Double Flee A

Well, I've got my tickets and the state of Tennessee paid, and I'm waiting for some kind of confirmation from them that I'm free to drive a car again. I remember right after I moved up here in 1997 when I heard on the news that most of the country had gone on a system that stopped drivers getting licenses in different states if they weren't allowed to drive in others. I was indifferent. Little did I know what hells awaited me when I got my shit together and stopped thinking I was going to die in the next ten minutes all the time. Now that I actually think I'm going to survive a few of the coming years (which does give me a familiar pang of panic to admit) the backwoods polity has caught up with me. I, like Ricky Nelson, fought the law... sort of like the time I overate at a picnic, that horrible day I fought the slaw and the slaw won. Oh god, sometimes I wish I had died. The jokes are just so much worse as time goes on. Anyway, I've paid the volunteer state and I want a driver's license. I want a new picture, too. In the "ID" I have now I look like a thug. Now that I have a car again I can't think of anywhere to drive it. I think I'll just have to get in it and drive it very far in some direction and then turn randomly until I get somewhere that it's nice to be. All the advertised places are the same, full of people who read advertisements. The best I can hope for, maybe in general, and it is worth hoping for, is that I find some people who don't read advertisements. I see fields in my future. Corn fields. That's what we've got a lot of here in the midwest. Maybe some trees that I can walk between. Some place shady in the middle of a sunny day, or somewhere with no wires running across the horizon for a while before a storm kicks up and the sun from beyond the storm front lights the ground while the sky darkens like it's being painted with tar. That's the prettiest thing I can remember seeing, I think. Yes, and all I need is permission. Because I drove too fast and didn't pay up quick enough. I'm addicted to this fantasy now. While we're at it, the radio might as well get nothing but static. The fences are all broken or laying flat. Water runs across the streets, weeds come up through cracks in parking lots, discarded metal bits like the pop-tops of soda cans tarnish and fade into the gravel. I'll stop before everybody pukes on their keyboards.

posted by dale @ 12:40 AM