Empty Highway Quotes

It was clear that in a past life the detective had been a phone booth beside an empty highway.

The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed. The desert was the apotheosis of all deserts, huge, standing to the sky for what looked like eternity in all directions. It was white and blinding and waterless and without feature save for the faint, cloudy haze of the mountains which sketched themselves on the horizon and the devil-grass which brought sweet dreams, nightmares, death. An occasional tombstone sign pointed the way, for once the drifted track that cut its way through the thick crust of alkali had been a highway. Coaches and buckas had followed it. The world had moved on since then. The world had emptied.

She just stood there and looked at the empty highway, and you could almost tell how bored she was by the way she stood.

West Virginia was a haunted house. Grocery stores sat dark, empty diners stared out from blank windows, farmhouses collapsed beside the highway like rotten teeth.

The desert was the apotheosis of all deserts, huge, standing to the sky for what looked like eternity in all directions. It was white and blinding and waterless and without feature save for the faint, cloudy haze of the mountains which sketched themselves on the horizon and the devil-grass which brought sweet dreams, nightmares, death. An occasional tombstone sign pointed the way, for once the drifted track that cut its way through the thick crust of alkali had been a highway. Coaches and buckas had followed it. The world had moved on since then. The world had emptied.

We've got time," Jared says again. An abrupt panic, like a warning premonition, makes it impossible for me to speak for a moment. He watches the change on my face with worried eyes. "You don't know that." The despair that softened when he found me strikes like the lash of a whip. "You can't know how much time we'll have. You don't know if we should be counting in months or days or hours." He laughs a warm laugh, touching his lips to the tense place where my eyebrows pull together. "Don't worry, Mel. Miracles don't work that way. I'll never lose you. I'll never let you get away from me." She brought me back to the present - to the thin ribbon of the highway winding through the Arizona wasteland, baking under the fierce noon sun - without my choosing to return. I stared at the empty place ahead and felt the empty place inside. Her thought sighed faintly in my head: you never know how much time you'll have. The tears I was crying belonged to both of us.

I have tonight begun reading a stupid, shitty book by Kerouac called Big Sur, and I would give a ball to wake up tomorrow on some empty ridge with a herd of beatniks grazing in the clearing about 200 yards below the house. And then to squat with the big boomer and feel it on my shoulder with the smell of grease and powder and, later, a little blood.

Jesus Christ!" sterling shouted. "Where'd you learn to drive?" "nobody asked you for commentary!" Emma yelled back as they hurtled into the moving traffic. Luckily it was late and the lanes were mostly empty. "I don't want to die on the pacific coast highway!" sterling wailed. "Oh, I'm sorry," Emma's voice dripped acid. "Is there a different highway you'd like to die on? BECAUSE WE CAN ARRANGE THAT.

A car whipped past, the driver eating and a passenger clicking a camera. Moving without going anywhere, taking a trip instead of making one. I laughed at the absurdity of the photographs and then realized I, too, was rolling effortlessly along, turning the windshield into a movie screen in which I, the viewer, did the moving while the subject held still. That was the temptation of the American highway, of the American vacation (from the Latin vacare, "to be empty").

Why do so many Americans say they want their children to watch less TV, yet continue to expand the opportunities for them to watch it? More important, why do so many people no longer consider the physical world worth watching? The highway's edges may not be postcard perfect. But for a century, children's early understanding of how cities and nature fit together was gained from the backseat: the empty farmhouse at the edge of the subdivision; the variety of architecture, here and there; the woods and fields and water beyond the seamy edges--all that was and still is available to the eye. This was the landscape that we watched as children. It was our drive-by movie.

Some stories last many centuries, others only a moment. All alter over that lifetime like beach-glass, grow distant and more beautiful with salt. Yet even today, to look at a tree and ask the story Who are you? is to be transformed. There is a stage in us where each being, each thing, is a mirror. Then the bees of self pour from the hive-door, ravenous to enter the sweetness of flowering nettles and thistle. Next comes the ringing a stone or violin or empty bucket gives off -- the immeasurable's continuous singing, before it goes back into story and feeling. In Borneo, there are palm trees that walk on their high roots. Slowly, with effort, they lift one leg then another. I would like to join that stilted transmigration, to feel my own skin vertical as theirs: an ant-road, a highway for beetles. I would like not minding, whatever travels my heart. To follow it all the way into leaf-form, bark-furl, root-touch, and then keep walking, unimaginably further.

A traveling salesman once told me that if you tense butt muscles tight enough, you can run on an empty tank for miles.

Three o'clock in the morning. The highway is empty, under a malignant moon. The oil drippings make the roadway gleam like a blue-satin ribbon. The night is still but for a humming noise coming up somewhere behind a rise of ground. Two other, fiercer, whiter moons, set close together, suddenly top the rise, shoot a fan of blinding platinum far down ahead of them. Headlights. The humming burgeons into a roar. The touring car is going so fast it sways from side to side. The road is straight. The way is long. The night is short. (Jane Brown's Body")

Here the earth, as if to prove its immensity, empties itself. Gertrude Stein said: 'In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. That is what makes America what it is.' The uncluttered stretches of the American West and the deserted miles of roads force a lone traveler to pay attention to them by leaving him isolated in them. This squander of land substitutes a sense of self with a sense of place by giving him days of himself until, tiring of his own small compass, he looks for relief to the bigness outside -- a grandness that demands attention not just for its scope, but for its age, its diversity, its continual change. The isolating immensity reveals what lies covered in places noisier, busier, more filled up. For me, what I saw revealed was this (only this): a man nearly desperate because his significance had come to lie within his own narrow ambit.

IV REVEILLE Wake: the silver dusk returning Up the beach of darkness brims, And the ship of sunrise burning Strands upon the eastern rims. Wake: the vaulted shadow shaatters, Trampled to the floor it spanned, And the tent of night in tatters Straws the sky-pavilioned land. Up, lad, up, 'tis late for lying: Hear the drums of morning play; Hark, the empty highways crying "Who'll beyond the hills away?" Towns and countries woo together, Forelands beacon, belfries call; Never lad that trod on leather Lived to feast his heart with all. Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber Sunlit pallets never thrive; Morns abed and daylight slumber Were not meant for man alive. Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Breath's a ware that will not keep Up, lad: when the journey's over There'll be time enough to sleep.

At last week's Sunday service, Reverend Pike read a parade from the Gospels in which Jesus and His disciples, having arrived in a village, are invited by a woman into her home. Having made them all comfortable, this woman Martha, retreats into her kitchen to fix them something to eat. And all the while she's cooking and generally seeing to everyone's needs by filling empty glasses and getting second helpings, her sister, Mary is sitting at Jesus's feet. Eventually, Martha has had enough and she lets her feelings be known. "Lord," she says, "can't you see that my idler of a sister has left me to do all the work? Why don't you tell her to lend me a hand?" Or something to that effect. And Jesus, He replies, "Martha, you are troubled by too many things when only one thing is needful. And it is Mary who has chosen the better way." Well, I'm sorry. But if you ever needed proof that the Bible was written by a man, there you have it.

There pass the careless people That call their souls their own: Here by the road I loiter, How idle and alone. Ah, past the plunge of plummet, In seas I cannot sound, My heart and soul and senses, World without end, are drowned. His folly has not fellow Beneath the blue of day That gives to man or woman His heart and soul away. There flowers no balm to sain him From east of earth to west That's lost for everlasting The heart out of his breast. Here by the labouring highway With empty hands I stroll: Sea-deep, till doomsday morning, Lie lost my heart and soul.

I’m drinking a glass of water in the empty hotel bar at the Principe di Savoia and staring at the mural behind the bar and in the mural there is a giant mountain, a vast field spread out below it where villagers are celebrating in a field of long grass that blankets the mountain dotted with tall white flowers, and in the sky above the mountain it’s morning and the sun is spreading itself across the mural’s frame, burning over the small cliffs and the low-hanging clouds that encircle the mountain’s peak, and a bridge strung across a path through the mountain will take you to any point beyond that you need to arrive at, because behind that mountain is a highway and along that highway are billboards with answers on them – who, what, where, when, why – and I’m falling forward but also moving up toward the mountain, my shadow looming against its jagged peaks, and I’m surging forward, ascending, sailing through dark clouds, rising up, a fiery wind propelling me, and soon it’s night and stars hang in the sky above the mountain revolving as they burn. The stars are real. The future is that mountain.

As the bus took us north on a connection of dark farm roads and smaller highways, I started to wonder where all the cars were. How could the streets be so empty? How could people sleep when there was so much at stake, so much happening, when there were so many reasons to be awake and alive? And I wondered how it was that I could feel both empty, like these streets, and yet so full at the same time. And those weren't the only contrasting poles inside me. I felt sad and happy. Scared and exhilarated. I felt young and old.

It was impossible to see where the highway ended and heaven began—as if a huge eraser had dragged across the edge of the world.

Attempting to remove thoughts from your mind is similar to expecting a highway to be empty of cars. The highway is meant for cars and we shouldn’t expect it to be otherwise.

The orange turns to dull bronze light and continues to show what it has shown all day long, but now it seems to show it without enthusiasm. Across those dry hills, within those little houses in the distance are people who've been there all day long, going about the business of the day, who now find nothing unusual or different in this strange darkening landscape, as we do. If we were to come upon them early in the day they might be curious about us and what we're here for. but now in the evening they'd just resent our presence. The workday is over. It's time for supper and family and relaxation and turning inward at home. We ride unnoticed down this empty highway through this strange country I've never seen before, and now a heavy feeling of isolation and loneliness becomes dominant and my spirits wane with the sun.

Picking oranges in Florida. Pushing a broom in New Orleans. Mucking out horse-stalls in Lufkin, Texas. Handing out real estate brochures on street corners in Phoenix, Arizona. Working jobs that pay cash. ... The faces on the currency don't matter. What matters is the sight of a weathervane against a violent pink sunset, the sound of his heels on an empty road in Utah, the sound of the wind in the New Mexico desert, the sight of a child skipping rope beside a junked-out Chevrolet Caprice in Fossil, Oregon. What matters is the whine of the powerlines beside Highway 50 west of Elko, Nevada, and a dead crow in a ditch outside Rainbarrel Springs. Sometimes he's sober and sometimes he gets drunk. Once he lays up in an abandoned shed-this is just over the California state line from Nevada-and drinks for four days straight. It ends with seven hours of off-and-on vomiting. For the first hour or so, the puking is so constant and so violent he is convinced it will kill him. Later on, he can only wish it would. And when it's over, he swears to himself that he's done, no more booze for him, he’s finally learned his lesson, and a week later lies drunk again and staring up at the strange stars behind the restaurant where he has hired on as a dishwasher. He is an animal in a trap and he doesn't care. ... Sometimes he asks himself what he thinks he's doing, where the hell he's going, and such questions are apt to send him in search of the next bottle in a hurry. Because he's really not going anywhere. He's just following the highways in hiding and dragging his trap along behind him, he's just listening to the call of those roads and going from one to the next. Trapped or not, sometimes he is happy; sometimes he sings in his chains like the sea. He wants to see the next weathervane standing against the next pink sunset. He wants to see the next silo crumbling at the end of some disappeared farmer's long-abandoned north field and see the next droning truck with TONOPAH GRAVEL or ASPLUNDH HEAVY CONSTRUCTION written on the side. He's in hobo heaven, lost in the split personalities of America. He wants to hear the wind in canyons and know that he's the only one who hears it. He wants to scream and hear the echoes run away.

But when they don’t wear helmets, they abuse the taxpayers, taking a couple of weeks to die in intensive care, their primitive brains jellied by hard impact with the concrete highway. Somebody has to pick them up when they go down and deliver them to Emergency, regrettably.

Months later, when I rarely saw the Angels, I still had the legacy of the big machine -- four hundred pounds of chrome and deep red noise to take out on the Coast Highway and cut loose at three in the morning, when all the cops were lurking over on 101. My first crash had wrecked the bike completely and it took several months to have it rebuilt. After that I decided to ride it differently: I would stop pushing my luck on curves, always wear a helmet and try to keep within range of the nearest speed limit ... my insurance had already been canceled and my driver's license was hanging by a thread. So it was always at night, like a werewolf, that I would take the thing out for an honest run down the coast. I would start in Golden Gate Park, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head ... but in a matter of minutes I'd be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming up on the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to Santa Cruz ... not even a gas station in the whole seventy miles; the only public light along the way is an all-night diner down around Rockaway Beach. There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves. The momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon. I would come out of the park near the soccer field and pause for a moment at the stop sign, wondering if I knew anyone parked out there on the midnight humping strip.

weren't nearly as bad as the silence. He sighed, returning his attention to the parade of stores out the window. "And people said I was guilty of highway robbery." I kept an eye out for a parking spot. "I'm going to pretend you didn't just insult my job," I said, locating an empty spot up ahead in the town

When he crossed the line into Shelby County, he removed his badge, tossing the five-point star inside the glove box. It slid against a half-empty pint of Wild Turkey he'd forgotten was in there, clinking softly, a siren call he left unanswered for the moment. He felt naked without his beloved badge but also strangely protected by the anonymity of its absence. Without the star, he would draw no undue attention, make no advertisement of his presence to any rank-and-file Brotherhood in the county, rabid dogs always on the hunt. And no word would get back to Houston, where he was stationed, that he was poking around something, unauthorized by his superiors, something he guessed he did hold an outsize interest in as a cop, as a Texan, and as a man. In fact as long as he wasn't wearing the Rangers star, they couldn't stop him from doing any damn thing. Without the badge, he was just a black man traveling the highway alone.

the ambiguous conversation with the unseen serving-wench, the bags of hot-grease-scented food hurtling in through the window, condiments in packets, attempting to eat while lurching down a highway, volumes of messy litter that seemed to fill all the empty space in the mobe, a smell that outstayed its welcome.

Of course, the nonexistence of God is nothing more than a nonsense option. The categories of good and evil themselves require some sort of transcendent standard. What makes things good? What makes things evil? Atheists have, by and large, given up on the idea of an absolute standard of morality. After all, spiritual emptiness and the nonexistence of anything outside of the simple material universe is no way to come up with an ethical system. Morality is cultural preference (which cannot be said to be right or wrong) and fundamentally relative. It takes on (to be generous) the same authority as Wisconsin speed limits on a Nevada highway at night.

Evening and the flat land, Rich and somber and always silent; The miles of fresh-plowed soil, Heavy and black, full of strength and harshness; The growing wheat, the growing weeds, The toiling horses, the tired men; The long empty roads, Sullen fires of sunset, fading, The eternal, unresponsive sky. Against all this, Youth . . .

Daniel first kisses his brother in a town where no-one knows them, a no-account place that's barely even a town, just some buildings clustered around the highway: a smoky bar, an empty motel, a convenience store that only sells candy and condoms and beer. The nearest gas station is twenty miles away. The nearest bus station is fifty.

Everyone says they're empty. Everyone says – vast and flat. Everyone – mesmerizing. Nabokov probably said somewhere – indomitable. But no one had ever told use about the highway storms once you reach the tablelands. You see them from miles away. You fear them, and still you drive straight into them with the dumb tenacity of mosquitoes.

The truck looked just like a Civil War truck if they'd had trucks back in those times. But the truck ran, even though it didn't have a gas tank. There was an empty fifty-gallon gasoline drum on the bed of the truck with a smaller gasoline can on top of it, and there was a syphon leading from that can to the fuel line. It worked like this. Lee Mellon drove and I stayed on the back of the truck and made sure everything went all right with the syphon, that it didn't get knocked out of kilter by the motion of the truck. We looked kind of funny going down the highway. I'd never had the heart to ask Lee Mellon what happened to the gas tank. I figured it was best not to know.

The darkness may seem empty and vast, but my whiskers say it is criss-crossed with the paths of the birds—can you not feel them? High up, the rough drumbeat of the cheels carves broad highways above the clouds; over our heads, across the trees, you can trace the soaring songlines of the bulbuls, the trails left by the sharp swift sorties of the parakeets.

Psychoanalysis: An Elegy" What are you thinking about? I am thinking of an early summer. I am thinking of wet hills in the rain Pouring water. Shedding it Down empty acres of oak and manzanita Down to the old green brush tangled in the sun, Greasewood, sage, and spring mustard. Or the hot wind coming down from Santa Ana Driving the hills crazy, A fast wind with a bit of dust in it Bruising everything and making the seed sweet. Or down in the city where the peach trees Are awkward as young horses, And there are kites caught on the wires Up above the street lamps, And the storm drains are all choked with dead branches. What are you thinking? I think that I would like to write a poem that is slow as a summer As slow getting started As 4th of July somewhere around the middle of the second stanza After a lot of unusual rain California seems long in the summer. I would like to write a poem as long as California And as slow as a summer. Do you get me, Doctor? It would have to be as slow As the very tip of summer. As slow as the summer seems On a hot day drinking beer outside Riverside Or standing in the middle of a white-hot road Between Bakersfield and Hell Waiting for Santa Claus. What are you thinking now? I’m thinking that she is very much like California. When she is still her dress is like a roadmap. Highways Traveling up and down her skin Long empty highways With the moon chasing jackrabbits across them On hot summer nights. I am thinking that her body could be California And I a rich Eastern tourist Lost somewhere between Hell and Texas Looking at a map of a long, wet, dancing California That I have never seen. Send me some penny picture-postcards, lady, Send them. One of each breast photographed looking Like curious national monuments, One of your body sweeping like a three-lane highway Twenty-seven miles from a night’s lodging In the world’s oldest hotel. What are you thinking? I am thinking of how many times this poem Will be repeated. How many summers Will torture California Until the damned maps burn Until the mad cartographer Falls to the ground and possesses The sweet thick earth from which he has been hiding. What are you thinking now? I am thinking that a poem could go on forever.

Unfortunately the hostility that the European displayed toward the native cultures he encountered he carried even further into his relations with the land. The immense open spaces of the American continents, with all their unexploited or thinly utilized resources, were treated as a challenge to unrelenting war, destruction, and conquest. The forests were there to be cut down, the prairie to be plowed up, the marshes to be filled, the wildlife to be killed for empty sport, even if not utilized for food or clothing. In the act of 'conquering nature' our ancestors too often treated the earth as contemptuously and as brutally as they treated its original inhabitants, wiping out great animal species like the bison and the passenger pigeon, mining the soils instead of annually replenishing them, and even, in the present day, invading the last wilderness areas, precious just because they are still wildernesses, homes for wildlife and solitary human souls. Instead we are surrendering them to six-lane highways, gas stations, amusement parks, and the lumber interests, as in the redwood groves, or Yosemite, and Lake Tahoe-though these primeval areas, once desecrated, can never be fully restored or replaced.

There's a stranger in a car Driving down your street Acts like he knows who you are Slaps his hand on the empty seat and says "Are you gonna get in Or are you gonna stay out?" Just a stranger in a car Might be the one they told you about Well you never were one for cautiousness You open the door He gives you a tender kiss And you can't even hear them no more -- All the voices of choices Now only one road remains And strangers in a car Two hearts Two souls Tonight Two lanes You don't know where you're goin' You don't know what you're doin' Hell it might be the highway to heaven And it might be the road to ruin But this is a song For strangers in a car Baby maybe that's all We really are Strangers in a car (Driving down your street) Just strangers in a car (Driving down your street) Strangers in a car

As the old gent shuffled his way to the bureau, I scanned the room, curious as to his weakness. At the Sunshine hotel, for every room there was a weakness, and for every weakness an artifact bearing witness. Like an empty bottle that has rolled under the bed, or a feathered deck of cards on the nightstand, or a bright pink kimono on a hook. Some evidence of that one desire so delectable, so insatiable that it overshadowed all others, eclipsing even the desires for a home, a family, or a sense of human dignity.

THE GHOST OF THE AUTHOR'S MOTHER HAS A CONVERSATION WITH HIS FIANCÉE ABOUT HIGHWAYS ...and down south, honey. When the side of the road began to swell with dead and dying things, that's when us black children knew it was summer. Daddy didn't keep clocks in the house. Ain't no use when the sky round those parts always had some flames runnin' to horizon, lookin' like the sun was always out. back when I was a little girl, I swear, them white folk down south would do anything to stop another dark thing from touching the land, even the nighttime. We ain't have streetlights, or some grandmotherly voice riding through the fields on horseback tellin' us when to come inside. What we had was the stomach of a deer, split open on route 59. What we had was flies resting on the exposed insides of animals with their tongues touching the pavement. What we had was the smell of gunpowder and the promise of more to come, and, child, that'll get you home before the old folks would break out the moonshine and celebrate another day they didn't have to pull the body of someone they loved from the river. I say 'river' because I want you to always be able to look at the trees without crying. When we moved east, I learned how a night sky can cup a black girl in its hands and ask for forgiveness. My daddy sold the pistol he kept in the sock drawer and took me to the park. Those days, I used to ask him what he feared, and he always said "the bottom of a good glass." And then he stopped answering. And then he stopped coming home altogether. Something about the first day of a season, honey. Something always gotta sacrifice its blood. Everything that has its time must be lifted from the earth. My boys don't bother with seasons anymore. My sons went to sleep in the spring once and woke up to a motherless summer. All they know now is that it always be colder than it should be. I wish I could fix this for you. I'm sorry none of my children wear suits anymore. I wish ties didn't remind my boys of shovels, and dirt, and an empty living room. They all used to look so nice in ties. I'm sorry that you may come home one day to the smell of rotting meat, every calendar you own, torn off the walls, burning in a trashcan. And it will be the end of spring. And you will know.

For decades he had lived it up with nothing to live for, had tried to kill himself without a cause worth dying for; and during the thirty-some-odd strides his daughter made down the cement steps and across the empty street, he was convinced that he would endure any suffering or make any sacrifice to put things right again. He felt neither sadness nor hope, but all the weight of his own history, as if every highway he’d raced down, every day he’d squandered, every bad idea he’d chased down a dead-end road, in one single, swelling moment, could finally have a purpose.

To discover why canned laughter is so effective, we first need to understand the nature of yet another potent weapon of influence: the principle of social proof. It states that one means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct. The principle applies especially to the way we decide what constitutes correct behavior. We view a behavior as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it. Whether the question is what to do with an empty popcorn box in a movie theater, how fast to drive on a certain stretch of highway, or how to eat the chicken at a dinner party, the actions of those around us will be important in defining the answer.

the grand jurors, local men and women pulled off farms and out of post offices and barbershops, for whom a day at the courthouse counted as genuine excitement—entertainment, even—no matter that a man’s life was at stake. The DA had a storyteller’s instinct for pacing and plot twists, the leisurely parceling out of key information. There was no judge here, only a bailiff, the prosecutor, a court reporter, and the twelve members of the grand jury, who had the solemn task of deciding whether or not to indict Rutherford McMillan for first-degree homicide. Because all grand jury proceedings are private, the honey-colored benches in the gallery were empty. The deck was stacked squarely in the state’s favor. Neither the defendant nor his counsel was allowed to weigh in on the state’s presentation of evidence.

On July 6, 2016, a month after my statement was released, Philando Castile, a young black man, was driving home from the grocery store when a police officer pulled him over pulled him over for a broken taillight and shot him seven times. His fiancee in the passenger seat recorded him slumping over, his white shirt stained red like a Japanese flag, while a four-year old girl sat in the back. I thought, Evidence, this is it, the case that gets the verdict. It's right there, you can't turn away from it, can't reason your way out. But on June 16, 2018, the jury returned a not guilty verdict. In Oakland, people stormed the highways. Some called it chaos, but I saw reason. My testimony was incomplete because I'd blacked out. Philando couldn't testify because he was dead, couldn't even attend his own trial. I wish the prosecutor had called Philando to the stand, forced the jury to stare at the empty witness box, his name echoing into the silence, proceeded with questions. What were your nicknames for the little girl? Did your arms get tired when you carried her? Did you know, while getting dressed that morning, those were the clothes you would die in? What kind of cake did you want at your wedding?

About the Phones Closing my car door, you always say - Watch for deer and text when you get home. I want to, I do, but I will forget. Time moves and I forget. - Look I am trying, I am, but it's not the kind of thing that trying solves. Once on the side of a highway, a cop told me about dragging a full grown buck out the windshield of a wrecked car all by himself. About the sounds it made, Like the devil learning what regret feels like. About the woman it kicked to death in the driver's seat. The phone call he had to make to her grown daughter after whose first question was, Did the deer survive? Different cop, different time, different highway. Said she keeps her phone on silent then spoke about securing the crime scene in that classroom in Blacksburg where one student shot all the others. Every single one of them had a cell phone, she said, and for hours after every single one rang and rang or vibrated across the floor in the same slow way that blood pools. No one was allowed to answer, no one, so instead the phones rang all night until batteries were empty, voicemails full of a thousand Call me when you get this so I know you're okays. Turns out time moves the way blood does. Batteries too. Runs out like a startled deer across a road. - Listen I am trying to find a way to tell you this. There are things that trying solves but this is not one of them.

didn’t plan this,” Jack said. “But since it’s you and me—tell me about Brie.” “Tell you what, Jack?” “When she was leaving… It looked like there was something….” “Spit it out.” “You and Brie?” “What?” Jack took a breath, not happily. “Are you with my sister?” Mike had a swallow of his whiskey. “I’m taking a day off tomorrow—taking her down the Pacific Coast Highway through Mendocino to look for whales, see the galleries, maybe have a little lunch.” “Why?” “She said she’d like to do that while she’s here.” “All right, but you know what I’m getting at—” “I think you’d better tell me, so I don’t misunderstand.” “I’d like to know what your intentions are toward my sister.” “You really think you have the right to do that? To ask that question?” Mike asked him. “Just tell me what was going on between the two of you while I was gone.” “Jack, you’d better loosen your grip a little. Brie’s a grown woman. From where I stand, we’re good friends. If you want to know how she sees it, I think she’s the one you have to ask. But I don’t recommend it—she might be offended. Despite everything, she tends to think of herself as a grown-up.” “It’s no secret to you—she’s had a real bad year.” “It’s no secret,” Mike agreed. “You’re making this really tough, man…” “No, I think you are. You spent some time with her tonight. Did it look to you like anything is wrong? Like she’s upset or anything? Because I think everything is fine and you worry too much.” “I worry, yeah. I worry that maybe she’ll look to you for some comfort. For something to help her get through. And that you’ll take advantage of that.” “And…?” Mike prompted, lifting his glass but not drinking. “And maybe work a little of your Latin magic on her and walk away.” Jack drank his whiskey. “I don’t want you to do that to her.” Mike put down his glass on the bar without emptying it. “I would never hurt Brie. And it has nothing to do with whose sister she is. Good night, Jack.

So it was always at night, like a werewolf, that I would take the thing out for an honest run down the coast. I would start in Golden Gate Park, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head. . . but in a matter of minutes I'd be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming up on the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to Santa Cruz. . . not even a gas station in the whole seventy miles; the only public light along the way is an all-​night diner down around Rockaway Beach. There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves. The momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon. I would come out of the park near the soccer field and pause for a moment at the stop sign, wondering if I knew anyone parked out there on the midnight humping strip. Then into first gear, forgetting the cars and letting the beast wind out. . . thirty-​five, forty-​five. . . then into second and wailing through the light at Lincoln Way, not worried about green or red signals, but only some other werewolf loony who might be pulling out, too slowly, to start his own run. Not many of these. . . and with three lanes on a wide curve, a bike coming hard has plenty of room to get around almost anything. . . then into third, the boomer gear, pushing seventy-​five and the beginning of a windscream in the ears, a pressure on the eyeballs like diving into water off a high board. Bent forward, far back on the seat, and a rigid grip on the handlebars as the bike starts jumping and wavering in the wind. Taillights far up ahead coming closer, faster, and suddenly -- zaaapppp -- going past and leaning down for a curve near the zoo, where the road swings out to sea. The dunes are flatter here, and on windy days sand blows across the highway, piling up in thick drifts as deadly as any oil-​slick. . . instant loss of control, a crashing, cartwheeling slide and maybe one of those two-​inch notices in the paper the next day: “An unidentified motorcyclist was killed last night when he failed to negotiate a turn on Highway I.” Indeed. . . but no sand this time, so the lever goes up into fourth, and now there's no sound except wind. Screw it all the way over, reach through the handlebars to raise the headlight beam, the needle leans down on a hundred, and wind-​burned eyeballs strain to see down the centerline, trying to provide a margin for the reflexes. But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right. . . and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it. . . howling through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the long hill to Pacifica. . . letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge. . . The Edge. . . There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others -- the living -- are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.

The empty highway behind looked like a stretching rubber band.

It was marijuana that drew the line between us and them, that bright generational line between the cool and the uncool. My timidity about pot, as I first encountered it in Hawaii, vanished when, a few months later, during my first year of high school, it hit Woodland Hills. We scored our first joints from a friend of Pete's. The quality of the dope was terrible -- Mexican rag weed, people called it -- but the quality of the high was so wondrous, so nerve-end-opening, so cerebral compared to wine's effects, that I don't think we ever cracked another Purex jug. The laughs were harder and finer. And music that had been merely good, the rock and roll soundtrack of our lives, turned into rapture and prophecy. Jimi Hendrix, Dylan, the Doors, Cream, late Beatles, Janis Joplin, the Stones, Paul Butterfield -- the music they were making, with its impact and beauty amplified a hundredfold by dope, became a sacramental rite, simply inexplicable to noninitiates. And the ceremonial aspects of smoking pot -- scoring from the million-strong network of small-time dealers, cleaning "lids," rolling joints, sneaking off to places (hilltops, beaches, empty fields) where it seemed safe to smoke, in tight little outlaw groups of three or four, and then giggling and grooving together -- all of this took on a strong tribal color. There was the "counterculture" out in the greater world, with all its affinities and inspirations, but there were also, more immediately, the realignments in our personal lives. Kids, including girls, who were "straight" became strangers. What the hell was a debutante, anyway? As for adults -- it became increasingly difficult not to buy that awful Yippie line about not trusting anyone over thirty. How could parents, teachers, coaches, possibly understand the ineluctable weirdness of every moment, fully perceived? None of them had been out on Highway 61.

Why does God call us to dangerous places, to the highways and the hedges of the world? Because God’s house is not yet full. Because there are places that are empty and guests who have not yet received their invitation.

her head against the roof. She slowed as she reached Red Arrow Highway and made a right onto the empty road. Breathe. She needed to get to the police. She glanced back, but there was no one following. She faced the road ahead. Which way

At last week’s Sunday service, Reverend Pike read a parable from the Gospels in which Jesus and His disciples, having arrived in a village, are invited by a woman into her home. Having made them all comfortable, this woman, Martha, retreats into her kitchen to fix them something to eat. And all the while she’s cooking and generally seeing to everyone’s needs by filling empty glasses and getting second helpings, her sister, Mary, is sitting at Jesus’s feet. Eventually, Martha has had enough and she lets her feelings be known. Lord, she says, can’t you see that my idler of a sister has left me to do all the work? Why don’t you tell her to lend me a hand? Or something to that effect. And Jesus, He replies: Martha, you are troubled by too many things when only one thing is needful. And it is Mary who has chosen the better way. Well, I’m sorry. But if ever you needed proof that the Bible was written by a man, there you have it.

Senderovsky had only learned to drive three years ago, at the milestone age of forty-five, and only within the limits of a country setting. The highway on the other side of the river unsettled him. He was a fiercely awful driver. The half-empty local roads inspired him to 'gun' the engine of his sturdy but inflexible Swedish automobile, and he saw the yellow stripes bisecting the roads as suggestions meant for 'less experienced drivers,' whoever that might be. Because he did not believe in road marks or certain aspects of relativity, the concept of a blind curve continued to elude him. (His wife no longer allowed him to drive with their child onboard.) What was worse, he had somewhere picked up the phrase 'tooling around.

Two cats on a highway. Nighttime. One is lying on the shoulder. Hit by a car. The second is sitting by it, mouth open toward the heavens in silent pain. Full of pointy teeth. Instead of stars. Like ammunition. An empty road. Behind them. In front of them. Only the omnipresent dotted white line.

For anyone who was told they’re weird because they read too much. Because you’re not, and you don’t. CHAPTER ONE That July night seemed full of possibility, with the empty highway stretching out before us.

I don’t remember where we were going, or if we were coming from somewhere, but it was late, and the highway was empty. Your car was a piece of shit, so Chris wanted you to see how fast it could go. You got all the way up to ninety when you got pulled over. When the cop came to your window, he said, ‘Do you realize how fast you were going?’ You said, ‘Yes, sir. Ninety.’ And then the cop said, ‘Is there a reason you were driving twenty-five miles over the speed limit?’ You paused for a moment and then said, ‘I don’t like for things to go to waste.’ The officer looked at you, and you waved toward your dash. ‘I have this entire speedometer, and most of the time, I don’t even use half of it.

skimmed thirty feet over the hills and grasslands. They were flying dark, with no navigation lights and all emission sources powered down: no IFF transponder, radio, or FLIR (Forward-Looking Infrared Radar). Within minutes, they’d skirted Ashgabat, which lay fifteen miles out the side window. Fisher could see headlights moving along the highways and surface streets. They passed over the black oval of a lake and a rail line, and then the terrain began to change, hillocks turning into the rolling foothills of the Köpetdag. Redding sat at the console, watching the same map Bird and Sandy were using to navigate. One by one, villages disappeared behind them. Fisher read their names on the screen—Bagir, Chuli, Firyuza—until they were all gone and there was nothing but empty land. “Five miles from the border,” Bird called. Fisher went to the cockpit and knelt between the seats. Through the windscreen he could see the Köpetdag Range, an expanse of jagged peaks and ridgelines stacked against the even darker night sky. A red light started flashing on Bird’s console, followed by a beeping. A

GRACE’S HANDS SHOOK AS SHE TRIED to put the key in the ignition. She looked back at the house, threw the gear in reverse, and backed out of the drive, the tires spitting up gravel. Shifting into drive, she slammed her foot on the accelerator and flew down the road. The neighborhood was quiet, the sun still hidden, just an orange and pink glow rising through the barren trees. The car bounced over the railroad tracks, jolting her body into the air, smacking her head against the roof. She slowed as she reached Red Arrow Highway and made a right onto the empty road.

Unfortunately the hostility that the European displayed toward the native cultures he encountered he carried even further into his relations with the land. The immense open spaces of the American continents, with all their unexploited or thinly utilized resources, were treated as a challenge to unrelenting war, destruction, and conquest. The forests were there to be cut down, the prairie to be plowed up, the marshes to be filled, the wildlife to be killed for empty sport, even if not utilized for food or clothing. In the act of 'conquering nature' our ancestors too often treated the earth as contemptuously and as brutally as they treated its original inhabitants, wiping out great animal species like the bison and the passenger pigeon, mining the soils instead of annually replenishing them, and even, in the present day, invading the last wilderness areas, precious just because they are still wildernesses, homes for wildlife and solitary human souls. Instead we are surrendering them to six-lane highways, gas stations, amusement parks, and the lumber interests, as in the redwood groves, or Yosemite, and Lake Tahoe-though these primeval areas, once desecrated, can never be fully restored or replaced. I have no wish to overstress the negative side of this great exploration. If I seem to do so here it is because both the older romantic exponents of a new life lived in accordance with Nature, or the later exponents of a new life framed in conformity to the Machine, overlooked the appalling losses and wastages, under the delusion either that the primeval abundance was inexhaustible or else that the losses did not matter, since modern man through science and invention would soon fabricate an artificial world infinitely more wonderful than that nature had provided-an even grosser delusion. Both views have long been rife in the United States where the two phases of the New World dream came together; and they are still prevalent.

Pale blue. A vast empty expanse of it lay between them and the searing white disk hovering overhead. Nothing else. It could have been painted there, ripped from a paper ceiling, proving they didn’t exist. None of it did. Best to lean back in the seat and feel the wind and hope to catch sight of something, an eagle, a cloud, a slight incline, a tumble weed, a curve in the highway.

Pike said, “Coming your way.” Pike gunned his Jeep out of the Shell station, and turned onto the highway at the first intersection. He lost sight of the van when he slowed for oncoming cars, but slalomed between traffic and quickly caught up. “Eight lengths back. I’m by a yellow eighteen-wheeler.” “Looking.” Pike was still settling into a groove when the van’s right-turn indicator flashed. They had gone less than a mile. “Blinker.” “Shit, I don’t have you.” “Las Palmas. West side.” “I’m looking.” Pike slowed to put distance between himself and the van. A horn blew behind him, then another, but Pike braked even harder, hanging back as the van turned onto a street between large, undeveloped lots. It stopped in plain sight of the highway. Pike left the highway, but turned in the opposite direction, watching the van in his sideview mirror. A hundred yards later he turned into a parking lot surrounding a home furnishings outlet. “They stopped at an empty lot.” “I

They were not bound to anything. They could sample all the possibilities. They flashed by trees that took a hundred years to grow. They tore through towns where men lived their whole lives. . . . Back in the city their families were growing like vines. . . . They were flying from the majority, from the real bar mitzvah, the real initiation, the real and vicious circumcision which society was hovering to inflict through limits and dull routine,” Leonard wrote, re-creating these night rides with Mort in fiction. “The highway was empty. They were the only two in flight and that knowledge made them deeper friends than ever.”20

On the most basic question of all, “who is a Jew?” Elisabeth could find no solid answers. Many of her interviewees simply shrugged: “Ask three Jews, get five opinions.” In a later Christianity Today article, Elisabeth summarized her search for answers. “It is not, Israel officially proclaims, a racial question. There are Jews in every anthropologically-defined “race”—from the black Ethiopian to the Chinese orthodox Jew. “It is not a religious question. Probably fewer than ten percent of Israelis are orthodox Jews, and many are not only not religious, but are militantly anti-God. “To be Jewish is not a linguistic question. Over seventy languages are spoken in Israel, even though Hebrew is the official language and strong efforts are made to encourage everybody to learn it. “It is not a cultural question. Some Jews, desperately casting about for a definition that would satisfy me, said that Jewishness is a “cultural consciousness.” But what culture? Elisabeth had seen keening eastern Jewish women in Arab dress, Jews from New York’s East Side, Russian Jews, and Israeli natives born on kibbitzes. There were clearly no common denominators in terms of rituals, speech, dress, or outlook. “Is Jewishness then a political category?” Elisabeth continued. “Israel is a political state, but there are millions of Jews who are not Israelis. There are thousands of “Israelis” who are not Jews—every Arab now “assimilated” into the nation of Israel by conquest is officially an Israeli . . .” At the time the Israeli government defined Jews genetically, which to Elisabeth seemed a strange contradiction when they so vehemently deny that Jewishness has anything to do with race. But the determining question is, “‘Who is your mother?’ Anyone born of a Jewish mother is Jewish. The question as to what makes her Jewish has no answer. If your father is Jewish, if he is even a rabbi, it will not help you at all.”⁠3 “I have come to the conclusion that it remains for Israel; alone to execute justice for those who are its responsibility. If its highways must cut through the Arabs’ desert, if it claims ‘eminent domain,’ it must justly compensate those who have been displaced, those whose empty houses and lands Israel is now determined to fill with its own immigrants.

Sometimes the credit in the bank of petience becomes empty, and it cannot longer sustain all the drama laid at her door, how many forgivness does one need before helping themselves with all the help and understanding laid at their disposal,from relatives and family, how many tears must everyone cry for you to change your ways, but nothing seem to help least of all you towards yourself, you think the whole world is against you but its not true, you are against yourself, this has been the problem, and you want to blame all others, its so easy to avoid responsibility, we have all been there and done that, we have all faced challanges, but the highway to spiritual growth, begins with facing yourself taking up responsibility for you, by doing that you take up responsibility for all others, Every day, the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars rise in the east and set in the west, why do you make life so hard for yourself, by refusing the light that shines onto you from celestial heavens, do not be afraid to change, life changes us all, we are the flowers in the wilderness, where the wind challenges us not to break, we are the still garden, birds flying, the golden yellow sun pouring her energy onto the stillness, appriciate the moment, be still, be love towaards yourself, be love towards others, be love towards nature, be love towards animals, be love to life

I'm a drifter August 5, 2024 at 9:38 AM [Verse] I see you standing there, a smile that could light up the night, Your eyes are calling me, but I know it wouldn’t be right. Got one at home who loves me, she's my guiding light, Even an outlaw's heart can feel the truth in black and white. [Verse 2] The whiskey bottle's empty, the neon signs burn bright, Temptation's getting stronger under these barroom lights. But promises aren't meant to break, even when out of sight, My mind's a battlefield, and my heart's in the fight. [Chorus] I'm a drifter, a rambler, living nights in neon haze, But I won’t let a moment's spark set my world ablaze. I'll keep riding down that highway, back to her embrace, Even an outlaw knows where they belong, every single day. [Bridge] The call of freedom whispers, and I've answered once or twice, But loyalty’s a brand on me, paid its heavy price. I’ll keep my boots from wandering into a love that isn’t mine, Even outlaws need a home and a reason to decline. [Verse 3] So I'll tip my hat and walk away, though it's harder than it seems, Back to where she waits for me, the woman of my dreams. She understands this outlaw’s heart and all his crazy schemes, Even outlaws know where love's light truly beams. [Chorus] I'm a drifter, a rambler, living nights in neon haze, But I won’t let a moment's spark set my world ablaze. I'll keep riding down that highway, back to her embrace, Even an outlaw knows where they belong, every single day.

The Temptation of Outlaws August 5, 2024 at 9:38 AM [Verse] I see you standing there, a smile that could light up the night, Your eyes are calling me, but I know it wouldn’t be right. Got one at home who loves me, she's my guiding light, Even an outlaw's heart can feel the truth in black and white. [Verse 2] The whiskey bottle's empty, the neon signs burn bright, Temptation's getting stronger under these barroom lights. But promises aren't meant to break, even when out of sight, My mind's a battlefield, and my heart's in the fight. [Chorus] I'm a drifter, a rambler, living nights in neon haze, But I won’t let a moment's spark set my world ablaze. I'll keep riding down that highway, back to her embrace, Even an outlaw knows where they belong, every single day. [Bridge] The call of freedom whispers, and I've answered once or twice, But loyalty’s a brand on me, paid its heavy price. I’ll keep my boots from wandering into a love that isn’t mine, Even outlaws need a home and a reason to decline. [Verse 3] So I'll tip my hat and walk away, though it's harder than it seems, Back to where she waits for me, the woman of my dreams. She understands this outlaw’s heart and all his crazy schemes, Even outlaws know where love's light truly beams. [Chorus] I'm a drifter, a rambler, living nights in neon haze, But I won’t let a moment's spark set my world ablaze. I'll keep riding down that highway, back to her embrace, Even an outlaw knows where they belong, every single day.

They are 7 in number, just 7 In the terrible depths they are 7 Bow down, in the sky they are 7 In the terrible depths, the dark houses They swell, they grow tall They are neither female nor male They are a silence heavy with seastorms They bear off no women their loins are empty of children They are strangers to pity, compassion is far from them They are deaf to men's prayers, entreaties can't reach them They are horses that grow to great size that feed on mountains They are the enemies of our friends They feed on the gods They tear up the highways they spread out over the roads They are the faces of evil they are the faces of evil They are 7 they are 7 they are 7 times 7 In the name of heaven let them be torn from our sight In the name of the Earth let them be torn from our sight

The farm, unlike the highway, was a community, with the only intimation that it might not survive coming in the arrival of a college-educated daughter, “smart, well-dressed, confident, blooming with health and energy, . . . a breath of air from another world.” It seemed unlikely that she would wind up on the farm: the city, “at once so menacing and so promising,” had claimed her for its own. George saw the future himself when he spent the next night in a college town where the streets were empty except for automobiles, each containing a couple or two “bent on pleasure—usually vicarious pleasure—in the form of a movie or a dance or a petting party.” Anyone unlucky enough not to be among these “private, mathematically correct companies” would be alone. “There was no place where strangers would come together freely—as in a Bavarian beer hall or a Russian amusement park—for the mere purpose of being together and enjoying new acquaintances. Even the saloons were nearly empty.” All of this convinced George that the technology industrialization had made possible—automobiles, movies, radio, mass-circulation magazines, the advertising that paid for them—was creating an exaggerated desire for privacy. It was making an English upper-class evil a vice of American society. This was the sad climax of individualism, the blind-alley of a generation which had forgotten how to think or live collectively, of a people whose private lives were so brittle, so insecure that they dared not subject them to the slightest social contact with the casual stranger, of people who felt neither curiosity nor responsibility for the mass of those who shared their community life and their community problems. Americans

Evening and the flat land, Rich and somber and always silent; The miles of fresh-plowed soil, Heavy and black, full of strength and harshness; The growing wheat, the growing weeds, The toiling horses, the tired men; The long empty roads, Sullen fires of sunset, fading, The eternal, unresponsive sky. Against all this, Youth . . . —O Pioneers!, Willa Cather

memory of Parker and Packer in their Pullman car with their food thrown about and the half-empty bottle of gin on its side. How quickly Emmett had judged those two; condemned them for the spoiled and callous manner in which they treated their surroundings.

Psychopaths have their own bars in Hell. They don’t waste time on empty highways. You’ll see.

Just outside Everett on Highway 2 near Snohomish. Parking behind an empty office building near the road out of town.

Linda closed the door without answering. She searched the car again to ensure she hadn’t missed anything before the State Police arrived. A tattered highway atlas. Three empty packs of cigarettes, a lighter, a packet of ketchup, four stale French fries, and a corpse.

Jeffrey ran to his car parked outside Mr Roslan's block, not wanting to lose sight of the young man and remembering Faizal's number plate. He found the black Nissan and pursued it from two or three cars away. It had started to drizzle and he almost lost him a few times along the Bukit Timah and Kranji Expressways, but kept a close eye on the back of Faizal's car. For twenty minutes they drove like an invisible convoy, before Faizal turned off the highway into the Lim Chu Kang area. Keeping his distance, Jeffrey saw Faizal stop his car by the main gate of Pusara Abadi, the Muslim cemetery ground. Jeffrey swerved to the side and waited until he saw Faizal getting out of the car empty-handed and entering the cemetery. Then, getting out of his car he pried open the Nissan's boot with an Allan key that he always carried in his pocket. Inside was a black trash bag and a long machete, well-worn and used, crusted along its edges with a dark stain. It was soil, not blood, as he lifted his finger to taste it. Jeffrey put the machete back, closed the boot and went closer into the burial grounds, the long weeds brushing the sides of his trousers. Faizal stood in a far corner of the cemetery. Jeffrey stopped, crouched behind a large tombstone and watched. A darker, smaller man appeared next to Faizal. They talked for a few minutes; several crumpled dollar notes were exchanged. Faizal patted the man's back. The man departed. Then Faizal walked back to his car. Jeffrey continued to watch. Faizal returned with the machete. Taking his time, he hacked away at the overgrown scrub around a blue minaret tombstone. Slow and lethargic like a landscape gardenener, he pulled up the weeds and threw them into a pile at the side. Jeffrey waited until Faizal cleared the vegetation and left the grounds, before inching forward. On the minaret tombstone, he saw the engraved name, 'Rubianah binte Bakar' - she had died eight years ago.

If I Can't Love You" If I can't love you, then I want to live on some blind sea, Wherever the freighters squint along the horizon, Wherever it is your look arrives from, that is, wherever The branches dream of rain, wherever your goodbye Grasps the stems of stars, someplace where the day Learns to live leaf by leaf, where night quivers on the lake, A place, this place, where I arrive even before my dreams, Before my shadow that hobbles along still tied to the earth. But if I can't love you, not even wherever it is your words Arrive from, words that kiss the dust into clouds, words That scratch the back door, that travel a road no one knows Except for the night stopping here and there to cover an old wound, If I can't love you then, I can no longer apologize for the world, For the volcanic heart of the man reaching for his pistol, For the screams held in broken glass along the highway, For the mouths of the dead still asking for water. If I can't love you, then I want each breath to track you To wherever it is your look arrives from, through some fog Muzzling the streets, over some scorpion burrowing the desert, Beyond the canyon that refuses my echo, beyond the sky That splinters on the horizon, wherever it is your letters Never return from, where the eyes in the windows are all shut, Because the assassins are alive in the stones, because The wars are gathering their orchestras of arrogance and hate. If I can't love you, then no smile can have a face of its own, The fire of yesterday's sun has already been swept into space, Into wherever it is your look arrives from, the way the lizard Disappears into the rocks, the way the past is emptied from my shoes, Because wherever it is your look arrives from, these words approach Like miners chipping through granite, heavy with apology And love, with a fragrant guilt that embarrasses the flowers, Approaching a place, wherever it is, where I will deserve you. Richard Jackson

Of Jacob’s arrival, on a February night in 1760, in Częstochowa They get on the Warsaw highway. The wheels of the carriage clatter over the slick cobblestones. The horses of the six armed men must pull forward and keep to the narrow road so as not to fall into the mud. Dusk approaches, and the last scraps of color fade into darkness, white murks into gray, gray becomes black, and black vanishes into the abyss that opens up before human eyes. It is everywhere, under every thing in the world. The little town of Częstochowa is situated on the left side of the Warta River, facing the monastery on the hill. It is made up of some dozen little homes, low, unsightly, damp, set up around a rectangular marketplace and along several little streets. The market is almost empty, its uneven, undulating cobblestones thinly iced over so that they seem to be covered in a shiny glaze. Yesterday’s trade fair has left horse droppings, trampled hay, and litter not yet swept up. Most of the little houses have double doors protected by an iron bar, which means that business is conducted inside them, although it would be difficult to guess what sort.

Attempting to remove thoughts from your mind is similar to expecting a highway to be empty of cars. The highway is meant for cars and we shouldn’t expect it to be otherwise.

Suppose that boom shaking in our body can be a physical reminder that we are all connected-- that if the cassowary population decreases, so does the proliferation of fruit trees, and with that hundreds of animals and insects then become endangered. Boom, I want to tell the people at Siesta Key, whom I see dumping empty poptato chip bags into the shrubs of sea grapes from my blanket on the beach. Boom to the man in the truck in front of me of Highway 5, who tossed a whole empty fast food sack out his window and then, later, a couple of still-lit cigarettes. Boom, I want to say the family who left their empty plastic water bottles on a bench at Niagara Falls State Park, only to have two of them blow over and plummet into the falls. Don't you see? We are all connected. Boom.

US Highway 1. A gray snake of concrete writhed past her. The Oceanrest exit let off onto an artery road, two lanes on either side of a double yellow line, a dying pulse bloodletting into the sea. Before the iron lung economy, there’d been a trailer park by the highway, and an ice cream shop, and a very large church. Their razed bodies curled in shallow graves, their bones hidden in underbrush. A monster licked the skulls empty, scavenged the flesh.

The tables are crowded with American civilian construction engineers, men getting $30,000 a year from their jobs on government contracts and matching that easily on the black market. Their faces have the look of aerial photos of silicone pits, all hung with loose flesh and visible veins. Their mistresses were among the prettiest, saddest girls in Vietnam. I always wondered what they had looked like before they’d made their arrangements with the engineers. You’d see them at the tables there, smiling their hard, empty smiles into those rangy, brutal, scared faces. No wonder those men all looked alike to the Vietnamese. After a while they all looked alike to me. Out on the Bien Hoa Highway, north of Saigon, there is a monument to the Vietnamese war dead, and it is one of the few graceful things left in the country. It is a modest pagoda set above the road and approached by long flights of gently rising steps. One Sunday, I saw a bunch of these engineers gunning their Harleys up those steps, laughing and shouting in the afternoon sun. The Vietnamese had a special name for them to distinguish them from all other Americans; it translated out to something like “The Terrible Ones,” although I’m told that this doesn’t even approximate the odium carried in the original.

We tramped over, and as we stepped from the thick trees, we all stopped and stared. Then Corey raced forward, arms raised. “It’s a road. Oh my God. A road!” He dropped to his knees by the roadside. “Oww.” Daniel helped him back to his feet. “The knee is good,” I said. “But the knee is not completely healed. Be careful.” “It’s a road,” Corey said, pointing. “A dirt road,” Hayley muttered. “So? We’ve been slogging through the forest for two days. What do you want? A six-lane highway?” “That’d be nice.” “Yeah, until you raced out, screaming for help, and got mowed down by a logging truck.” He walked into the middle and turned, waving his arms. “It’s a road!” I patted his back. “It’s a lovely road. Now, which way do we go?” Corey looked one way, the brown ribbon extending into emptiness. He looked the other way, saw the same thing and his shoulders slumped. “Damn.

Instinctively, Cody glanced over but all he could see was the gaping silver-rimmed muzzle of a snub-nosed large caliber revolver an inch from his eye. The cylinder revolved, filled with dull lead bullets, as the trooper pulled the trigger. There was a tremendous explosion of light and thunder. He could no longer see out of his right eye, but it was more than that. There was no pain, only tremendous silence. Then he was floating, light as air, as if his lungs had filled with helium. He passed through the sheet metal roof of his pickup into the night, which was no longer cold. As he rose his eyesight was restored but he no longer had feeling in his limbs and his arms hung loose at his sides. He looked down. He could see the top of his pickup from above, the bed of his truck which was empty except for a crumpled fast-food wrapper in the corner, then the rusted metal roof of the First National Bar. The windows of his pickup strobed three more times but there was no sound and he felt nothing. Cody’s life didn’t pass before his eyes, but he clearly saw the photo of Justin in his football uniform and a vision of Jenny sleeping in bed from years before they separated the first time and he rose until he could see the river and the ribbon of highway through the valley and Jimmy and the truck driver emerge from the bar and stand on the porch and he knew what happened to those poor girls and he felt both cheated and angry at the same time and he wished he could do it all over again, everything. Especially the last five minutes. Then nothing. No sound, smell, or sight. Peace.

Accidental death then,” Tubman said with some relief. “Or what we like to call ‘death by misadventure,’ if you add in the empty bottle. Is Skeeter on the way?” “As far as I know,” Larry said. “Cody had him called.

Lacunae Lacunae aren’t What was going to be Empty anyway. They aren’t spaces With uses, such As margins or highway edges. Lacunae are losses In the middle of places- Drops where something Documented happened But the document is Gone-pond shaped Or jagged.

Psychoanalysis: An Elegy" What are you thinking? I think that I would like to write a poem that is slow as a summer As slow getting started As 4th of July somewhere around the middle of the second stanza After a lot of unusual rain California seems long in the summer. I would like to write a poem as long as California And as slow as a summer. Do you get me, Doctor? It would have to be as slow As the very tip of summer. As slow as the summer seems On a hot day drinking beer outside Riverside Or standing in the middle of a white-hot road Between Bakersfield and Hell Waiting for Santa Claus. What are you thinking now? I’m thinking that she is very much like California. When she is still her dress is like a roadmap. Highways Traveling up and down her skin Long empty highways With the moon chasing jackrabbits across them On hot summer nights. I am thinking that her body could be California And I a rich Eastern tourist Lost somewhere between Hell and Texas Looking at a map of a long, wet, dancing California That I have never seen. Send me some penny picture-postcards, lady, Send them. One of each breast photographed looking Like curious national monuments, One of your body sweeping like a three-lane highway Twenty-seven miles from a night’s lodging In the world’s oldest hotel. What are you thinking? I am thinking of how many times this poem Will be repeated. How many summers Will torture California Until the damned maps burn Until the mad cartographer Falls to the ground and possesses The sweet thick earth from which he has been hiding. What are you thinking now? I am thinking that a poem could go on forever.

Who do you think you are? Is it too much to ask for a cup of coffee? You’re a woman, aren’t you? What do you think you’ll do once you’re married? I shouldn’t have to call for you all day long just to get a glass of water! You’re pretty stuck-up for someone with grades like yours.” My father said to my mother, “What’s wrong with her? She used to be a good girl. It’s your fault she turned out that way. All she does is sulk.” My mother’s face turned deathly pale. I witnessed all of this through the wide-open door of my parents’ room. “She takes after her aunt,” my mother said. “You know as well as I do how stubborn and empty-headed that younger sister of yours is. Besides, it’s not like I had her alone. Why do you blame everything on me?