The cold wind before a heavy rain combines with a chilled loneliness to create a special blend of frigid apprehension, an apprehension that is dulled almost to non-existence, but there, throbbing in the darkest corner. This is the feeling you might have when you are standing out there in the dark with nobody but yourself, surveying the street in a melancholic daze. The streetlights are a muddy yellow, and stand in a row as far as you can see, unmoving, as they should be, but at the same time you expect them to be swaying with the wind. You can feel the clouds hanging in the darkness high above. You can't see them. They are there. They have a great presence there, behind the sphere of polluted light, in the infinite black. Something is about to happen. Something cold. But what?
And then 15 minutes later is that stretch of freeway on the 5 that is bordered by fields, and is in almost complete darkness, if it wasn't for all the cars moving through. But even amidst all the cars, there is a sensation of this stream of blackness, of nothing, a lonely stretch that lasts but a minute. That's the one part of the trip that I remember more than the rest.
I seem to be comfortable in these settings, for a fleeting second, and there is something else, eating at the edge, not quite defined, and the comfort is gone.
I guess that's the sort of dominating imagery that symbolizes some of the more serious problems that eat slow and subterranean. The problems that I don't think are problems until they've done too much damage to reverse.
I almost can't help but watch the course of this abstract disease in morbid fascination. Then of course there's the realization that the material being corroded is myself, and then, well, the show is over I guess.
