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Thursday, December 17th, 2009
nswarts
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10:18p
The faded pocket atlas reads Hoegh Pet Casket Company below a picture of some desert road disappearing into mountains. Beside the text, a lion and a fox guard a mysterious crest containing the heads of some sort of eagle and a rabbit.
I found it when I rested my head on the rich burgundy steering wheel of the shaking, overheating beast. In a side pocket on the passenger-side front door, just laying there. It pissed me off then, with its implied freedom, its sense of limitlessness.
Much of the once-rich blue ink is rubbed off the sky in the photo on the atlas, probably from repeated insertion into a pocket. It's the only item the original owners left in the car I bought, and it's certainly an odd and ominous artifact. In these times of trouble, a less disciplined mind might take it as a sign.
If one were so inclined, one could find a lot of signs lately. What would you make of pulling up behind a car with the vanity plate 1 MT TOMB, for instance, at the exact moment a voice over the radio implored unlock the mysteries of Egypt's tombs...
All this in one day. I suppose it's to be expected when purchasing a $700 Volvo somewhere in the barren hinterlands northeast of Columbus from a man with tattooed flames creeping up his neck.
"This thing will run for three or four hundred thousand miles," he said, neither of us believing him. I'd like it to be true, though. It's the only thing I could get.
The ride back went smoothly, with my brain analyzing ever move tattoo neck made and every word said, looking for sketch. Nothing. Then the car dumped all its coolant while sitting outside my house. A busted hose. A false alarm. An omen?
"I'm putting my money on the best broken down horse," I remember telling my roommate as we wound through Ohio's dead spots. I think people would probably like me more if I was less full of these witticisms. If nothing else, it might improve my luck with the ladies.
The car certainly won't improve my luck with anyone in the matter of amorous feelings. But there it is, the best broken down horse, sitting outside my apartment. It's gun metal gray like a big block of steel some giant Swede just barely carved a car from. No rust. Great interior. Fast (it's a turbo, after all.) Sure, it busted a hose. Yes, you have to hold the gas down after you start it sometimes, and it'll idle rough for ten minutes or so, but after a tune up and whatever else it needs, I think it may work.
Work for what, though? I bought it to wander, to drive to Bloomington (becoming less and less of a possibility) and Florida (now out of the question.) Which leaves me to my own devices. Where do I want to go? What is a suitable destination for a solo roadtrip? I don't know.
It's sitting out there, though, those metal edges sharp enough to sever things clean and cut out new paths. If I can just make it run the way I want it to.
Where do I speed to with no lover excited to see my headlights through her window, no family calling? To find new lovers, I suppose. More important, to reconnect with the family of friends like those living in a ramshackle house on the other side of town from the big lines on the highway atlas. Not to mention the ones I've yet to meet.
I will outrun this curse, whatever it is, because it doesn't really exist. I'm ignoring the pet caskets, the tombs, the smell of overheating and leaking coolant.
I keep looking at that atlas and all those roads it's got in it.
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