Was the landscape the day? Or the day the landscape? Hard to tell. The desert and timid shrubs stretched right to the edge of my vision. Meeting in some time equals space who gives a fuck kinda continuum. Like two flat pieces of bread laid open, like possibility split you know? The opening of that most simple question. And shit was it hot. The desert lapped like waves of heat at the edge of the road.
And me, in my van, a glint of some blunt knife in the harsh sunlight, a community of rust and dust in the shape of an almost rectangle, making my way through the fault line of the desert. I tapped the dashboard lovingly. Poor thing. Sitting inside I could feel it tiring of its structure. Trying to contain all of itself, but leaning out at the edges, like the gravity-bulge war of middle age. The relentless descent from what it once was, when it was formed into existence; for one split second before the inevitable decay. What is made will always be unmade.
And now my stomach was rumbling, a full cauldron attached to the rest of my skinny body, like a drop of oil on a surface. It was coming from the belly button, the centre, full of stomach thoughts. All I’d had today was the dingy shit coloured water excuse for coffee, taken from garage counters along the way. Cremora, Ricoffy, sugar, and that sweet watered down ketchup that was strangely satisfying were scattered on the floor behind me.
I looked in the rearview mirror reflection, into the throat of the van, scanning for something more substantial. Dirty pots and tin mugs were scattered. Clothes hung from the bars I’d put up, and were languidly draped over the chair, as if I’d slipped out of each yesterday and the memory of them was still caught, not ready to be forgotten. I was creating my own world on this trip. I didn’t feel like wearing any of them today. I’d been sitting naked since early morning, everything jostling and aware with each shrub and stone I drove over.
I preferrred driving without a shirt on. Especially in this heat that wrapped around you like small silk layers until its presence became you. Heat was an equalising factor. As was sweat I suppose, like sitting in that Goddam dingy emigration office yesterday, all of us liquidising into the surroundings. If we’d stayed there long enough we'd have evaporated or sublimated or whatever and shimmered across the border, our pathetic, little laminated passes slipping through everyones’ hands.
I'd only made it out of there in the heat of the late afternoon yesterday. The soggy looking man behind the counter seemed to be grappling with even the smallest of thoughts. As if trying to think through something was like pulling impossible shreds of meat from the bone. I imagined the stifling heat must have suffocated his brain. Or perhaps rather there were no thoughts that existed in the liminal space between states. It was a small strip of vacuum where people only received, where there was no activity or agency. It was a cesspool for fat, stupid blacks like this one. He wouldn’t stop hawking his tobacco mucous on the floor next to him. I could see hardened stained drops around his chair. Even the radio was static as if that somehow made sense to him.
The road had started to become grumpy. Big ditches and shrubbery started appearing and the old kombi moaned at the inconsiderate beating it was taking, squishing the precocious twigs with its whole weight. I tapped her again. The dashboard resonated with heat. Imagine your face rolling round and round like a wheel, being squished into every enemy, coming eye to eye with the hellish gaze of a nearing death praying mantis all its regality burst out of it, or the decaying fur of a broken animal. Thank god I was in this chair. Sweating the dirt away from the last border, driving on, eating up the road. Thats right Im eating this shit up. And you, you fucker, and you, and you shrubfuck.
The road stretched up toward the sky, like something that was being unravelled and then deserted, as if someone had had a better idea, had moved on and started up again in a different place. Somewhere with more promise perhaps.
But I was out visiting all these areas. Every place deserved to be visited. For a reason i'd long ago lost track of and as I liked to say, had lost track of me. The tightening ropes around my heart had slowly let themselves loose and curled on the floor, slunk away. I felt free and I felt empty. An emptiness that could not be filled, like a pipe or a tunnel. There were too many ways to think, too may people to be, to hold it all in.
Jo had lost track of me too. She unravelled around my heart and fell to the floor. And with her, my hair grew and my skin began to slowly drip, like a human stalactite. Small drops of regret are what give the face its form.
She’d had that weird, inexplicable heaviness. Depression. I wasn’t sure what it had meant. All I had understood by it was sadness. She was sad. Well fuck that, everyone was sad, the world was a sad place for crying out loud. You just pulled your thoughts together and ordered them. Like sardines in a box, or whatever. Something unthreatening. I’d let her go, along with the screaming kids that scratched at their eyes and hit their heads against the walls, and treated the world like it was some toy.
I needed coffee. These thoughts were worse than the heat. I pulled over onto the hard edge of the dusty road. Turned off the car and pulled the keys out, glinting erratically like some crazed laugh of fatigue. It had been driving for three weeks straight. Up and over and out. Up and over and out.
I laid my head on the wheel. Tapping my fingers on my skinny knees in rhythm with my heart. Everything settled around me, the jostling cutlery, the swinging clothes and the frenetic dust. I knew if I just stopped moving, no one would find me. I’d rise like that thick bread I used to make when I was younger. Such simple fucking happiness. Pushing flower and water together and squeezing it like it was part of me, then laying it in the oven and watching, my face pressed against the glass, completely immovable, till it became too hot to bear. I wonder if I’d make a nice loaf of bread. This desert was pretty much the same as an oven. My van like some rusty baking tray. Crazy thoughts Jack, those are crazy thoughts.
I put the keys back into the ignition and the familiar rummaging of the van to its spark of life began. The ascending hill was there waiting for me. Not yet Jo. Not yet.
