Advent: Sixth Note: This the sixth part of a twenty-four part series running through December 24th. To read the previous installments in a convenient form, go here. Things are changing now. My words get lost against the roaring wind, syllables and syntax tumbles out the window, on to Route 40 and then into the Indiana night, where they will lose their accent and become nightly news anchors for a Major Television Network. Daniel’s eyes stay fixed to the road as bucket loads of non-sequiturs and brilliant mixed metaphors about Us, the World and the great grand beauty of the Road, escape like Hansel and Gretel from my New England witch’s mouth and I’m casting a great spell on myself, transfiguring me into me! Me! Me of the country! Me of the great heartland! Proud American! Patriot on the Frontier! Indianapolis rises from the fields and up on her highways we ride round, circumnavigating another completely unremarkable city node, its gravity propelling us faster past its orbit and into the night, west to Terra Haute. Against the blazing wind you’ve curled up into a ball, a warm lump nestled between my arm and my chest and carefully tented under my jacket. I hadn’t noticed how cold it had become. I power slide the window up and Jizelle is silent. “I need to eat.” We live the hardest when we know things are going. Last moments are so much more gripping when we know that they are the last moments and all the moments are last moments. Pulling into a truck stop outside of Indianapolis, Daniel refuels Jizelle as I take you for a little walk over to a grassy island surrounded by parking lot. You bark madly at a car that passes by, then ignore another one. Daniel calls from the station. "She's damning them!" "Yup! Natalia's X-factor is the ability to damn people!" Bark! Bark! In the car we pull up to a White Castle and you bark at a happy midwestern couple in matching sweatshirts. "Oooh- good choice Natalia!", giggles Daniel. "They are soo damned!", I reply. We prop you up against the window and point you in the direction of various people walking by and true to your nature, you ignore some and start yipping at others. Bark! Bark! "What if she barks at us? Are we damned then?", I ask. "She would never bark at us, would you baby?" Nope. Instead you just start biting our hands wildly, feeding off our manic energy. Ah, love.

posted by Japhy at 12/05/2002 09:00:00 PM || #