This morning I drove D-fab to the airport in Illinois. To get there you have to cross the Mississippi River on this bridge that, if you're driving towards it at night, literally looks like it's going to eat you (I don't know how it's possible for a structure to be darker than dark but this bridge does it with terrifying aplomb). Anyway. This morning it just looked like a bridge, blue metal latticing up the sky. As we drove towards it Dylan asked, "Do you ever get that feeling like something huge is going to happen, like the sky will just tear open or bridges will collapse from under you?" "Um, cool thing to say before driving over a bridge, champ," I said and we both laughed and then Dylan said, all serious again, "But really, do you?"The truth is, I do. Maybe it's about smaller catastrophes, like that weird thought I sometimes have when I see pedestrians or bike riders when I'm driving and want to hit them, not enough to hurt them bad but to shake them up a bit. I know, I'm a total creepster! But maybe it's all rooted back in my general delight in throwing big things like rocks or tree trunks into bodies of water just to hear the crash, or punching punching bags with my bare hands, or skateboarding so fast that the wheels start wobbling and at any moment you know your head could be pavement. It leaves me with a staic-y feeling that's hard to want to shake.
Anyway, this was all just to say that I really liked driving across the bridge thinking about how at any moment it could--unlikely, yes, but it could--collapse from underneath me. When I drove back over it I put on one of my favorite driving songs and it was perfect. Then I went to the World's Biggest Truck Stop (no joke) and got a cone at DQ.
(My dear friend Alan introduced me to The Silent Years and I routinely get obssessed with one of their songs--for driving it's, hands down, "Black Hole."
0 comments:
Post a Comment