9:54 am | 18 November 2003 | they love me down in texas/my home while i'm away

i just wrote the longest entry ever and diaryland ate it. fffuck. it was so nice and beautifully written. GAH. here it is again, only less coherent and also with fewer links and no capital letters. blurgh.

we left chicago & drove to springfield. the fog froze up the road like water clouding into ice & midnight took us no further. the mirror at the springfield inn revealed a moonscape of a face and i fell asleep instantly.

at 8:20 i snapped awake and Frogger-hopped the six-lane highway to get to the Wal-Mart across the way. it is part of the abandoned North Town Mall (almost exactly like the North Kent Mall by my folks' house) and i wandered through it, Christmas carols richocheting off the closed stroefronts, a snack kiosk advertising "Nachos. A whole Plate full!" for $3, the coin-operated gypsy fortuneteller waving grey hands and staring blankly at her hollow cage as i passed. in the Wal-Mart i found genius orange-and-camou fashion in the Hunting Gear aisle, but it was all too big for me. I helped an old lady in a lacy-collared sweatshirt reach shampoo off the high shelves and was stared at.

outside the rain had driven the red-clay earth out of the grassy areas into the parkinglots, seeping over the edges of concrete like ugly old wounds, and my shoes left iron-tinged bloodmarks on the sidewalk like i was dragging Lady MacBeth. there would be no real coffee yesterday.

Rain drove the cows to lump together under trees and a poke of goats* trotted to a craggy overhang like M&Ms rolling down a green blanket. it rained and rained and rained. through Oklahoma's blackwater fields the construction barrels stood sentry and i flew past, too fast, chain-smoking and listening to Orbital and doing (i do this sometimes) the old dangerous driving headspace, that is, i start to think of the act of driving as a game of Nintendo, a series of binary choices (brake or do not brake. turn or do not turn) that affect the outcome. this is stupid. but fun.

Austin has got the prettiest highways in the world, at night, curved shards of highway, like the city is built on a whale's skeleton. I had pretzels only yesterday, so I have to eat something now. I miss you. clm

*i know it is probably "a herd of goats," but that is so boring.

also there is a mad-lib game for you, entry previous.