20080416

S P R I N G - 3

...I got into gear and onto the Old Highway and drove east, running away from the sunlit rim of the plains. I wasn't traveling fast, not at first, but the rows of cultivation whipped quickly by, and in the dizzying exactness of their changing perspective they turned and opened and closed agin as I shot down the middle of the fields. I accelerated but I still felt as if I had stepped wrong and was plunging backward. Like the rider on an amusement, I had that strange satisfaction that it was all designed to be scary, to be fun, and would soon be over. I wondered if that meant I was going to die. I had not reason to think I would, but I wondered. I put my foot to the floor and stared straight forward while the terror of high speed opened up the sinuses in my head and put a taste of pennies in my mouth. And I drove like a spear through the tiny town, miniatures in a work of meticulous depictioin floating on the fields of corn and soy, went speeding along through them toward some deep vioelent conclusion--to have my heart torn out and eaten while I watched. The sun had set but the fields were soaked with light in the dusk. I wanted to stagger to the shore of this mindless iridescence and throw into it my most beloved thing, my very favorite thing. When I'd worn myself out going too fast, I pulled into the roadside weeds. I stopped the car in the middle of the round shimmering table of the earth. Meanwhile the dusk wouldn't die...



I drove on toward the world's darker half. Now the horizon was like that of the sea around certain islands, tar black, blended with the night. Halfway up the sky and to my right floated the new moon. Satisfied that darkenss had found me, feeling in a way hidden from myself, I put the car in gear and went to my home...