Wednesday, November 25, 2009 2:00 AM
I had spent the previous day covering myself in layers, missing class and using too much Vick's Sinus Spray. I had to work at 11pm until 2am. I wanted to go home, desperately. I knew that if I waited to get some semi-decent sleep, I would be stuck in a gridlock for the holiday for 6 hours.
Just for the sake of not being sick in Bellingham, I was sure that if I left this town I would be healthy again.
So after limited sleep cycles and a congested head, I finish work. I feel slightly of death, but I can do this. I WILL do this.
So a shower, a diet coke, a hot dog sandwich for nourishment, all my vitamins, another hit of my sinus spray, and a fresh travel mug of coffee. This is how legends are made. I make it out the door by 3:00 and on the freeway by 3:05am.
This first hour is difficult. I thought it would be appropriate to listen to Animal Collective's new EP. Mistake. Instead of feeling a sensation of intensity like I would listening to Dark Side of The Moon, it turns into sleepy music. God Dammit, Animal Collective, you're suppose to excite me, not Interpol me. Well shit. I'm at the northern end of Everett.
The Second Hour:
I-5 is an immensely long stretch of highway if you don't deviate from it other than to find a rest stop. I begin to panic slightly and start (attempting) to drink my coffee in a moderate non-chugging fashion. I was somewhat successful as I recognize the Northgate Mall in Seattle. Fuck, I hate Seattle. But this is not a time to think of what's wrong with this city. Time for podcasts. We must all have podcast! We must all have podcasts forthwith! We must all think, and we must all have podcasts, and think each and every one of us to the very best his ability!
Adam Carolla. he can save me with his witty guests and commentary about everyday life.
Seth Green and Adam Carolla are discussing evolutionary theories on artificial intelligence and how we demand everything around us to make our next move for us (such as predictive texting on cellphones), and that is hypothesized to take us over eventually. This is going to help me. The coffee has completely been depleted. I am scared because the coffee has not begun to kick in yet it is all gone? "Have I become immune to a single cup of coffee?" I think to myself. "Perhaps this won't do it for me.
The fantastic thing about driving through Seattle at 4:30 AM is there is [almost] no traffic and the express way is mine. I feel like a king fucking my way through miles of outstretched pavement placed underneath onramps and offramps. As this sensation is exciting me in a questionably sexual way I realized that my eyes have opened further in an unnatural way, my eyes are slightly shaky. I imagined this is what cocaine would do to the body, and I realize; the coffee is now working. The Rolling Stones' "Sympathy For The Devil"
I smell the Tacoma waiting for me down the bend. How close am I? I want it so bad. Earl Greyhound's "Soft Targets" is so loud the only thing acknowledgeable within my hearing is the cough drop I'm slowly crunching between screaming lyrics. It's somewhere between 5:00-5:45 AM and this coffee I'm suspicious of perhaps did have something else in it because I feel like Freshman Year 14 hours before a midterm. The intensity is going crazy. I listen to everything of intensity, Wolfmother, Fleet Foxes, Queens of the Stone Age. The podcasts are no longer a necessity.
It's towards the later end of the fourth hour of the day. I at this point have lost all concept of reality and sleep deprivation has been conquered and tied up in the back of my car. I have been up for more than 20 hours. I realize that since first consciousness I have been sick in bed, sweating in bed trying to flush my system, jerking myself out of bed and going straight to work (until 2:00 AM). We cannot tarry here. Haste! Tacoma I've always found to be the apex of mediocrity but this morning is special. While it is pitch black the fog has arrived in full force. While construction is taking place the red lights are so bright that the fog has turned caution red which has consumed me up to about 10 feet from my peripheral vision. Nothing can stop this far and I doubt it will.
The red fog chases me all the way to Olympia, and yet nothing seems to be changing. Tumwater. For those of you who don't know about Tumwater, it is a fantastic place to stop into but I would imagine there's a higher suicide rate in that town than all of Norway during Winter Solstice. There is a truck stop in Tumwater that has been nurtured into a miniature college student Hajj for me. Every time I drive home I stop there to pee and buy a refreshing something or another. At this point in the evening I resemble Kramer from Seinfeld; hair disheveled, shirt half-tucked, glasses fogged from natural facial excretions of unrelenting exhaustion. I take care of my personal business and stare at the cornucopia of absolutely disgusting and delicious greasebombs to ingest before I hit the bricks again.
Usually I instantaneously run to the corndogs or the Subway booth but nothing seems to grab me. A woman who works the early morning shift approaches my disoriented presence. She is at least 50 looking like a sweet hick lady with an attitude, a woman I would imagine growing old with had I been that age. She says to me "anything catching your fancy?" to which I turn and smile "No, I'm here trying to find what it is I'm looking for." She replies "What is that exactly?" "I'm not quite sure." I say. She tilts her head slightly and says to me "I think we're all looking for that. If you do find what it is your looking for you know where I am sweety." as she pats my shoulder and walks back to the counter.
"Coffee, fuck it." I say under my breath. A little known fact about the Pilot truck stop franchise carries coffee brewed from Costa Rican coffee beans, which mildly excites me, but I know is not what I'm looking for. I go the counter and for fear of commonality avoid the lady involved in my metaphor at the counter and go to the other woman. As my $2.00 drip with room is being "rung up" I make eye contact with the lady. She sees my coffee and I shrug my shoulders as if to say "This will have to do for now." I walk outside and notice the large line of semi trucks turning in. I tend to forget that different cultures in American society exist at different times of day. I reexamine my biological status. Everything feels greasy and dirty, although I do have coffee, and while my buzz is still very prevalent I am no longer tweaked. I am normal and dirty and am okay. Tumwater 6:15. My time so far is impeccable.
At this point I feel no drive for anything but the road. Normalcy, I think overall, was what I was looking for. Although my concept of time is no longer existent I still feel a need for the status quo, whatever that may be. Rilo Kiley "More Adventurous". Life begins to ponder itself into a montage while I hit mid-Chehalis. I pass the Stihl Chainsaw store that I remember passing several years ago after an unfortunate Christmas outing hating myself and watching the blinking Christmas lights rev around the fiberglass cutout of the chainsaw on the side of the building. I remember the first time I drove north to Bellingham at 17 so assured that it would be my place, now realizing that I wasn't looking for cool people, but I was looking for more people like me. I remember housesitting for a family and having to pull their Yellow Labs out of a pile of barbed wire fencing that they got tangled into. So much riles through when you think about the existence of an album in your life and how many places you can pinpoint where you were at while that album was playing.
This lasts for a while and I grow weary of duetting my deep voice to Jenny Lewis' soft one. I find this is time for something new. Something that has been involved in me but not in a heavy way. Dirty Projectors' "Bitte Orca". I am not passing into Longview, and I am close. The sun is just beginning to peak over the mountains, but the fog and darkness are still suppressing it heavily. "Cannibal Resource" is banging hard as if to beat away the darkness and fog. My speed of my vehilce seems to have steadied to cruise, I feel something heavy hit my chest. I am arriving in Kelso. "Temecula Sunrise" is next, and again the music is pushing the darkness away, yet the fog is still strong. Soon Woodland and La Center, and I am about 10 minutes away from exiting the freeway for good. This is truly either the work of god or one of 2009's best indie albums.
The darkness is no more. Music has vanquished darkness and has signed a peace treaty with fog. This fog, like it did in Tacoma, has illuminated the red-orange morning sky and I am happier than I've been in five years. I feel the touch of something holy.
Final tracks Thin Lizzy's "The Boys Are Back In Town" and Starfucker's cover of "Girls Just Want To Have Fun". Appropriate and I am screaming that shit from the offramp to Battle Ground. The light is becoming more prevalent as I am entering the main intersection of which I was raised.
I am at the driveway and it is 7:25 AM. I haven't been up this early in 6 months, and only because I stayed awake to get to this point. I hide my pack of cigarettes in my backpack, which I grab with me and head to the door where my mother is greeting me in her bathrobe (she's getting ready for work). I eat a satsuma orange and discuss in an abridged form what you've just read.
The coffee remains in my car cold, full, and completely untouched.
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