Just Words, Cross Country Edition: Mount Rushmore

We enter Outback Steakhouse with our smiles akin to a yet-to-be breaded Bloomin' Onion. It's our first real sustenance since midday in Chicago. Shane, Brian, and Mike settled for 7-Eleven fare on the outskirts of Illinois the night before, since we rushed out of Chicago to avoid the holiday exodus, only to remember too late that it was a Sunday night. I chose to subsist off Nutri Grain and Quaker bars in the interim. So as our young black male host looks at me as if he beholds black gold, I am preoccupied prospecting the nearest menu.


On a roadtrip, few things are as comforting as a sit-down meal. A bed is a worthy competitor, but I choose not to fight for one. When I get out of the shower, Shane, who is wary of sharing a bed with another guy, is already sprawled out on the floor, blanketed by his Old Spice body spray. Brian and Mike are displaced across each queen-sized bed, out like a pair of blown Motel 6 bulbs inside a Super 8. I settle for the floor and let them count their blessings and their sheep.

***

As we eat a less than super continental breakfast the next morning, we overhear a gentleman telling one of the hostesses that he lost his camera on a train ride the day before. It had twelve days of pictures on it. On a roadtrip, one's camera is almost as important as one's pair of eyes. My heart drops for the guy, but it's rapidly driven out of Rapid City, breaking the loop of infinite plains and soft hills and entering the Black Hills out of which the busts of legends loom.


And yet, it is not even the monumental patriarchs that most impressive me, but rather diminutive Alex, son of New Jersey who lives up to his last name: a small being, human in form, playful and having magical powers. Mr. Fay is a hypnotic orator, energetic and informative, with a clean shaven face and sparkling apple cider eyes that have seen no more than twenty-three years. That it's his first year as a tour guide is even more impressive. His presentation is as broad-knowledged as Washington's shoulder's; as flowing as Jefferson's hair; as enhancing as Teddy's spectacles; and as sharp as Lincoln's nose. I've often felt that I belonged in the past, so it's no surprise that a section of my anachronistic soul should remain etched in stone, over a day behind Eastern Daylight Time.

Just Words, Cross Country Edition: The Badlands

The infinite plains and soft hills go on for so long that we would begin to believe the Badlands are a myth, if not for the fact that Mike had been there eight years ago on a family trip. He says he remembers the Badlands being more magnificent than the Grand Canyon. We think he is delusional. Doubly delusional, actually, because there is no way that any substantial rock structures can coexist with infinite plains and soft hills.


The realization of my lack of faith exposes my cavernous mind like God seems to have taken the lid off 244,000 acres of caverns and bestowed to man the gift of the Badlands. It is at this juncture that I feel as I have only one other time in my life: I am in absolute, elemental awe. The first and all subsequent times that I've been to Niagara Falls, I've felt that I could stay in that one place forever. And so it is in this land of infinite plains and soft hills and rocks, rocks, rocks. Some resemble mountains; others hills; still others stalagmites, prehistoric animal skulls, and down-turned, dusty ceramic cups of Shut The Fuck Up.


It's so quiet it's almost vulgar, especially as I fall behind on the Notch Trail, where a ranger piques the interests of Brian, Mike, and Shane by divulging that the trail features rope ladders which lead to better views of the landscape. Meanwhile, I'm steady taking pictures as if I'll never return to this place – and as I become surrounded by a sound that would make a toddler sleep straight through to its death – I begin to think that I never will. I stand frozen and feel infantile amidst the resonant rattling in the calf-to-knee length grass, surrounded by evidence of things unseen. Faith and fear are coaxial. My head spins, remembering the enmity that God forged between Eve and her offspring and the Serpent and his. With the God-ignoring stubbornness of Adam, I snap a few more pictures before creeping my way back to the main roads.


Damn you, Eve, for tarnishing another Eden. And you, Satan: STFU.

Just Words, Cross Country Edition: Transition

Like three impatient children standing in front of an unlit Christmas tree, Mike, Brian, and I stand in a darkened Minnesota rest-stop parking lot and exchange pleasantries not too far from something grand. What surprises await near our feet will have to wait as it's 3:30 in the morning and the Mississippi River of literature and lore laps inside the gift wrap of darkness, forcing Mike and Brian back to their dreams and me back to driving lonely interstate 90.

Sunrise opens a box of coal-black bugs and then vanishes like an irreverent parent, leaving in its departure a most deceitful fog twelve times thicker than Santa's beard. As visibility decreases to less than an elf's foot, I persevere for two more hours before pulling into another rest-stop, where Shane, who says he feels good, takes over. At this point, the windshield and front grille are decorated with dead bugs. Bugs. Bugs. Bugzzzzzz...

***

I wake to infinite plains and soft hills and to a sky that seems to be a national park unto itself: a monumental, cloud-quartered chess board in the midst of a four-way civil war for the most beautiful section of cerulean to loom over the infinite plains and soft hills of South Dakota, where the mundane doesn't make one insane.

Something approaches on the right – an erection at once austere and extravagant: a metallic human figure leading a metallic dinosaur by a leash. We pull into the nearest town, 1880 Town, to get a better look, but we don't get any closer because it's wire-fenced inside an infinite plain. The town itself is a motley of relics; of restorations; of replicas; of references to “Dances with Wolves”; of recordings by John Barry; of travelers dressed as Western settlers of old; of portraits of Native Americans looking, ironically, both reserved and stately.

The definition of the structure becomes plain: In the frontier west, the past is presented.

Just Words, Cross Country Edition: Chicago

The dusty, cracked, almost yellowish road shortly reveals a skyline like I have never seen. One after another, majestic skyscrapers reach toward Babylonian heights; the sweltering summer sun sears the Willis Tower as its finger-like antennae vainly reach for the aquamarine lake of Heaven. The Trump International Hotel and Tower, the Aon Center, and the John Hancock Center are not far behind. With four of its buildings fraternizing in the top thirty tallest on earth, Chicago's mass architecture equals mass appeal.


Yet even ground level maintains small wonders: sufferers of claustrophobia can walk the streets with ease; darkened underpasses provide shade for pedestrians and transients; elevated walkways span over the emerald Chicago River—proof that Oz once lived here, just as the spinach pizza is proof that Popeye once visited the city by tugboat to deliver the prized recipe he procured in Italy by punching out Bluto.


Chicago reaches mythological heights and it also falls to abysmal lows. Fireworks tower above Lake Michigan, squealing across the nine o'clock sky, silencing the millions of submerged South Side souls still squealing for independence.

Just Words, Cross Country Edition: Prologue

'Round midnight on July fourth, Brock Lesnar hears music. It's the ringing between his ears as Shane Carwin beats him nearly senseless in the first round. No, wait. It's the tune of success as he submits Carwin in the second round. Final round of television for a while. Fine by me. And by Mike and Brian and Shane, who takes the wheel first because he says he feels good. Barely an hour on interstate 76 W, we find he's a liar. After the first night, Mike and I drive by night—Shane and Brian by day.


Around 7:30, I pull over to the side of the road on interstate 80 W in Ohio. My slowly coherent comrades stir, thinking I've had enough. It's the cop who knocks on the window who's had enough. He slaps me with a ticket the width of a 1-lb chargrilled burger, despite it being my first offense and despite the fact that I'm driving in a foreign environment on a holiday. Independence Day, my ass. In spite, my white smile overpowers my raging red face and my bemused blue disposition. The cop asks why I'm in a rush, to which I respond that I have no reason.


I'm a liar. I'm on the windy fast track to skyscrapers and pizza and fireworks: Chicago.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

I walked the silent cement strip aptly lit by the marigold-bulbed lights that were just budding in the wake of the last ray-shower of the sun. The lights, which dominated the right side of the sidewalk, were superseded only by the endless alignment of hotels, which resembled the last stretch of a classic Monopoly board—starting at Pacific Avenue and ending at Boardwalk. The left side of the sidewalk offered nothing but railing and the boardwalk itself—a useless commodity, especially at night, when the elongated wooden expanse serves only as a plank over the abyss of the sea.

The ocean is cryptic enough during the day, but by night the depths of its fathoms cannot be fathomed by the mind's eye alone. This is where other senses take precedent: the subtle white noise crashing of the tide; the recurring refreshing smell jettisoning thereof, despite the historical stench of the Atlantic; the goosebump-inducing gale that reminds of mid-spring—all orchestrated by the moon, which, upon the night of my arrival, was full of herself.

She rose red. The red of a rose. The red of a heart logo that strengthens the claim that Virginia is for Lovers. She was a sunken red beacon, and as she rose to the top of her invisible lighthouse, all were gravitated to her: waves. Seagulls. People. Even the facades of the hotels had a slight blush to them.

***

She rose red. The color of my ire the next night when I came prepared with my camera to capture the awe of the previous evening. I waited and waited, past an hour whence the moon seduced me the night before. Dejected and exasperated, I scuffled back to my hotel room, only to look out the window to find that the moon had risen behind my back—for another man who had more patience than I. The moon isn't my mistress. She's more like an ex-wife.

Just Words: Chemistry

Relationships are elemental. Some have few stable isotopes, if any, and they decay according to their short half-lives. Others are as stable as Tin, Xenon, or Cadmium. Yet even these elements have a number of unstable isotopes.


Tara is a kindred spirit: a wise mind, a wizened soul, and a back that carries too many burdens. It warms my heart to see Tara smile, and whenever Jeanene used to make her rounds at work, such a reaction was inevitable. They were best friends, even after Jeanene got fired because her mental instabilities caused her to be missing in action too many times.


Tara began to take off days to help Jeanene; eventually they were taken to help herself. “Good morning” lost its compound. After a while, her tears lost the spontaneity of their combustion. Carbon monoxide began to cloud the back hallway even more than usual.


Jeanene is far worse off. Five or six months later and she still hasn't found a job. On many occasions she can't even find herself, as Tara has gone out of her way many times by driving around the county to find her at all hours of the night. Her boyfriend owes her money because he's a crystal meth addict and she has taken to puffing air out of cans. Her mother has had to call the cops on her numerous times.


Tara, despondent, has resigned to the accelerated decay. She says she can't do it anymore, and, earlier this week, frankly stated that Jeanene is going to die. A part of my heart went out to my kindred spirit. I wanted to draw her near—and while I would feel nothing from the hug just as I haven't for years, I wanted her to absorb the compassion, the reassurance, the inner warmth blocked within me. Like water to dry ice, I wanted her to cry on my shoulder to expedite the process of commiseration through sublimation, creating a temporary, smoky union of weary souls.

Just Words: Death

I stepped into the doorway and saw my mother's small frame sprawled on the chaise with a book in her hand and a Bible at her feet. It seemed like Day 7 of the same, without rest. I wondered if she had any lungs left to cough out or any brains left to sneeze out. Selfishly, I wondered when I'd get a good night's sleep sans the violent symphony of her sickness.


She turned to me before I ascended the stairs, hood over her head, and said: “I talked to your grandmother today. Uncle Matthew died.”


He was 82 and the only family Nana had over on the west coast. For years, he had been calling her every morning to touch base. Apparently it grated on her at times. She was supposed to get together with him on Saturday, but she called him on Friday night to cancel, because she was exhausted from the day's proceedings.


She didn't hear from him Saturday morning.


She didn't hear from him Sunday morning.


She called him Sunday morning before she went to church.


She called him Sunday afternoon after she returned from church.


She went to his apartment complex to check on him.


She came back with a man with a key to check on him.


Uncle Matthew was lying in his bed, glasses on, all dressed up with nowhere to go. In his wake, he left years of his prized collected novelties. Everything. Everything. Everything. Three times to resurrect that point. Death is more cryptic and clearer than I could ever dream to be.

Just Words: The Vulcan Man of Iron

We forewent the elevator and took the stairs like men because we didn't know we'd be climbing over one hundred feet. We emerged from the insulated stairway of cement and cinderblock to find it was as the lady who had come down before us had said: windy.


But oftentimes words betray true feelings. We were one hundred and twenty-four feet in winter's air, where it felt at least twenty-four degrees colder than on the ground. I have never felt a more malevolent force in my life—perhaps the god of the forge and fire directly above us was angered by our audacious curiosity. The wind whipped my back as if I was a recaptured convict and it ricocheted off the cagey railing with the fury of forty prisoners with chattering teeth, rattling their bars in an Arctic penitentiary.


David had gone ahead of me on the octagonal outlook and shouted a couple of things back to me that I couldn't hear, but I deciphered the most important statement: it was less windy around the bend. As we looked directly onto Birmingham's evening skyline, my freezing fingers fumbled with my camera, only to take a few noisy pictures at ISO 2000 and higher. There are still plenty of instances where the human eye is the master of clarity, just as the human mind is the master of deception and doubt.


As I stood momentarily hypnotized by the string of lights across the city, I imagined what would happen if the wind pushed me over the railing and hurled me to my death. Perhaps I would land on my feet like a cat and have my kneecaps explode from their sockets like two kernels bursting from a bag of Pop Secret. Perhaps I would fall flat on my back and have my bones disjointed like a dropped tray of uncooked french fries. Or perhaps I'd fall head-first and explode like a negro's watermelon, creating a picnic of juicy blood and black and translucent seeds of unfulfilled desires and potential for which scavenging crows and frigid ants could feast.


David would have the common sense to take the elevator down to see if I had survived before he notified the authorities. I'd probably do the same, or I might have sent a Facebook message out to those he loves and cares about and then jumped from the god's pedestal in fitting pagan fashion.