The Horror

Seventy-five miles going 75 mph with the dome light on in a drizzle, dodging road construction after a back-and-forth basketball game that ended in a loss for the local team was a harrowing adventure.
It was a trip through the heart of darkness with Kurtz riding shotgun, swearing at a computer on his lap and playing tape recorded comments while pounding at the keyboard.
Driving without a map in unfamiliar territory at the beginning of the rainy season: it was like being in the Parrot’s Beak in 1970. Instead of landmines there were potholes, Jersey barriers and deer looming in the mist.
It was a close basketball game, essentially a draw that became a win at the charity stripe with .1 of a second remaining: not enough time for even a last-ditch, full-court heave.
The site was an opulent school is an affluent aberration of the Rust Belt. Penne Pasta and $2 hot dogs at the concession stand and a gym filled with banners celebrating tennis and lacrosse championships.
This was dinner-jacket territory, beyond white collar and making even this valley’s white collars seem blue.
A wrong turn out of the parking lot twisted me around and caused minor panic before I righted the course, then battled dome-light blindness the rest of the way.
No cigarettes and nothing to drink. Nothing to say to the colonel beside me, it was a wild time, alone with my thoughts spinning out of control.
Waking night-driving dreams of Conrad and Apocalypse Now wrought by the resonance of the Nelson Demille pulp fiction I’m reading.
I felt like a caterpillar crawling across a razor blade.
Now, 90 minutes after a safe return, the present keeps blurring by: I feel like I’m still moving as Bob Dylan sings about “Marching to the City” and I think about marching from the city.
I’m thankful I made it back in one piece, met deadline and now am safe at home, if home is indeed safe.
Tapping a keyboard like a maestro, taking the surreality of the world I wrought and turning it into words.
Words can redeem us. In the beginning was the word and come the apocalypse the word will be said.
Alas, the word will save the world if the world will let it. The word will fill the hollow men with substance and define the absurdities of the digital life in the next world.
Now that’s a load of nonsense and it’s time to stop the words and get back to the world.
The dreams should be vivid tonight!