I half expected to see Thomas Jane leaning against a pulled over vehicle in this heavy fog tonight, screaming and crying his lungs out. I've never driven through fog this thick before, and I was enthusiastically pressing the gas petal lower and lower to increase the thrill of not being able to see more than five feet in front of me.
It was exhilarating, especially when I went to pass slow drivers in front of me (driving a mere 35 in a pickup truck on a road that's at least 55). Could I plow into oncoming traffic that wasn't in my visibility range yet? Yes. Could it end my adventure at this very moment? Definitely.
With my iPod Touch on random, I let Lady Fate be the judge of my existence that moment as I barreled into that unknowable path before me. Sure, I've driven this road hundreds of times back and forth between Woodstock and McHenry. It's about a 20 minute drive down 120, cruising through the backwoods of a few neighboring towns - the only real rural areas left in an area that is increasingly "going suburban".
Where there is a suburban settlement, there is no life anyway. Only chain restaurants, sports bars, and familiar brand stores with no cultural identity or small town feel. Even the people have traded in their brains for brands and model numbers. McHenry is that way. There are a few holdouts, a few personas scraping a living, but the rest of the town is either being devoured by a lifeless chain or decomposed by an economic depression. It's simply a cemetery filled with wounded souls awaiting their last gasp.
This fog though, this unknowable blanket that has descended itself upon the road home, has brought life back to me, like a sip from the Holy Grail. "I knew not how empty was my heart until it was completely full again," King Arthur said upon drinking from this chalice in the 80's movie Excalibur.
It's brought that fear of what's ahead that gets my heart racing. Will I run into oncoming traffic? Maybe.
That's the crossroads where I still find myself in my personal life. I apply for work, attend interviews, and write - always write. I do some yard work to clear my head. I run at night while watching documentaries. I do whatever I can to keep my mind fresh and my body used to some exercise and activity. Yet, I'm just sitting in the fog, unaware of what's around the corner.
I have my book out on Amazon. China Town Warrior it's called - a bizarre little social comedy adventure that a limited few have read. Most have enjoyed it, but like most of the self-published nonsense on Amazon, it lurks in a darkened corner, never to be found (like the Ark of the Covenant from Raiders of the Lost Ark).
This past Monday I had an interview downtown. The anticipation in my veins scorched through me like an unruly furnace. It was the first time in weeks I felt this excited about anything only to succumb to an encounter with a psychic vampire.
The man had no personality. There was no vitality pumping through his pale skin as he gazed at my writing samples and resumes with cold scorn. He didn't ask me many questions about me personally or my abilities, merely acknowledging that I was qualified for the position. However, he did note that I freelance for a rival firm in the same field and spent most of the time firing off all sorts of illegal questions about this firm's business practices. It was as if he was trying to see if I could turn double agent and provide him all the glorious inner workings he could use to continue his expansion and dominance of the industry. After all, he was a Vice President of an enterprise that had many chains across the Chicagoland area, a big cheese whose singular life purpose seemed to be to dominate the resume writing service industry. A daunting and challenging task indeed!
What a disappointment though, eh? To get all excited at a chance to mold into society, to conform and dress appropriately in the corporate monkey suit business people consider good etiquette. I traded in my usual T-shirt and khakis for a pinstripe suit with a red tie only to eagerly find myself staring Death in the face. Maybe I'm too late though? Maybe I'm trying to squeeze into a dying American dream, and my prevention at integration is merely Lady Fate saving me from a grizzlier demise?
Maybe all that talk about economic instability caused by limited world resources are true? Is peak oil as plausible as some seem to make it?
I can't answer that at this moment. All I know is that I'm back at stage one again, back to the old drawing board awaiting more Acme supplies to build my next device and attempt conquering the world again. That's my dream anyway - using art to stamp my brand on the universe around me. A trademark.
I suppose I'll stay in this fog awhile and write some more books, peddling them to whoever will stop and give me the time of day while I preach my nOnsense like some crazy old prophet in Hyde Park. At least it strikes up that fear in me - that life I found so lacking in the working world this past Monday. At least I'll be human for a little while longer, enjoying the beauty of Nature and the awakening chill of thick fog as I speed toward the unknown.
