July 12, 2005
shaman
Echo was driving south, steady in the slow lane. On the interstate, it was his habit to stay right. There were three bottles of diet Coke on the seat next to him, a new pack of gum and a couple of candy bars in a plastic bag. The radio was off, but his fingers drummed an uneven rhythm on the steering wheel. It was three in the morning and he was alone in the darkness, the steady thrum thrum thrum of the white lines going past him, now and then a distant red taillight wandering in the darkness, highway reflectors marking steady time, steady distance.
His right hand reaches for the pack of cigarettes, then withdraws and he opens a soda instead, the sharp liquid a cold burn in his throat. He's driving by feel more then by sight, or by the feel of what his eyes are trying to tell his brain; not that he's tired, because he isn't, but his mind is somewhere else, somewhere familiar, in a place where the difference between the road and not-the-road is a little harder to tell. As he swings his Pontiac across the miles, he's imagining, or remembering, or dreaming, or... or something. He's looking for something, he is sure of that. But it's not at the end of the journey, he is also sure of that. If he finds it, he will have it with him when he arrives. But it's not on the road, not on the highway. He's been driving for two days, living on diet Coke and Doritos, he was thinking...
It's like the way a shaman uses physical discomfort, sleep deprivation, rhythmic drumming -- fasting to break the barriers between the world of the hands and the world of the spirits. And all over the country, all over the Eisenhower Interstate Highway system, people are driving cars, driving trucks, unsuspecting that they are fulfilling their true shamanic callings, seeking spiritual revelations, bringing gifts to the rest of the population, the dark ones. and they don't even know it, they couldn't tell you what happens out there...
Echo was looking for death and resurrection, in the southbound lanes.
Beside him on the seat, his phone purred green, the noise was like ice water on his meditations.
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posted by matthew at 06:26 PM