______, I guess.
What do you think? No shame in coming out of T______, right? Though we both have more interesting places we can say we were born in, huh. Bah.
--
(kings of convenience - sorry or please)
I don't know exactly what I'm thinking, but I'll tell you where it seems like the ideas are going, without touching them with my hands.
People don't need governance, and the ones that are doing any needing, well, they need a prophet. The Prophet speaks, and removes the confusion and pain from the people. Not necessarily from individual person, but the information is given, and the people are changed. A blinding blast of clarity, and then a shuddering, dim silence, of clutching at the old mementos. Truly, a Summer of Love.
Lots of them say different things. And not all of the things they say are the things that are Prophetic, if you catch my meaning. (I hope I don't screw it up by Naming it...) But they all have a way, and their way leads them to see, to speak, and then, to disappear, in one way or another. But whether or not it's their doing, the world changes. Infection, explosion, or communication, call it what you like, we're feeling the echoes from likely, almost all of them.
And we're still confused. Well, hell, I'm confused, but we still kill each other daily. What the fuck?! Huh?!
Before, all the Prophet could do was speak. You can only speak to so many people at once, even today. And all you can do is issue the words, move your face, and show yourself before the listeners.
Which brings me to the next part that occurred to me. (It's so boring having it all laid out like this, but this is the briefing, not the story.)
The world is tightening the screws, fast. We've got two currents coming that I'll mention. We're connecting ourselves with electricity. Which is pretty good, we've already been connecting pretty well chemically, and that's the gamut as far as scientists will tell you about the human form. But this, this is nuts. We're about to climb up the spine (just like syphilis) and stick our tendrils in (just like syphilis) and drive each other crazy (just like syphilis). Hopefully, we won't burn out our heads with epilepsy, and hopefully we won't strip away what anchors are left to hold us to the reality we were born in (take that one as far as you can get with it). Conversely, hopefully we won't stratify things until we slice up the magic box without noticing, and kill the madness. Because you don't end the storm by removing the atmosphere. But on our way to the place where we make these decisions, (if decisions is what we make,) we'll have some time to figure out what we're doing.
This is how the Prophet should speak. At the edge of the cliff, right where you could touch the soul if only you believed. And you can't believe with electrical hardware. But you can get close, which, hopefully, is all you need. At the edge, where nobody can go and come back with reason, where the Prophet's words live, into everyone's minds. All at once. Because as we speed up and close together, it will only become more and more important that this message occupy every point on the network at once.
What the Prophet says, I don't know. Ask me how I was that night you left. Ask me what I said to J____. I should get this out to you in person, but you're not here and I'm not there, and I don't know if you want to see me after another Iron Butt ride to your place again.
But the fact is, I don't know what I said. My suspicions are that I told him everything. I have a feeling that I explained -everything- to him, and told him that he had two choices, plus another two. But like I said, I don't know anymore. I walked back that night, passing your house at dawn, contemplating that last sight of your window, and back in the sunrise to where I was. I sang a song I couldn't repeat to save my life, in that dark blue turning to teal under the stars, walking. I remember I didn't like it all that much.
But after all these impressions, I came to the realization that I'd come to the ultimate realization. I don't know. But that day, I understood everything. All that there was in the world, was me. And all that I was, was in the world.
I was that way for maybe another week or so, before I went back to school and was made to forget. Helped. But I was never the same. I've talked at length about all the other ways you changed me, because I've seen the joy in all of them. You've never changed me for the worse, but this is the hardest one to explain. Despite that I'd lost the sight, I still had the fire. Even when I forgot what I was doing, or where I was, I still had the fire to carry me.
This is why I don't die, and I don't stop. It's no more explainable than I am, and it's the air that forms the storm. It's what sits behind my brain, and inside the Chinese Box. And I don't understand what sits between. And you're the only one who's ever gone there and come back safely, 避雷針. And where you go, calmness follows.
This is, for now, the limit of what I can say about it. That is, the rest I don't understand. I need to talk to you, and right now, you're not talking back. Which is your life, and I'll never hold it against you. But this is where I stand, at the edge of that cliff, staring out at that ghostly image which might just be the afterimage of the sunset burning away at my retinae.
So where does this end? What's the second thing?
Well, we are not a civilization that can sustain ourselves without oil. We have lived in an age of plenty and we're about to run out. People are gonna die a little quicker than they already are, as we tighten the strings too late to slim the package. The worst case scenario, is that we never get a chance like this again, and by that I mean, we don't get there in time and a lot of people die who maybe we could have saved. I presume a great deal with that, and I await your disgust. But like I said, I'm laying it out here. And I don't know of any other way that even attempts to get this far.
A better case scenario is, we get our act together before the economy or the people suffer. Things slow down a little, and we get closer slower, and maybe a little bit of the malevolent velocity disappears from the storm. Maybe. But who knows what kind of people we'll be, then.
There's also a possibility that you and me will both die before the breaking point. Early or late, or right on time, we might be dead before the sun passes over the lens and tightens that point to white-hot light.
In which case we'll never know. I've considered the chance that all the demons might just be on the inside, that they might just be me. I don't think we've ever had that conversation, because, like I said, I don't think we talk about each other that much.
But I could stand to sit and talk about you. I could stand to hear about you. I might live if I get to hear from you.
So that's the story of the Prophet. That, as it stands, is the shape of the idea you ignited in me. Blame it on my environment, but the form fits the function.
The rest I wait to hear you talk, slap, and kick into me. Again, I have no way of knowing how you'll react. "Others are navigable."
You are not.
Love, joy, admiration,
and a lot more.
-T.
Thoughts
Oh man, I hope that check clears, or I'm so screwed...Ohoho.
(yasunori mitsuda - unstolen jewel)
I wish I could get all the songs I hear, all the thoughts I think, down in time, before they get away...I wish I could take all my ideas down for you as soon as I think them.
But I can't, and neither can you, and so I treasure the moments I've had with you more than anything. I could come up with something clever like, "elixir, shining warmly in my hands" or "last light, warming and guarding me when nothing else will", but I won't touch them with my filthy, oil-stained hands. You are the only one who has ever approached me, at speed, so quickly to break through the storm, and you are the only one who I've seen shine with such beauty it makes everything around you stand in sharp, clear relief. You are the fastest, and the brightest.
I love you. I hope that one day I can come even a thousandth close to showing you the paradise you have shown me, for even that is beyond reason. I hope that one day you will give me even a ghost of a chance to do so.
I love you, ________ _____ __________.
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