(no subject)
deserts have mirages. the midwest has fog.
it works you from every angle. you smell it first, when you walk outside, a bit like a sauna at the local Y, and at this time of year, pumpkin seeds baking slowly. there's something sinister about that--the image of orange and red when all that's to be seen is this dull gray, this cascading moisture. you certainly feel it, it clings to you, even if you're layered you'll feel like you just stepped out of the shower. lights are blurred and so sounds became the measure of proximity, but there's no candlestick to judge by.
and then you drive in it. and it conjures all these ubiquitous and mostly false ideas about insanity in it, how it turns the minds of humans. and you laugh it off, you say i know these roads, i know these curves. but then a turn sneaks up on you, and again you laugh and say how foolish of me, i knew all along that was there, it's just my carelessness.
things begin to look less and less familiar. the landscape you spent years cultivating in your mind bends quickly into something else, something more foreboding. you beg for roadsigns you normally take for granted. you are alone, and even if you're not, they can't help you out of it.
you continue on, knowing hoping thinking desperately you'll make it home without plowing into something. a garbage bag on the side of the road is a bear. the turn onto your block is someone's driveway miles away.
you have the radio and normally the commericals and the dj and the slight warm static give you a sense of company, but now it seems distant and detached. you crank a favorite cd but it gives you a dull headache, there's too much to concentrate on and at the same time nothing to see.
distances change. time changes. memories flood in and out.
your friends are invaders, beings from another world, a different territory. they are not here to help you, they are here to take advantage of you. they shouldn't be here. no one should be here. you should be left alone. you will not sleep tonight.
the fog is a slow dying of electrical impulse in the twisted nervous cells of your body. of your grandmother's body. this is a cheap metaphor.
when she moved in towards the end the bathroom always smelled like shit and your dad put up that stupid wannabe wall, the one that was just two thin pieces of drywall, about as soundproof as a mosquito net, and all you wanted to do was get on the damn iMac late at night so you could explore the nether regions of the internet, or pretend to be some chivalrous but mysterious knight who deserved to get laid, pronto. it was all bullshit, anyway, the time you spent away from her, not listening to her restart the conversations six times an hour, smiling politely but stubbornly, hands folded in her lap. sitting dying slowly in the chair you'd fool around with some girls in later, a chair abandoned after it accumulated too much matted black dog hair and was considered unsightly. Vincent Price talked to you in that chair once, late at night, everyone else asleep but you and her, and you laughed at that ridiculous skeleton that was the center of the movies tension. it's absurd how easy to scare people were then, isn't it?
but then there are the nights you lay awake and think about your ribcage and how close it is to your hip bone and maybe you shouldn't sleep like that because that sort of stress on the skeleton can't be good. oh my god. i have a skeleton. shit. i'm going to die one day.
it works you from every angle. you smell it first, when you walk outside, a bit like a sauna at the local Y, and at this time of year, pumpkin seeds baking slowly. there's something sinister about that--the image of orange and red when all that's to be seen is this dull gray, this cascading moisture. you certainly feel it, it clings to you, even if you're layered you'll feel like you just stepped out of the shower. lights are blurred and so sounds became the measure of proximity, but there's no candlestick to judge by.
and then you drive in it. and it conjures all these ubiquitous and mostly false ideas about insanity in it, how it turns the minds of humans. and you laugh it off, you say i know these roads, i know these curves. but then a turn sneaks up on you, and again you laugh and say how foolish of me, i knew all along that was there, it's just my carelessness.
things begin to look less and less familiar. the landscape you spent years cultivating in your mind bends quickly into something else, something more foreboding. you beg for roadsigns you normally take for granted. you are alone, and even if you're not, they can't help you out of it.
you continue on, knowing hoping thinking desperately you'll make it home without plowing into something. a garbage bag on the side of the road is a bear. the turn onto your block is someone's driveway miles away.
you have the radio and normally the commericals and the dj and the slight warm static give you a sense of company, but now it seems distant and detached. you crank a favorite cd but it gives you a dull headache, there's too much to concentrate on and at the same time nothing to see.
distances change. time changes. memories flood in and out.
your friends are invaders, beings from another world, a different territory. they are not here to help you, they are here to take advantage of you. they shouldn't be here. no one should be here. you should be left alone. you will not sleep tonight.
the fog is a slow dying of electrical impulse in the twisted nervous cells of your body. of your grandmother's body. this is a cheap metaphor.
when she moved in towards the end the bathroom always smelled like shit and your dad put up that stupid wannabe wall, the one that was just two thin pieces of drywall, about as soundproof as a mosquito net, and all you wanted to do was get on the damn iMac late at night so you could explore the nether regions of the internet, or pretend to be some chivalrous but mysterious knight who deserved to get laid, pronto. it was all bullshit, anyway, the time you spent away from her, not listening to her restart the conversations six times an hour, smiling politely but stubbornly, hands folded in her lap. sitting dying slowly in the chair you'd fool around with some girls in later, a chair abandoned after it accumulated too much matted black dog hair and was considered unsightly. Vincent Price talked to you in that chair once, late at night, everyone else asleep but you and her, and you laughed at that ridiculous skeleton that was the center of the movies tension. it's absurd how easy to scare people were then, isn't it?
but then there are the nights you lay awake and think about your ribcage and how close it is to your hip bone and maybe you shouldn't sleep like that because that sort of stress on the skeleton can't be good. oh my god. i have a skeleton. shit. i'm going to die one day.