“I saw the fishing access sign a bit late, hit the brakes and made a sharp turn onto the rutted dirt track, bumping over a series of potholes, to a stop. As the engine died, and the heater ceased, I felt the full impact of months of stress lifting, awkwardly, post bank closing. Even blessed by the most generous of bankers, and her sympathetic assessments, I was spent. Dazed by the sudden lack of motion, over-sized snow flakes pelting my warm windshield on sharp, slicing gusts of cold, I felt both oddly exposed, yet hidden. Who would expect to see me here, or even notice a blue truck tilting on clumps of dying grass, at the edge of a wide river, across from nondescript warehouses, downwind of a state troopers barracks. I didn’t know what I was doing there, either. Life has changed. I find myself in places I’d never wanted to be, alert and engaged on some new level of survival. Old friends, & some family, can’t be reached on any device currently available, or made to understand. And as time compresses into contorted bites of incomprehensible data collection, those who buy into society’s fantasy continue to undock, moving farther and farther out into a Mirkwood forest, from which they will not return. I know the landscape as well as that, to know when the lost are truly gone. This place has few views, and is built nearby a monumental dump, still polluting, though managed by the state. We’ve done this to ourselves, I say, then stumble into a stiff, uncomfortable gait, hoping to find refuge. Dystopia, check. Dysphoria: checkmate. I can only look so much, and document so little, before returning to my vehicle. An hour later, at the exit 7, I realize I’ve not eaten and am feeling wan. Have you ever wandered into a convenience rest-stop, sort of lonely and lost, not really far from home? Depending on what’s going on, depending on how bereft of support you’ve been living for so many years, you may mistake the bright florescent lighting for a welcome, the racks and racks of Hostess cakes, for food. I must have appeared dazed, wandering the isles, looking for one single home-cooked muffin. I was glad for a public bathroom, empty, echoing, at the edge of anything I might have once considered civilized. The time alone, truly alone, had its own majesty. The automatic flush, the water spigots unresponsive to motion, the ancient paper dispensers still yielding, stolid as logging trucks, driving empty, wilderness miles. I was grateful, in some odd, caught-in-the-matrix kind of way. For the convivial gaggle of seniors at their plastic table, manning a random outpost as only retired people can, stealing life from lifeless space, signaling casual gestures of human kindness, even to me, a wandering shopper. Above, the huge ceiling of useless corporate space defining temporary shelter, the aluminum wrap of breakfast sandwiches in warming trays, a glowing & simulated mother and care. I know I too am driven by a longing for home, driven, as often as not, by gas for as long as it lasts, by a motor chugging on combustion, along dirt roads. Dirt permanently ground into my index fingers guiding the steering wheel, as pitch forks cling to soil, happy after a summer’s worth of labor. In the banker’s clean office, as I signed all those papers, my hands seemed authoritative. God knows, they hadn’t been just sitting around.”
