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Ivan the Terrible
natural disasters are comforting in certain angles.
On the interstate you lose the right lane to a family of crusaders. fragmented lines of back exposed military vehicles fed with curled up soldiers having nothing to do but look, watching you as you drive by, eyes weighed down with the heavy thoughts of the labor ahead. Private this and Corporal that, well pressed uniforms feeding the gory need for human preservation. Their trucks humming along well below the speed limit, shaped like the unloved beasts of the non-commercial persuasion, looking nothing like the sleek sirens us civilians liter the skies with. Like they stepped fresh out of a separate time, a different place.
When you get closer to your exit, you notice the trees hiding trees in trees, acting silly. As if we wouldn't notice.
Roots exposing themselves to young children. Everything you knew about scenery is holding its face underwater. Bubbles on the eyelids.
You know the correct exit to your town because you've memorized the hills, all the signs are on strike.
In the ditch.
miles down the road.
And when you pull out of the off ramp, it reminds you of an ant hill after its been stepped on by a marauding toddler or a fumbling quasi-goth on acid. You close your eyes in that half-open way and imagine you're visiting for the very first time, when nothing yet claims that familiar arrangement, when everything can be anything and there's still that exciting feeling of wide and open. You put the excitement in your right front pocket, opposite the left, which is full of the excitement that disaster brings.
You help your parents unpack and settle, reacquaint your feet with the ground, and play with the girls a bit in the dark boarded up house before making your way back home. The street is scattered with faces, walking dogs, strolling babies, stretching limbs. Bodies exposed, free from walls, surrounded in movement, lips impersonating smiles, everything misleading you with words like community. Look at this! The street has a heartbeat?! As if all these people really live in these well kept unintimidating houses! As if inside their well preserved modern exterior lives actually exist. What an idea, what a rouse. Who would have thought! All this time, these houses were secretly homes!
And there's something grotesquely welcoming about an empty house whose veins are limp without the thump of electricity. A quiet so empty you can feel the walls in every room all at once. The stillness has a few days head start on you making you feel slightly smaller at every angle. And there's nothing, absolutely nothing to do, except remember how to be yourself.
When you retire for the night and open the windows to let the cool night air into the unconditioned house, you realize its the first time you had touched the locks on the window. But you sleep with your face to the outside, watching the neighborhood kids, amazed at how long they can run around aimlessly in the dark with their flashlights bobbing. Like Halloween with an apocalyptic tint to the weather. So you imagine as you watch the lights weave and thin in the darkness, that they are being aimed by pint-sized angels, witches and vampires, and the thought is enough to carry you to sleep.
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