Advent: Third Note: This is the third part of a 24 part series celebrating Advent. Parts One and Two are below, in reverse chronological order. Somewhere in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, amid the cider stands and Amish pretzel huts, we travel. The air is filled with the sweet smells of summer vegetation that should have died with the end of the season, but the heat and the rain have kept them alive and thriving long past harvest. Unruly corn fields are littered with fallen ears repolinating the soil and the sun beats down, warming the Earth, warming us. Jizelle's windows are rolled down and as we race through this land, recharting the Manifest Destiny of our great-grandfathers grandfather, we talk about New Mexico and the road ahead of us. Our plan is to visit the great temples of America, the religious roadside attractions built by white-suited evangelists and knitting society church ladies, but here in the secular East, we concentrate on the road which swerves ever so slightly like an absent-minded dancer. We've put you in the kennel for the time being. You were frankly, irritating us with your continuing attempts to jump out my window. While I admire your convictions of invincibility, I'm pretty certain you'd think that jumping out was a lot less cool once you hit the pavement, the rushing pavement, black river. Daniel turns to me grinning. "It's so beautiful out here. Everything's so green! You forget about trees and plant and things in New York." I lean back in to my seat and watch him watch the road. "You're right. And it's so fractal. I mean, in New York everything is straight lines and corners and architecture, but I miss the complexity of tree branches and the the way a forest is the same as a leaf-" "You're such a dork, you know that!, Daniel says. "I know. I'm like The Celestine Prophecy, only gayer." "You know what I can't wait for?" "What?" "My mom's cooking." That's right puppy, you're going to live with grandma. I go back to focusing on the road. The best thing about the road is that conversations can cease for hours of silence and resume as if nothing has happened. "If only the stationary world could work like that!", I think to myself, but of course that would never work. Adam Ant comes on the radio. Our song! The towers are still there and it's summer in the Village and we're walking down 7th Avenue in tank tops as early evening settles in and gets comfortable. Off their aluminum skin, pinks and reds and roses and blues ripple like a Rococo sky caught in a skyscraper frame and I turn to Daniel and say, "This is heaven". Oh, how I love highway meditations! How I love being next to Daniel. How I love this pack of cigarettes and everything will be fine! We are beginning a great adventure! Grand gestures will sweep us away to a bright New Mexican future, because we are together! We will beat the dangers of the tragedy of hubris! We're superheroes and rockstars and above all, young and talented and ferocious tigers of the concrete jungle! "Huzzah!", bursts out of my mouth. "What?" "Everything." "Huzzah!" The road has been steadily climbing now for miles, but in such a way that you had no idea you were going any higher. Fields, though rolling now, spread out on both sides of us and then, the road swerves madly, up around a corner, then to its reverse and then a huge yellow sign with a giant black arrow points to the right and we turn sharply yet again. We're at the top of a mountain, the edges slipping perilously down in front of us. The fields behind us part of a massive plateau that we now descend at full tilt, Daniel whooping madly! "Slow Down!" "It's like a rollercoaster!" The pitch drops like a rock as the road clings to the side of the mountain and Daniel's going eighty and the wind whips and he's laughing all the way down and there's not a car in sight so he floors the gas and every single thing in the car, you and I included, goes crashing into the right side of Jizelle and I'm whooping it up too and we fall and fall down the mountainside and everything grows closer and nearer and the fractals zoom in, infinitely complex, and I hope the ground never levels out ever again.

posted by Japhy at 12/02/2002 09:00:00 PM || #