If Thou Be Near
This past weekend, with the truck's head gasket all but blown, I chuggged up a mountain road near Asheville, NC, following a friend with one broken lug on his rear right tire and the nuts of two more near the end of their thread, when an 80 year old woman with one eye and blue hair began to pull into the blind spot to her right, which I occupied.

For that brief moment in which I could watch this happening like the uninvolved spectator I wasn't, I thought, interesting, and, why is she trying to occupy a space that is currently occupied by me? Was this the moment that marked the end of time for one of us? Your time is up sir, you will relinquish your space to the blue haired woman. I could see in through her passenger side window the glove box and the latch of it was the last thing I remember before I started honking my horn and veering to the right onto that strip of pavement that is reserved for emergencies, and from which I used to hitchhike years ago, before various highway patrolmen threatened me with equally various degrees of success. Some patrolmen just politely explained how I needed to be hitchhiking from the on ramps and a couple even took me there themselves.

I remember unfriendly highway patrolmen in Virginia, Arizona, Montana, and a ChiP in Los Angeles and the thing all these guys had in common was their disdain for my occupation of state property. The trooper in Montana hit the bottom of my feet with his baton but in fairness to him he was trying to ascertain whether I was dead or alive,which was in question because I looked dead, in my serenely supine state across the front seat of the Ford Maverick, with my feet hanging out the open drivers side door, parked in a rest stop.

I continued to veer onto that little strip of asphalt, which in some states is more justifiably named as an "emergency lane" and in other states would be more aptly named "a waste of state money," and I realized I could, if need be, just occupy this lane for the emergency now occurring. I did not even consider at that time my previous trespasses of state property across America. Though as I straddled the white line separating the right lane proper from the emergency lane to its right, I did think of a joke from childhood. Your friend asks you would you rather slide down a razor blade naked or kiss a rabbit between the ears and at the time, probably not having developed any pleasurable use for pain, you say, kiss the rabbit, and he pulls inside out the whites of his front pockets and says, well come on then.

While I reminisced about tired jokes from childhood the eighty year old one eyed blue haired woman decided that she for one, wanted to live, that her time, was not up, and she began to veer back into the left lane, but a little wildly. She swerved back and forth a couple of times like something out of a tire commercial for tires you could imagine yourself buying.

And then I thought how I almost killed that woman, with the shotgun blast of my horn, just because she wanted to occupy space I felt was mine. But the space didn't belong to me. It belonged to the state of NC. The state flag of which is similar to that of Texas. I stayed at the Renaissance in Asheville, with Lorina. It was elegant. Very nice breakfast buffet. I carried her trumpet. She played Bach instead of jazz infused ska-punk. In a chapel in Waynesville. The things you do for love would include getting caught inside the groom's car with three women, placing origami cranes about the interior. It was embarrassing, but better than giving up for good your space to a one eyed blue haired elderly woman. Marginally better. I know of a local guy who makes hats from roadkill. I wonder what kind of hat I would have made, and if anybody would wear me?
- jimlouis 3-22-2005 7:01 pm




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