I didn’t know the sky could hang so low as it is laying tonight. From the front of the bus, it looks like we are sliding frantically upside down on a soft ocean of fog, the sort of thing you see in a dream you don’t want to wake up from, the type that you take an extra moment with to paint over and over so you can take it with you. Our driver Mike has safely transported us 800 miles today. I love sitting beside him and listening to the gruff voice come in on his radio from the bus behind us and him answer it in his smoky, Alabama drawl. I know I can’t mimic and whisper alongside him in the same tones so I smiled and watched Oklahoma pass instead. I sat in the front with him today and we talked about the road and those early morning sunrises you catch at the top of a mountain pass overlooking the road before you or the one you’ve just taken, as if your body and the earth were meant to parallel one another for those sparse moments. It’s wonderful where a drive or a walk can lead you, if you’re willing to simply follow. Getting lost may very well prove to be the grandest obsession in my lifetime. We’ll see.
My sense of personal space was lost somewhere in California- we’re all stuck here in this moving dorm for better or worse. It’s hard to get into a schedule when you’re on the road for 20 hours straight. I told myself two or three hours go I would be asleep, but it seems I’m not a very good listener. I’ve been pacing up and down the length of the 45 foot bus, stopping in front of the window in the driver’s cabin to look down at my toes and the road running just under them and again in the back of the bus where I glance at myself tired in the gold mirror. The others have been having a dance party on and off all night and through to this morning. They’ll all get up and shake around, someone will make popcorn and pour some more vodka or crack open a beer and then just as soon as they started, they sit down again and change the channel on the satellite tv to something to go with the music, something being “Snakes on a Plane” or part of “Lord of the Rings”. I danced myself silly last night, all night. I think I shook all the sand out of my hair from the beach. I was performing theatrical versions of everything from Laura Branigan to Prince to DFA to ridiculous remixes someone spent way too much time on. I’d rather sit here and listen to the saddest music on my computer beside this wide-eyed, lanky blonde who goes by the given name of Trendee, who at this moment and for the last 3 hours has been quietly reading her book about modern marriages.
This is my morning on the bus.
Alright, I’m giving up and joining the dance party, it’s migrated to the back of the bus now….
UPDATE: We just pulled over at a Love’s Gas Station. Jay and I threw snow at each other, yelled some empty threats to each other, skated to the door, busted in, and started flipping through DVDs. We both came to the agreement that buying “Joe and the Volcano” would be money well spent. Meanwhile, our drivers were getting coffee and apologizing to the patrons for our excitement so early in the morning. A man stopped on his way out and asked, “Y’all been partying?” “When are we not?!”, Jay retorted. We all cackled. I weighed myself with Lindsay in the bathroom, I bought Philip something to put in his stocking this Christmas and a hatchable dinosaur egg for the boys on the blue bus. I gave specific instructions to Ike, the driver for the other bus as to where the egg was to be placed for ultimate effect in the morning. When I asked the driver of our red bus Mike how he felt about a stop at a 24 hour Wal-Mart before we hit Chicago, he told me to go to bed, go to bed, go to bed. Episode 9 of Battlestar Galactica is playing up front so I know now it’s time for bed.
Good morning.
It’s 4:47am and we are 2 hours away from our hotel in Chicago.
these memories are really unforgettable