Time, Which Is the Record of Thought
<span>    The interminable now after which there was nothing and before which there was nothing. I was awake today, had been asleep yesterday, and would be dead tomorrow.</span>
<span>    Hooray if that were actually the case, but somehow it was always today. They promised me tomorrow. They wrote it on the goddamn calendar. But I went to sleep like a kiddo waiting for Santy Claus - and woke up today. Still today. Same old truck in my driveway. Same old freezer of instant burritos. Same empty pack of cigs on the nightstand. Same nightstand, same bed, same cursed body, the only part of my life that can measure the passage of time. Like it had run off into the future just to get older, then travelled back in time to hang with me and my brain again.</span>
<span>    Where it was always goddamn today.</span>
<span>    And you know what today means. It means we're driving the truck. Yeap, let's go drive the truck. Let's go raid the burrito stock. Let's go waste today on the edge of a lost tomorrow. Maybe it'll be different, right? Nah.</span>
<span>    Aaaaanyway....so what's your story? Don't wanna talk, huh? I mean, that's fine, I can ramble on if I must. If you twist my arm.</span>
<span>    Let's talk about burritos. The sausage ones are decent, but bacon and cheese is the best. Yes, I know it's not a goddamn burrito, but that's what it says on the package and I don't decide what they decide to call it. It's good, whaddaya want from me? Pop that piece of shit in the microwave for like 30 seconds and it's the best part of the day, right at the very start if it weren't for the fact that I'm sick to death of that garbage. But gotta eat just like getting out of bed. None of what I will describe to you would be classified as a voluntary act if I'm being honest, which I will be, cause that's really the goal here. You put one foot in front of the other because if you don't you might lie down on the ground instead, which is mostly fine except that someone's gonna happen along and kick you, or worse yet ask what's wrong. You keep placing your feet on the sidewalk like a little wind up toy because it's the only way to stop yourself from face-planting, same as you open and close the fridge as if part of an electric diorama so your stomach doesn't start yelling at the top of its lungs.</span>
<span>    Anyway, I recommend a burrito in the morning. If you drive a truck you get hungry. Don't ask me why. It doesn't make any sense. All I do is sit in a chair, and I'm famished. I'll eat frozen burritos, or a bowl of ashes, so long as it keeps the furies away. And so long as they got bacon and cheese flavor. Yes, flavor. That ain't real bacon, I don't know what it is.</span>
<span>    I'm standing in the driveway. The truck is in the driveway. Can you guess what's in the truck? I'll bet you can. Yeah, you got it. That's right. The driveway slopes down into the street. The street lies perpendicular to the driveway. The horizon lies perpendicular to the street, which makes it parallel to the driveway, I guess. The other side of the street slopes up into another driveway. If you were standing in that driveway, it would be sloping down, and mine would be the one sloping up. The road itself slopes both ways. That's so the rainwater ends up in the gutters. It's raining right now. Like, a good bit of rain, but highly atomized. Heavy but thin. Weighty and ballistic. It's a morning like yesterday evening, ashen clouds uniform in their usual formation. I grind a worn butt into the pavement with the rubber soul on my sneaker that looks like it could be made from my truck tires, in other words both are a mess. The driveway is so steep that I could tumble end over end if I just fell forward, gaining speed until my brains dashed out by the time I hit the curved bottom of the curb, assuming that was how I happened to land. The moon is still out, somehow underneath the clouds which doesn't make any sense but I don't want to question her in case she's listening. </span>
<span>    And that's when I notice that I left the headlights on. They are still dimly glowing, and I can already tell the battery'll need a charge. Luckily, I got an old generator in the garage, so I set that up. This is definitely how I wanted to spend my morning. And you know I don't even know if that ain't true. Maybe this is a nice surprise if I could turn around and think of it that way. I mean, it's gonna make me late, so that's not great. But maybe being late is a nice surprise, too. Maybe next a jet engine could fall out of the sky and squish my head, wouldn't that be a nice little surprise. Anyhoo, the generator's generatin' and I've got a styrofoam cup of coffee sat on the flat bit of the engine, whatever that is. I just drive trucks, I don't work on them. They've got people who do that. Compartmentalize. Diversify. Devalue.</span>
<span>    I get a phone call and don't answer it. I know who it is already. I mean, I guess I could show YOU who it is, but then I'd have to answer the phone and I don't want to, so I guess you'll just have to guess, huh? I'm not supposed to tell you about the stuff that's not happening. I can tell you about the crow hopping across the crest of the street because that's happening. I can tell you he turns his head and fixes a black eye on me and there is something inside it, something almost glowing, and the eye is of a size that would allow me to reach my whole arm in and drag out that thing like dipping into an oil well, the cornea peeled back -- does a crow have a cornea? I don't know what it is, but it's there, and it is oh-so-familiar. But I won't tell you who was on the phone, because that ain't happening. Maybe if she calls back. Oh shit, you didn't hear that.</span>
<span>    So the battery has batteried, the headlights are off and the day is still the same shade of night on account of the weather. But it's time to get moving. So the garage gets shut up, and I get shut up in the truck, and now I'm headed down the road. </span>
<span>    There isn't much to be said for the outskirts of the city. Shattered sidewalks all the way down to the highway and across the bridge into the city proper, where you could take the final ramp out of limbo if you had a reason to. I was headed around the proper, though, the truck route, the highway. I was headed from the Eastside to the Westside to make a dropoff and a pickup and then a dropoff and then a pickup and then another dropoff. On account of traffic, the best route is to go all the way around the city, and since whether dropping off or picking up, the route takes me to the opposite side, this means a full loop around the loop each time. I'd say it's like 9:30 now. So we'll drive in circles until about the next 9:30. And then we'll head home to the old pad and its burritos and stale air and time, and prepare for another day of circles. Circles. Circles. Circles. Circles. By god, the circles. How many styrofoam cups and cigarettes do I consume in a twelve-hour shift? I don't know, I've never bothered to count, probably would lack the mental capacity to do so. The circles are my mind entire. My mind is the highway. When I dream, if I dream, there is a wheel in my hand, and I am turning left, because the route goes counter-clockwise. I could go clockwise because it's all the same, but that is against regulations. I am always turning left. At the local bar in the other twelve hours, I lean off the right side of my stool because I am still turning left with a second set of phantom hands on a phantom wheel. And just like you did just now, some schmoe will ask me, "Hey, man. What're you doing there?" And I'll say, "I'm turning left dickhead. What's it to you?" I mean, I'd say that to a schmoe, but you don't look like one. I wouldn't be telling you all this if you did, right? Right. That's obvious.</span>
<span>    So I manage to make it some distance through my 12 hour left turn before she calls again, and this time I answer the phone, because when you're driving a truck like this you have to answer the phone. That's a regulation, too. So I pick up the phone and say, "Hello?"</span>
<span>    And she says, "What are you doing?"</span>
<span>    And I say, "Considering that it's.......11:30, what do you think I'm doing?" And she hangs up and I feel bad, but really, I don't look at the receiver while driving, and I was kind of in boss-dispatch mode, you know? So I said what was on my head, and if she didn't like it, she'll figure it out on her own. What good will it do me worryin about what I said? Right?</span>
<span>    I guess I've been talking for a while now, sorry about that. I may have got sidetracked on the topic of burritos. And something about a bird's eye. But trust me, I just remembered why I was telling this story, and we're not even there yet. This is important preamble. You can't just jump straight to the reason. We need the reason for the reason. And the reasons for those. We need to set things up. We need you to be me for a bit, and this is all, I'd say, in service of that. You've got to be me to understand the reason. Reasons for the things I do. In any case, I'll be right back, I gotta go you-know-where.</span>
<span>    Aaaaalll right, where was I? I was talking about eyes, right? Black eyes. That was what she had, the eyes that followed me when the rest of her had melted. Polished orbs floating just over my head. They were brown, really, but you couldn't tell that, they were so dark that the iris and pupil were one, just a black orb, scrutinizing, tallying, keeping track of my mistakes as I suppose someone had to. Like the eyes of the truck cab, cause they have those too, you know? They watch you, they whirr and click and sometimes blink, and they total how many times YOU blink, or look away from the road, or nod off for a bit in the midst of your left turn. So today and every day for some time, I had at least two eyes watching me, following the movements of my fingers on the wheel in such a way that each bone of my hand had to operate independently of the rest, and they had to talk to each other to stay in sync, to keep the eyes happy.</span>
<span>    Neither of these watchers had the glow, though, that was something else, something I felt I should know. If you've seen the glow, you'll know, and you'll wonder just like I did, why you recognize it, and from where. That day, its light could even distract me from the watchers for a few minutes, as I wondered over what to name its hue, whether it sparkled or shone, but most of all how and when and where I had seen it before. And how I could arrange to see it again.</span>
<span>    Oh shit, that's right, I was supposed to tell you about her when she called, right? But I don't really need to. You've already guessed everything you need to know, and probably more that I couldn't tell you anyway. Let's just keep rolling, keep turning, eh? That's better for my own mental health, and probably yours as well.</span>
<span>    I see that other fella had to turn in for the night, huh? Well, no big deal. You'll be the one who gets to dig into the meat of the tale. </span>
<span>    But first, let's talk about my truck. As you may have heard, I'm no mechanic. I'm not going to be telling you all about horsepower and injection pumps or whatever garbage. I'm going to tell you the important stuff. Like how the steering wheel feels like the skin of a synthetic alligator. And how in the rain, there is no way you are keeping the fog off of that window glass no matter what combination of heat and A/C you throw at it. I'll tell you that almost right there next to the shifter is a lever that if you pull it, the whole trailer pops off and spills down the highway, crushing god knows how many commuters and setting off an alarm down at HQ somewhere so they can flip your killswitch if they think you've gone rogue. </span>
<span>    I'd tell you that nothing aches quite like a leg on the gas pedal for twelve hours every day for a lifetime. It's an ache that sets off a special shade of blue in your cranium and I see it when I close my eyes. I'll tell you there's a particular radio station out there, the El Dorado of stations, audible only at a few key points of the loop that shift by the hour, that at certain times - that shift by the mile - plays the best goddamn blues you ever heard in your life. And I don't recognize a single tune, and they'll never play them again, and never tell you who was on, or if they do the channel's already cut out by then. I'll tell you that at sunset my eyelids are buzzing. My throat is dry. My stomach is sad. And the cab is the same temperature inside and out because the heater gave out an hour ago. I'll tell you that SUV drivers think I can't flatten them with a single twitch and so they drive like invincible maniacs, but lemme tell you right now that at regulation speeds this monster will go straight through an apartment complex like it were Jell-O pudding if it ever flips. </span>
<span>    I'll tell you, because most people don't have occasion to try, that if you stare at the same spot for long enough, the aetherial fabric flips back and you can see the gnomes busy turning the gears of the universe, locked up in hamster wheels by God or Marduk or whoever. Now, don't go lookin at me like that. I ain't gonna turn into a gnome from just a few minutes of glaring. That's right, that's my truck, that's my iron giant, my flying coffin, the bane and provider of existence, legendary Turner Of Lefts. It's some old piece of shit, anyway. </span>
<span>    The story? Yeah, what do you think I been doing? You're hearing it right now, buddy boy! Where was I? Eyes, watchers, glows, trucks, and hamsters? Ohhh yyyyeaeahh! The meat of the tale! Well, we'll get there won't we. It's not like I've got any place to be. What? No, this is how I sit. I was telling him all about it if you'd been listening. Just lemme keep things moving, will ya?</span>
<span>    So we're on the highway with the city to the left. The city's always to the left. Ain't that obvious by now? I shouldn't have to explain logistics here. So we're driving with the city to the left. You live in the city, you know what it's like. There's towers and hotdogs and people, and a lot of the latter are crazy. But maybe that's people's fault, not the city, I don't know. When it's midday like it was then but the rainclouds are holding the night in place, the towers full of people are swallowed by the fog from a distance. You can only see the lights they've left on to keep the planes away. </span>
<span>    Sometimes, I kill animals. Not because I want to, but because they run out onto the road and you can't slow down in that truck. They run out and get stuck on the grill or ground beneath the wheels. And the former means I gotta peel them off myself. Usually that only happens to the taller ones, dear or cattle, or birds. Birds will be jammed face first straight through two grill spokes with their neck clamped between them, their legs sticking straight out behind with their tail feathers. All sorts of weirdness happens to deer necks. They bend backwards and hang loose, so if a breeze picks up as you step around the front of the cab, it's like they're swinging their mangled heads to say hello. Cows stay the most intact, unless they happen to be facing forward. Then it breaks up their heads something awful, knocks out all their teeth, jams their own horns down into their brains, which shoot out their eye sockets and all over the truck face. Pets are small enough, they just get destroyed under the tires and I don't really have to see what's left. People are tall enough, but I've never yet had to peel one of those out of the grill, thank God. </span>
<span>    Now, just hold your horses, this is a crucial step in the tale-crafting process. And yes, I find it necessary to communicate the projectile brain-spurting of pulverized cattle. I am a holistic man in a holistic world, and you don't know me till you've polished the grey matter off a hood ornament at least once. </span>
<span>    There is one truck stop on the loop. Just one. One beautiful, crucial stop on the Hell-turn. Regulations allow its use once every six hours. That means once a day, right in the middle of the afternoon. On a night like today, the office towers in the distance are visible only because they glow. Unlike night, there is plenty of light, just not the sort that helps you see. There is a tiny park with a grand total of two trees in it, both little more than saplings. The trees are surrounded by stone benches placed as if for a ritual. The grass collects dirt and the dirt turns to mud and the mud collects water that overflows onto the sidewalk as I step over to the shelter of the vending machines. Lemme tell you something that you probably know: vending machines are great. You start to associate that cold light from their faces with food, with warmth and sugar, and you get like an infant when it's near a nipple. They buzz in a pleasing way. The vending machines not nipples, jesus christ. I can taste the cheap coffee just thinking about it. A handful of change and one button press and it's there just like magic, steaming hot, at least relative to the wind that whips across the highway, full of life energy and dehydrated milk, tasting like the grounds were filtered through a dirty grease trap. Then right next to that is the snack machine with at least 500 varieties of chip. Wanna hear what they are? No? That's okay, they're all the same anyway. Delicious when your last burrito was over six hours ago, and your body has wasted away like an unused organ attached to the steering wheel. There are at least 10 other machines, too, and they all synergize with each other. Once you eat something from one you want something from another, which has to be washed down with something from a third. Just make sure you bookend it all with the grease coffee. It's the king, the reason, the reason why you're here. Then you could sit and stare at the trees, but it's cold and raining and the stop gets reception from El Dorado station, so you seal yourself in your truck and listen to a song you never heard before yet it sounds like you've been listening to all your life. Then time is up and your surrounded by trash, wondering how you got where you are in every sense, wondering which way onto the highway is the right way, because the wrong way is against regulations; wondering if you could just spend your life right here at the stop, and how long it'd be before They sent someone to drag you away. </span>
<span>    The first part of the next six hours is the best part of the day. Better even than the last part, cause the last part has you thinking about the first part of tomorrow which will be today again. No, the first part of the second part is the best part. You've got that greased coffee shootin through you, you've got a hundred and fifty bags of chips lined up in the passenger seat in easy reach. When you turn back onto the highway you remember what you forgot because it's obvious. You turn left. You always turn left. You turn left when you exit, you turn left when you merge, you turn left while you go straight. El Dorado station cuts out and the truck stop shrinks into a speck of light in the mirror. But you've got food and it ain't morning anymore thank god, and best of all you haven't been driving for six hours straight like you were twenty minutes ago. So you've got about an hour to enjoy that energy before it bleeds away. This was the brightest part of the day, but nothing had changed. The street lamps were still on, the headlights were still on, the moon was still out where the sun couldn't find her. I've got enough tack to take a gander at the towers. They hope to connect the sky to the Earth, but the sky will crush them when they get close enough. It will not reach out, just condense fingers out of vapor and make a fist.</span>
<span>    And like I said it's after that hour that the energy goes away from you. You are starting the worst stretch of the day now, just like I was, just like I will on the day called tomorrow which will be today. Is it worse than the morning, cause I did say the morning was bad, didn't I? I'm not sure, to be honest. I ain't a morning person as you can probably tell. I'll bet neither of you are either. But that afternoon into night on the road to sleep is an endless one. What things pass before your eyes when there is nothing but The Turn? Do your elbows handle the constant pressure well? Is your scalp okay with the watchers, or does it itch like fire with every microscopic error in your movement? Has your palm finally turned into alligator skin? Do you expect her to call after what you said in the morning? Silence wears on and on because you shut off the radio just for a change, and now you begin to sing in a rasping falsetto, just to remind yourself you have a voice, that there are sounds beside the roaring of wind on glass. It's far too early still to call this the home stretch. Time has yet to angle downhill. Moving from one second to the next requires a conscious effort which you only expend because you don't want to stay here forever. Just like you put a foot forward because you must move. You put a second after the second before because you can't die. This is a requisite of existence. To exist is to move forward in time. To move forward in time is to approach nonexistence. I speak my thoughts because speaking uses time, which is the record of thought. If I do not speak, can I think at all? If I do not scream, how can I stop thinking? A scream fogs the window glass instantly, so you're definitely still breathing. Now wipe it off and stay in your lane. The SUVs are flitting dangerously close, daring you to smoosh them. Concentrate on not doing that. </span>
<span>    Sometimes, the eyes behind my back would drift near, combine and synthesize. One was the eye of the company. The other was hers. Together they made a chimera's face. Wire, sinew, metal, skin. They whined as they focused on the set of my shoulders, comparing it to the official posture formula designated in the handbook. I can have a conversation with the beast, because I know what they both would say, how they'd respond to what I said. True, you can't see it, but it's there now just beyond my left ear.</span>
<span>    Yeah, we're getting there. We definitely are. It was in the lowest hour, the slowest hour, the one between sunset and night, by the clock, though you couldn't tell by looking out at the world, that they appeared.</span>
<span>    Yes, they. The Ephrasians. I was fiddling with the radio dial when I first heard their voices in the static, repeating my name like a formula; then the static bled out onto the window and there it was, webbed fingers stuck to the glass, a tentacle reaching over the window edge to unlock the door. I thought about swerving, trying to kill it on the highway wall, or on another car, but that might be the end of me and everyone else in the traffic at that moment. </span>
<span>    ...WHO named them Ephrasians? Well I did, of course! One name is as good as another, and this one is better than most. Ya see ya see, the Ephrasians have PHO-TO-GRA-PHIC memories. For every image of their lives, there is a story to tell. For every moment on the circle in every 12 hours, they could tell you the smell of the air, the feel of the wheel beneath their flippers, the exact pitch of every voiced syllable in their phone conversation, and the selfsame for every moment contained within that moment. And they did. They told me it all, from right there in the passenger seat. And man it musta taken like four hours. I never did hear anyone talk so much. Just bla bla bla bla BLAH.</span>
<span>    Getting late, ain't it? Where was I? </span>
<span>    Really, on THAT again? I must be tired.</span>
<span>    Better wrap this up. See ya tomorrow night, if I make it that far.</span>