Dark

WAYNE’S WORDS
Volume 3 Number 18
Dark

Have you ever felt like, regardless of what you do, you just don’t belong where you are? That, even though this is your home, it is totally foreign to you or, more precisely, you are totally foreign to it?

“Earth. Terra Firma. Seems forever it's filled my thoughts, been my goal. And now... I'm here.”

“I figured Earth would freak out and it's delivered in spades, on time, thirty minutes or less.”

“Family traditions. They're supposed to bring us together... and make everything... normal. But things have changed. And we don't get to close our eyes and pretend they haven't. And everyone is telling me... how different I am. They're right. But they don't have a clue why. They can't know.”

4:32 am - August 1, 2009.

I just closed the garage after coming home from one of my infamous “middle-of-the-night-I’m-not-sleepy” drives. It started with me deciding to return a movie. As I dropped the DVD in the slot at Hollywood Video, I heard the road beckon.

I used to take these drives to clear my head. This time my there is no need for that. Now, after a long, long time of everything rattling around in there, it all makes perfect sense and I once again think clearly – for the most part.

As I start my journey, I actually use a little bit of common sense and pick south on Highway 28 as my direction. The reasons are two-fold. One: if I drive east, west or north I may not stop until tomorrow and I have to be back for a BBQ. And B: south on 28 is the way the Boy and I used to go to and from El Paso every weekend when I lived down there. Sentimental. Why does south keep me from driving into oblivion? I guess that southern border stops me and veering east into Texas is not at all palatable at this point.

As I leave the lights of Las Cruces and Mesilla behind, the night enshrouds my conveyance like a velvety, black blanket with not much more than my headlights cutting through it. To add to the blackness, I have opted for no radio this time. No music that hides in its melodies and lyrics messages of heartbreak or anguish. No news of how the world, which has been turning for our eternity, is now coming to a grinding halt. Even Coast-to-Coast AM, with its program on premonitions and knowing, will not be filling my car with auditory illumination. I have had enough of all of it. For now it is just the sound of my breath, the four-cylinder drone of the Suzuki’s engine, the hum of the tires caressing the road and the dark night.

Adding to the lack of noise is my cell phone lying on the seat next to me. On past excursions like this one, the Samsung would chime loudly and light up the car’s interior with texts of concern and worry. Now it lies dormant in the seat like a tiny, hibernating, electronic animal awaiting the first signs of spring.

As I continue south, I come to the pecan orchards. My headlights cast strange shadows behind the overhanging branches. In this light they look like giant claws trying to snatch me out of my car. I experience a short “mind-wandering” of the ensuing battle between the wooden fingers and me. They have me in a stranglehold and I cut and slice at them with a lock-blade knife from my glove box. I am unsure if I am making any headway against the pecan goliaths: the flight of fancy dissipates with no resolution as I exit the orchard.

As I wind my way down 28, I pass through the tiny, Southern New Mexico “towns.” They are all sleeping. The roads are desolate. I suddenly get extremely cold and have to turn the heater on. It blows hot air on me the rest of the night. I wonder what would happen if I never went back. Would I end up being a fable of someone who rode off to meet his destiny or just a news blurb about some guy found dead at a rest stop with no real explanation of why he was there? No matter how sane I feel these types of strange thoughts enter my brain while I am out in the night. They are not fatalistic. They are more just script treatments for my own internal motion pictures.

I begin to pass one of the multiple cornfields on my trip. The stalks are higher than I am. About midway through, I stop the car, turn it off and walk to the edge of the field. God, it is quiet out here. The air does not seem to be moving even on a molecular level. I swear that I can hear the corn stalks growing. It is so quiet that the ping of the engine cooling in the night air hits my ears like a nuclear blast. The quiet is deafening. It is serene. It is haunting. As I stand there listening to the nothing I feel a strange tingle on my neck. I don’t know why, but it is time to go.

I get back on the road and back to the heat of the car. I really do not know why I am so cold. My mind tells me half-jokingly that it is a disturbance in “the force” and that somewhere something is happening. My mind is an idiot. Of course something is happening somewhere. I tell my mind that all I can do is be aware of the disturbance – there is nothing I can do about it.

I am exiting the serenity of the countryside and, as I get closer to El Paso, I thank the night stars that my reflexes haven’t completely diminished as I have aged. I end up needing them to dodge a couple of apparent drunk drivers veering into my lane. It is so creepy down here. While I am at a red light on Doniphan I watch and listen to a drug transaction take place at the gas pumps at a Circle K. I bite my lip just before saying something. Choose your battles. The light turns green.

It is also dirty down here. I have to relieve myself so I pull into an all night gas station. It is a franchise so you would figure on some standards of cleanliness. Not so much. It is actually not a whole lot better than a place in Colorado that the Boy and I refer to as “The Filthy Acorn.” You probably get the picture. There is an oddity in the bathroom (besides me of course). Amid all the grime and nastiness there is this framed picture screwed to the wall. It is a lame, discount-store print of some wild flowers. It is not even hung straight. I stare at it for a while. I look around at the disgusting bathroom. Then I stare at the flowers again. I cannot make sense of it. It confounds me.

I decide to head back to Cruces on I-10. It is not the quiet countryside, but it has its own meditative qualities. The engine and the tires make a different kind of music on the highway. They have a higher pitch and it is quite calming. The pitch lowers as I slow down to pass the aftermath of a vehicular altercation between a semi and a pick-up. Black and whites are already on the scene. There is no reason for me to stop.

As I regain speed, my mind wanders again. It doesn’t reel and kick and scream about the past like it used to. Now it thinks of the future. All it comes up with the entire way back to town is that the future is as black as this night. I sarcastically tell my mind that it is really cranking out the lovely thoughts. Idiot. My mind calms me down and speaks to me. It tells me that I used to see the future as light. I had feelings of what was going to happen - what I wanted to happen. Due to change, that light has turned to darkness. My mind guarantees that I will see light again. It assures me that the blackness of the future is not doom. The blackness is just… unknown.

Until Next Time,

Wayne