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Mark my words. - June 15th, 2009

About June 15th, 2009

Getting high 11:58 am
These past few nights, warm and without rain, have been gifts for me. I've gone out on my deck and looked at the trees, watching the lightning bugs.

They begin the summer each year here by illuminating the trees. Later on they venture away into midair, the way non-swimmers toe their way into a pool, I reckon.

The fireflies remind me of lights strung through the branches of another type of seasonal tree. They also have a paparazzi-quality. It can seem like they're hiding in the bushes, popping flashbulbs, if one has a big enough ego, and one does.

Speaking of which, after watching them for a while I start to yearn lately for getting further away from it all, and late at night I'll grab my car keys and take my, as Merriam-Webster says, gorgeous fine self for a drive up on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

It's clear to me that some timid soul with a day job named this road I drive on in the wee hours. The ridge doesn't look very blue while I'm there, but that soul's tucked into his bed with his pajamas buttoned up to his chin during that special time and wouldn't know this fact from Shineola.

If the pavement is ignored, there are no signs of civilization there, and no lights, not even those bugs that started this entry. It's black, there.

I've seen it, the same darkness seen by the Elizabethans.

The Parkway is higher than where I live, and there are overlooks where I can pull my car over, kill the ignition, and steal a view reserved for the highest soaring owl. It's all they say, mystical, magical, and there's no telling what year it is there, so absent is our footprint.

I've seen that phrase in action, a "deer in headlights." They're a startling thing to see, by the roadside. I don't recommend driving along and spotting one to the weak of heart. I've also thought wonderful thoughts while stopped up there:

1) A chocolate milkshake would be a good idea on the drive back home.

2) I'm crazy about my friends.

3) Please let that McDonald's I passed earlier have a 24-hour drive-thru.

4) It's so dark. Oh, dear. I hope it's still 2009. I don't want to be an Elizabethan.

5) Poor fucking Elizabethans... never had a McDonald's chocolate milkshake. Terrible!

But for the most part I'm not thinking, at least I don't think I'm thinking, while up there. I'm pacific. When I'm not looking down, I'm lying on the warm hood of my car, looking up.

In that position my chest would make a great lub-dubbing headrest for someone, but it's still just a chest, up there, all alone. While there I stare at heights I can't achieve, the spun sky, higher, higher and filled with twinkling touch-me-nots, and I find the damned and dismal aspect of it sort of comforting, though I don't know why.

Hey. You could have read any entry, but your, as Merriam-Webster says, gorgeous fine self read this one. Thanks.
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