GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #890: RT 55

 On Saturday night I was feeling better, so I decided to head down to Braidwood and hang out with a friend. Get high. Pet cats. I thought it would have an excellent effect on my miserable life, and I was correct. It was.

But driving out that way is goddam beautiful, if you can stand looking into the sun for that long. It was unseasonably cool that day, and driving was a very pleasant experience. To get from Elmhurst to Braidwood, the best bet is to go down Rt. 83 to Rt. 55 and take that all the way down. I used to go down this way to Bolingbrook for many reasons. I used to go on parts runs down that way for the city, and a girlfriend used to live there for a while. So I know the road is beautiful, but when you get past Bolingbrook? That's where true beauty takes over. That's where the suburbs start to transition into farm land. Braidwood is definitely a rural community, and it's good to get away from what I'm used to.

The air did me good. Having it fly through my hair was great. Listening to good music, driving through beautiful land, driving very, very fast. That's ideal. If I was driving a Delorean, I would have definitely gone back to the future several times.

Then I got to do it again the next day, except I was a teeny-tiny bit high. That made me feel even more relaxed. At ease with the world. The mph sometimes kissing a hundred. Hell, even Joliet looked nice, and that's next to impossible.

For all the complexities of our world, aid and succor comes fairly easily to us. All we need is beauty in the world, that's all.

Of course, that didn't stop me from waking up feeling like garbage today, so . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #155: THE END OF THE NIGHT

I ready myself to leave Days of the Dead. I want to be there for every day, but I don't have the money, and I am denied a vendor table. I leave early. I say my goodbyes to the one friend who showed up as a fan, and as I go through the revolving door, I see an Arab gentleman entering. He wears a turban, and snow has frosted the top of his headwear. Then I see the outside world, and I curse it. Snow falls heavy and hard, flakes the size of pennies.


I have a long walk back to the parking garage, and I can feel my entire body being infected by these flakes. I follow the path through the parking lot, and a young woman with a big umbrella approaches me. She is looking at her iPad and pays me no mind, but I can hear what she's looking at. The X-Files theme echoes back to me as I watch the snow fall in front of me. The mad calliope drifts to me in the soft breeze, and I can see every individual snowflake fall before my eyes.


A hush falls across the land, and I'm alone. I blink, and I can see a freeze frame of the falling snow. In the distance I can see trees, bare of leaves, skeletal branches reaching toward the powdery sky. I pause, and I look about me. No one is present to see this silent beauty, and I feel kind of important. This moment is for me, and for me alone. I snap a picture which I will eventually post to my Twitter, but it doesn't do that hushed silence justice. It's a frozen moment in time, and it's gone, never to be replicated. Never to be explained.


I move on to the parking garage, which is also silent. I feel a moment of fear when I realize that I'm alone, and if anything were to happen, my slightly pacifistic self would be left alone to deal with any threat that might present itself. I see a man approach me, and I can only guess what he sees. An overweight man with a fresh goatee and his hair and shoulders frosted with the fresh snowfall.


He ignores me. I ignore him. Our worlds are not threatened. I get in my car and drive home in the first blizzard of the year. Snow flows around me like star beams in hyperspace.


I arrive home. The beauty is still out there, despite my attempts of capturing it. But that's all right. You will all find it without my help. I hope it serves you well.