September 23, 2010
I woke up this morning with a hangover. The room stunk of stale booze, and I found myself lying there for a few minutes, trying to calculate how much alcohol I ended up drinking. The gears in my brain forced themselves to move, working against a buzzing headache and a physical fatigue that begged me to resume a catatonic state.
It was a slow start, assuredly, but I got moving enough to shower, clean up, and get some breakfast. It was at breakfast that I was reminded why I have this stigma about marriage. There was an old couple at the table next to mine eating powdered eggs and greasy hotel sausage. They were brave souls, as I had only ventured toward the crumbling bagels and packaged yogurt, but maybe they didn't care so much for the health ramifications either. Who knows?
Anyway, the old man was quiet, occasionally gurgling and coughing, but mostly sitting there silently, chewing on his dripping sausage. His wife, however, (a hefty whale of a woman) sat like a pile of jello in the corner seat, staring at him, starting up new conversations every few minutes that went nowhere. She'd complain, wait for him to grunt, and sit a few moments, breathing heavily. It was as if she were struggling to swallow up the last gulps of oxygen in the well-ventilated hotel in between complaints, summoning enough wind power to continue. Then she'd complain about something else completely unrelated to her last complaint. The weather. The size of the chairs. A female friend she had jealousy for. It didn't matter. She complained for the sake of complaining, of prodding the quiet man into reacting. He just grunted in reply, acknowledging she existed, and then returning to his food. He didn't emotionally fire up. He was apathetic, as if he heard all this before, perhaps many, many, many times before.
The griping for the sake of griping. Something told me that when these two were young, they may have had fun. It was either that thought or that he married someone safe - a boring person he could pleasantly press his penis into on a regular basis, so long as he listened to her gripe and just vegetate. In his old age, this may have led to a passive nature if it hadn't existed before, and it turned him into a hollow man with a gargantuan gorilla following him around everywhere, yapping in his ear. Yap. Yap. Yap. I could almost kick her.
I don't want that. It's like a nightmare visage of being tied down by someone who, unbeknownst at the time, eventually turns into this beast that just fires whiny pondering after whiny pondering in a routine not even remotely close to a comedy bit. The timing is just all off, and the pitch of the voice is a squeal of terror meant to shatter mirrors. It's almost as frightening a notion as having to spend an eternity in a Wal-Mart.
Leaving Deadwood, however, was a drag. While it's very tourist-orientated in nature, it's still a beautiful city in a beautiful area. It's as if it's a mystical realm within the Black Hills. I mean, South Dakota, for the most part, is a drag - flat, boring plains with Wall Drug signs everywhere. Deadwood isn't like that. It's its own little world surrounded by great forests and shadowed by Mount Moriah Cemetery (the final resting spots for Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hicock, and Sheriff Seth Bullock). It was also in this great forest that I experienced a moment of joy. In regards to the music for the trip, I have my i-Pod go through my albums alphabetically. Driving through the Black Hills during a storm, I was at B. Bram Stoker's Dracula soundtrack came on. The haunting themes from 'The Storm' blended smoothly with the plumes of fog rolling down the tops of the trees in the Black Hills. It was picture-esque.
I visited Mount Rushmore today. I always imagined the carvings would be larger. Trust me, the pictures in the books are lies.
Otherwise, I spent most of the day driving through Wyoming, staring at flat lands, trucks, and horrible drivers. It's like a potential inspiration for AC/DC's 'Highway to Hell' as it never ends. No cell signal helps perpetuate this agony. However, driving through some of these towns (I'm currently in a Super 8 in Rawlins) I realize something about myself. The rest of the country is not like the quaint little suburban burgs I grew up in. These places are grittier, more decayed, and show signs of an unstable economy. The world I stem from is a white-washed fantasy play land that kicks any signs of distress under the perfect, lush green lawns (like the insects fighting within the grass at the beginning of 'Blue Velvet').
It's not real.
Rawlins is real. McHenry....... feels like an illusion.
The people are nicer here. They're more human and probably have a better handle on life than the neurotic individuals I am surrounded with. They don't have the same falsetto 'American Dream', but they have something much more liberating. They have those open roads, slower communities, more natural environments to find life within.
I have technology and same-ness on every corner. Corporate chains that gobble up all the diversity. Unlike here. Corporate chains exist, but they are dwarfed by the living humans struggling to cut out a niche.
