3.

Had to be another slow ride creeping back on slow roads to a home too far away from here to even feel like a home. Had to be back with these lonely road-stripes and me, staring out past open fields and winter white, like the biggest paper mill in Vermont just exploded and lay thick on the landscape, thick cream paper without a mark, doing just fine on its own. Had to be sailing past maibox-guideposts lined up neat with little colored dots and little bridges over cold rivers and over night air--no words needed but had to drive on anyway, watching nothing move and trying hard to say nothing about it. The road, now a street, pans out over suburbia, except there is no town in the distance: this is it, folks. Now the car is downhill, and it's impatient, tiring of this open, airy Ruralbia and I roll down windows, let the weird moon in and the air and feeling that whitewater hush of the world roll all over my seats and over me. I drive, and as I drive, I'm waiting. Had to be waiting, you see, long time now, for a sign or a signature or the other shoe to drop down hard. Besides being the only person here--the only one in the whole world now, really--I am the only one with the sweet chilling wind in my hair, the only one to hear the music and the only one with anything to say about it. Had to be driving home late again, cutting like a railway through towns and hills and never ever seen, never known, never met.

The heart of music is desire and the heart of the desire, today, is company. Two hours of black road and black sky and wild light turning in the heavens and it's as though I might take off, phone home: this place is just too stunning even with the full absence of co-witnesses, and this brings me right down to my main problem. My father likes to say he's easily entertained, and this would be true. He'll roll over in histerics for the most obvious punchlines penned down, and seeing him so helpless in the face of such banal and basic humor--the kind an 80's era computer AI might pose, right, to a pet gerbil in the basement of some epic graduate-school nerd--is both fascinating and wildly entertaining. My father will take almost anything as humorous, and we love him for it.

I on the other hand am running a completely different operating system. Things are funny, but usually not deliberately. Things to me are weird-funny, is-anyone-else-seeing-this funny, there's-nobody-else-here funny. You know, iro-funny. And today the world is a big ball of icy irony that catches at my scarf and flings it in my face while I drive around. Most of my driving home is late, and always alone. Except for the company of the spheres in the heavens. Except for the little furry guys scurrying around the bases of trees and miscalculating my approach velocity. Poor furry bastards. So crunchy! And I chuckle to think that my father would probably find that sad, and distinctly un-funny. He is very compassionate towards furry creatures.

But it's worth it. Trips around town are worth it, the commute is worth it, I think to myself. If only for the music, if only for the moment when I get to be alone and fire up the latest tunes hot off my CD-R presses. I've got no aux jack and no bluetooth. Lulla is pretty oldschool, actually.

Lulla by the way, was named after a Tinariwen song. So, check that out if you want.

Lulla is a beautiful and faithful truck, a great white chariot that conveys me about the world even as my words convey the description of my ride over your brain. Lulla's a slick, no-nonsense kind of broad. She takes care of me pretty well, and tends to get a little overprotective when I've got friends in her cab. She warms up after a while. Just, don't make any sudden moves around her at first. It's possible she came equipped with an ejector seat.

I guess I could talk more about the wind and about my hair, and about music and whatever. But I'm home, and I spent all that time driving just so I could get back here and tell y'all all about it, but what I guess I really wanted to do was fire up some mocha-chili drinky things, get horizontal, and listen to music from Mali till I pass out.