Exit 286 (revisited)

[mnaz]

(starting at three paragraphs in)...

...I flew below purple mountain's majesty on a wheat field wave, as the radio spilled details of the latest military base closures. I thank those who died to protect the purple mountains; I owe them that much. The radio droned like the engine on a long list of assets at risk if the bases close. Rich forests and sparkling ports. Own them and own the marauders who'll one day come over the wall. I should aim for more inconspicuous land, seek undressed curves like contours of my hand at first light, first sight. They won't look for me there, in dawn flashes, razor passes.

A warrior accepts altered state and razor pass, spins electrochemical novellas as I fumble for a pen. Yes to devotion whores, quartz veins and leather-bound tracts, thrust neon rust and absurd po-mo props. Yes to it all. Life drunk on death and dying drunk on health. Know thy intoxication. Yang sleeps by a sage spring and cracks open granite with his eyes. Everything is happening as it should, as I lapse into cut up verse. But there's no verse here, nothing to read in quarter-mile markers lined up like a picket fence, dissolved in sun flare.

Banished from Vegas, north on 95 into exile, observe rising high desert curves and deceptions. Barren basins tilt upward and ridges rise, retreat, and rise yet higher. One subtle climb reveals the next, reveals another thirty miles of eye level trickery, and six-thousand feet looks a lot like three. One could theoretically drive from Las Vegas to Reno, but I've yet to meet anyone in either place who could stomach that prospect-- nothing but a few roadhouse brothels and raw sweeps and ramps left to imagination, some which run up thousands of feet into scattered, invisible Joshua trees. Rise and fall. The land is breathing.

On Bonnie Claire grade, four thousand feet and rising, truckers gear down. I see snaking boxes on the faint auburn seas. I see the junction now and hear a faint lumbering shift and whine. I might catch a fever. But I need that 95 straightaway; a fine ramp lies in sight and rumor has it there's a trail to the top. But which mile marker to exit? In that zone between center stripe and earth, precarious speed and time, let the trucks pass. A frail etching appears at last, into its own vacant logic, then a U-turn and plunge from paved grade. Quite a departure. Center stripe was a pumping space-time artery, and now, only space.

Now the slope picks up steam, rises more steeply, trivially. My coordinates simply rotate. The snaking boxes recede and crawl more slowly until safely out of range, where they never existed. I can't tell if I'm climbing until ridges flow out in lustrous waves. No sound. No scale. Only indeterminate space compressed to a point of now. But it won't fool me like before. As boundless as this place seems, it may all be crossed by encyclopedic armies fitted with doctrine. The bully pulpit will have its say, and I made some sort of deal when I came in. There's no hiding place in billions of light years and no purity of free will. I'll simulate it. I'll thank bright blue ports like a bright blue blown mirage on a high desert playa. For now.

[emel.scott]

I started slowly, a little distracted but built momentum until my eyes pulled my imagination along with you...thanks for the ride

[mnaz]

Thanks for the input emel... Appreciate.

This is about the only segment that I haven't posted yet from a long stretch of desert wander over the last several years, and I kind of jumped into the middle of it... I should maybe consider a bit more "addition by subtraction" here and there, granted... seems to be an occupational hazard of cobbling journal notes together..

Thanks for looking in.

[Arcadia]

I owe them that much... I love that!. Also the writing visual-texture!!!
thanks for sharing the process with us, mnaz!!!!!!!!!