repetition II

early this summer, after deep interrogation revealed a rupture in my innermost being, i decided that i must go back to texas, to return to that shore on which i had shipwrecked years ago, so that i may find the dead among the wreckage, so that i may bury them, so that i may remember who that self was who decided to go on life’s voyage of discovery.

because i adhered to no schedule, i would simply go where the feeling took me. only by trusting my feelings, i reasoned, could i hope to truly discover them.

i stayed mostly to myself in the southern- and western-most parts of the state. i was alarmed again and again each time i sat two feet above the ground, flying through the world at nearly 100 miles an hour. i felt astonished at the desert, that all of this had outlived its purpose as the bottom of the ocean floor, had emerged from the depths to live life anew and be among the earth as the earth. i was mesmerized, moreover, at how grotesque nothing could be, at how visceral of an experience looking into the unreflective truth of the horizon proved, the recognition of one’s own flesh in the dust into which one day it will pass.

“WRONG WAY,” read the signs that adorned the highway. “TRUCK STOP,” “KITCHEN,” “LAST GAS FOR 60 MILES.” “COLD BEER,” “UNLESS,” “PRADA.” signs, the sheer madness of them. everywhere trying to impart meaning on shapelessness.

i decided one day immediately following the outbreak of the protests that it was time to head home. at a campsite along the path back, i happened upon an architect from shreveport.

“i’ve just been on the road for two weeks,” i told him. i told him about the artifact i discovered which eventually turned out to be pineapple tours’ ‘gold rush’. i told him about that young man who had come out here so many years ago to see what lay past the limits of the knowable, what he could forge himself into in the beyond, that young man whom i left behind so long ago now. i told him above all about the emptiness of the whole thing, about the signs which gave it form, the signs, the madness of signs.

“you mean to tell me,” he said, took a sip of his beer, smoked his cigarette, “you didn’t even see one rodeo?”