I lay down at 2PM for a nap -
getting ready to find a
movie/job interview/mall – been this way once before, traced the route on a
map, a
kaleidoscope of a dozen unsure fragments of a dozen
road trips, poorly planned or
gone wrong, from my early driving history – a left turn across oncoming traffic, can’t see, my seat is facing the wrong way, someone else is driving – "Moshe, get the fuck out of the car!" as I physically drag him from the driver’s seat. And who is that other passenger? A friend from the post-Tracy era, or a current coworker? High speed, beating on the
transmission, trying to keep up with the
stop-and-go flow of traffic, big trucks bearing down but can’t see through the gray-fogged windshield, is it foggy or is it night? Is this a dream? It better be, out of control and wipe the windshield inside with my
flannelled or
sweatjacketed sleeve, it doesn’t help for long –
I think I’d like to wake up now - a
shortcut into an
industrial park dead-end, into a warehouse, across the defunct (or are they?) tracks of a historic train station under renovation, have to
portage the car over a patch of broken muddy dirt, and out onto a residential strip in
Verona? Bloomfield?
Staten Island, NY? Whatever, we are on actual legal streets, and the journey can resume, this is the last leg. A psychotic
refrain, "
the merry-go-round broke down, jee-jing, it’s
Dominic the Donkey". Throughout, I have a detached gnawing sense of danger, of being lost and
losing face and missing the show/appointment, of not having the money for
admission or return tolls.
I wake slowly at 3:30pm, hungry, jittery.