9.11.10 workshop

another one:

Some days I cannot stand my own skin. I wake early - before dawn - and I get in the car and just drive. I roll down all the windows in the old Chevy and maybe put on some music - maybe not and just drive. That early with the sun just coming up and the birds just starting their racket, it's almost like I'm the only one alive in the whole world. Out on the causeway, maybe there'll be a truck or two or some poor soul just coming home from work - just starting their work day. But mostly - it's empty - just me and the birds and the sky and the great fat stinking swamp stretching for miles in either direction. Used to be you'd see pelicans from out the Gulf, sometimes great Herons but now, it's mostly smaller birds or ducks, geese - all that. I once saw a pickup tilted halfway into the water its wheels spinning and spinning - no one in the cab no one standing on the side of the road. I pulled over and shouted but the only answer was a rush of birds flying up from the water into that pale blue sky. A cruiser came by not long after and we talked for a while. He told me I could go on about my business and that was it. Of course, I've seen worse out on that causeway - all those drunks speeding through all that darkness on that narrow road. And when it became just another drowned thing after the hurricane, well, it's better not to think about all that. On days like today when my body aches and my skin feels too small, stretched tight over my bones - it becomes an escape - a way out of that ache, that tightness - a way out of the city and with the wind, all that big southern air whipping through the old car, all those birds, all that pale blue sky, it almost makes everything alright again. Almost.