another travelin' song

writing can only get better with practice. so here's some practice. thanks to malora for the inspiration to start writing again.

it's 8 pm and i'm leaving work. i should be staying later, should be going out to get dinner and then coming back, but i'll just procrastinate more and then get more annoyed about being so far behind. so i take one last sweep around the building to check out the coolness that is my office and head out the door. i take a shortcut through the tall grass as i walk to my car, and wait for all of my anxiety about work to slowly ebb away and be replaced by this other funk that's been lingering in my head. maybe the funk has musical roots, i think as i wait for my car to warm up, listening to the mournful anger of maynard keenan singing a eulogy for his mother. i eject the tool album that has seen little besides the inside of my car's cd player since i bought it, and replace it with the mix of americana that molly gave me some time during the wild ride that was the latest reconnection and disconnection in our ten-year history. the comforting twang of john prine should be exerting at least some pull on the old heart-strings, but as he drawls through the tune that we danced to so many times on that last night in her apartment, somehow my funk gets packaged away, sent off somewhere to stew and regroup while i instead start to self-analyze.

as i pull out into traffic and speed away, my mind picks up the polyrhythm of my rundown little car, and fires away in random directions. maybe listening to tool for days and weeks on end has slowly shifted me into a worldview that is darker and more cynical than i should be. maybe i need to get my car fixed so that it passes emissions and i can get it registered and avoid another $200 ticket like the one i got yesterday for expired tabs. maybe over half a year is plenty of time to get over molly and everything that i thought we had. maybe i should finally work on my yard tonight. maybe not having an emotional response to this album means that i am finally getting over this. maybe i should be working on my truck tonight. maybe i should get drunk. maybe i'm just not satisified with

dammit. there's a cop tailing me. just like yesterday morning, when the blue car pulled up right behind me and i could just feel him checking out my car with its broken taillight and its expired tabs before he flicked on his lights. i slow down a little and change lanes, hoping that i'm not speeding and wishing that my car has a working speedometer. the car changes lanes. can they give me two tickets for the same thing within less than a week? i take a turn early. and there it is behind me again. crap crap crap okay the car is turning somewhere else.

i put the speed back on because i have to get home and write down this trip, this simple vignette that plays every day with a rotating cast and a variety of voice-overs and soundtracks. i have to write because i need to write because creating words and sentences and stories is what gets these thoughts out of my mind and in to some semblance of structure, of order, and when that happens, well, when that happens then just maybe it's easier for me to see. and i would like to see.