By September, I had been in Missouri for seven months. Mount Vernon, Missouri is located approximately 60 miles south east of Springfield, Missouri. I had my Missouri driver's license. I had worked a bunch of odd jobs. Looking for an answer, finding firefly front porch cigarettes so lonely. I was living with a misguided spirit again. The Midwest rains fell and tornado lightening shattered summer into fall.
Missouri wasn't right anymore. Living with an actress wasn't right anymore. Looking at a life so far from the Pacific Ocean wasn't right anymore. The movie called "My Life in Missouri" needed an ending.
I borrowed $500 dollars and Lesa's brother helped me build a box on the back of the Jeep pick-up so that I could pack up all my crap and leave. It was a sturdy frame thing that I covered with a blue water-proof tarp. Would it hold up to 1800 miles of American Highway in September 2000? My Fender amplifier would tell the tale.
The day I pulled out, it was raining. I was the foil in a front-porch heatbreak scene. Was I even there? Storm clouds rumbled in their rumbling Missouri way. Ciccada's buzz in the treetops. She says she feels like an old hat on a thrift store shelf: who will ever want her again? Melodramatic drama as her role in the show ends permanently: she finds herself written out of the script. Drunken recriminations in the arms of a Missouri State Trooper's hottub will ease the pain again (until his wife discovers the secret). Be careful, (especially if they own a Missouri car wash.)... Be careful, my friend.
By the time I hit Joplin, Missouri, the rain was over. Oklahoma Waffle House morning gasoline diesel driving. New Mexico has finally-decent Mexican food. Arizona egg-breakfast satisfies with cactus and Chollula sauce. Flagstaff afternoon is refreshingly cool and pine tree shades me over.
Joplin, Missouri...it was all over, all over, all over...
California Colorado crossing, then on to Needles. Midnight drive, overloaded, 98 degrees Farenheight at two in the morning.
The storms of Joplin, Missouri...no longer matter.
Barstow route 66 and Victorville...Boulder Road and Bell Mountain: headlights shine as semi-truck roars onward towards the Pacific.
Silhouette moon: all is quiet. Joshua tree silence moonlight blankets all. Streetlight glimmers.
Mojave desert, again.
2 comments:
I wrote a song (unfinished) about this whole chapter. I really liked it. "You didn't know me very well." I should try to fix that thing up.
-Daniel
I like what you write about the Return to the Desert - the feel of seeing your familiar sand and rock landscape, after the dramatic end to a movie gone wrong, lady like a hat on the wet porch, the firefly cigarettes! For all of us, the desert and its rawness is the very fabric of our soul whether we live there or not. It's embedded, imprinted, indelible. Desert made a soul dent.
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