Extravagantly Yours
I know that I will do better if I can calmly denounce the urge to sequester the urge to do better. If that makes sense. Twice in the past month I’ve pulled off the interstate and checked into a hotel to establish a scene where my thoughts can come into focus and stop playing coy. Both times I ended up watching a fair amount of Sports Center and exploring the streets of the city in which I placed myself. For less than a hundred dollars I’ve purchased two nights in completely anonymous non-smoking rooms and the Bible in the sliding drawer was the same (looked the same, and I’m guessing contained the same) each time. I’ve taken ice that rumbled out of a machine into my own personal plastic bucket, dumped it into the sink, and made a little refrigerator for my beer. I’ve left for supplies and come back to slide the keycard down the slot, making the dead eye blink green. On commercial Western-themed paintings bolted to the wall and instructional cards admonishing me to be as comfortable as possible, mine eyes have feasted. America has these gifts to offer across its great expanse and you can never be sure if it wants you in on the joke or not.
On these overnight trips, I know I will forget to take pictures if bring my camera and still I bring it anyway. My hands will smell of gas and cancer. The CD player will overheat and won’t allow a disc to load properly; I will steer with my left knee as I try to coax it into its proper slot without feathering myself with cigarette ash. I will fly by vehicles, looking to the right to see who steers them and casually register the passing with a moment’s worth of eye contact. Drivers of vehicles who fly by me will do the same. Sometimes this makes it easier. The antelope of eastern Montana and northeastern Wyoming will gather at the fence line to show me their white asses and atavistic cranial structures – I remember now that ground antelope meat tastes vaguely of sage and pretty much demands an overnight marinade or integration into a red spaghetti sauce – and they will not be in the slightest bit shy about mixing with the cows or the horses, especially in a north wind.
I know I will wake up some Saturday in the near future ready to depart. I will pack a lunch, a book, pen, paper, and a dose of geniality. The urge to go is borne out of desperation and contentment, and if this is a contradiction it is one I have become accustomed to. On state highways, each sharp curve comes with its own bouquet of white crosses. Ninety percent of vehicles in the other lane offer a one-fingered wave in passing. On gravel roads, you might both slow down a bit, ostensibly to give enough berth but more often than not to get a better look at one another. Most of the time gravel offers few encounters. This makes it easier to remember that uninhabited space is not empty.
Last fall I found a strand of cottonwoods where two bald eagles roost. For a half an hour I watched them swoop down to feed on a deer carcass about two hundred yards from the road. They’d land and feed for a minute, then flap their wings as if it took effort to stay rooted to the meal. Eventually a truck came up from the opposite direction – blue Ford, probably as old as I am, with a car seat mounted in the bed in case the passenger load exceeded two – and the guy driving it saw what I saw and pulled off to watch about fifty yards from me. When the eagles flew exited over the nearest ridge, we both pulled out and passed each other with a little nod of recognition or greeting or whatever it was.
For three years running, April has brought with it a need for decisive action. The ebb and flow of its weather patterns coheres nicely with my pussyfooting around decidedly different possibilities. I postulate the existence of grocery stores that sell tomatoes that aren’t translucent. I sift through abstract projections of future circumstances, tossing fictive realities around and seeing what sticks to the ceiling I stare at. Of course it’s not all that interminable a quandary because soon enough I’ll wake up, see that the alarm will sound itself in the next five minutes, and settle back into the routine that staves off thinking about anything but what I need to do to be where I need to be. Twelve hours later I’ll do the dishes, read until I can’t anymore, and get back to the question at hand.
On these overnight trips, I know I will forget to take pictures if bring my camera and still I bring it anyway. My hands will smell of gas and cancer. The CD player will overheat and won’t allow a disc to load properly; I will steer with my left knee as I try to coax it into its proper slot without feathering myself with cigarette ash. I will fly by vehicles, looking to the right to see who steers them and casually register the passing with a moment’s worth of eye contact. Drivers of vehicles who fly by me will do the same. Sometimes this makes it easier. The antelope of eastern Montana and northeastern Wyoming will gather at the fence line to show me their white asses and atavistic cranial structures – I remember now that ground antelope meat tastes vaguely of sage and pretty much demands an overnight marinade or integration into a red spaghetti sauce – and they will not be in the slightest bit shy about mixing with the cows or the horses, especially in a north wind.
I know I will wake up some Saturday in the near future ready to depart. I will pack a lunch, a book, pen, paper, and a dose of geniality. The urge to go is borne out of desperation and contentment, and if this is a contradiction it is one I have become accustomed to. On state highways, each sharp curve comes with its own bouquet of white crosses. Ninety percent of vehicles in the other lane offer a one-fingered wave in passing. On gravel roads, you might both slow down a bit, ostensibly to give enough berth but more often than not to get a better look at one another. Most of the time gravel offers few encounters. This makes it easier to remember that uninhabited space is not empty.
Last fall I found a strand of cottonwoods where two bald eagles roost. For a half an hour I watched them swoop down to feed on a deer carcass about two hundred yards from the road. They’d land and feed for a minute, then flap their wings as if it took effort to stay rooted to the meal. Eventually a truck came up from the opposite direction – blue Ford, probably as old as I am, with a car seat mounted in the bed in case the passenger load exceeded two – and the guy driving it saw what I saw and pulled off to watch about fifty yards from me. When the eagles flew exited over the nearest ridge, we both pulled out and passed each other with a little nod of recognition or greeting or whatever it was.
For three years running, April has brought with it a need for decisive action. The ebb and flow of its weather patterns coheres nicely with my pussyfooting around decidedly different possibilities. I postulate the existence of grocery stores that sell tomatoes that aren’t translucent. I sift through abstract projections of future circumstances, tossing fictive realities around and seeing what sticks to the ceiling I stare at. Of course it’s not all that interminable a quandary because soon enough I’ll wake up, see that the alarm will sound itself in the next five minutes, and settle back into the routine that staves off thinking about anything but what I need to do to be where I need to be. Twelve hours later I’ll do the dishes, read until I can’t anymore, and get back to the question at hand.
posted by am at
7:54 AM
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