mountain range. We pass small wooden houses with porches that face the slow highway curves. The shade trees in their yards are bare and gray. A cold breeze blows down from the mountains and rattles bare branches. Either there aren’t any people here or they’re hiding.
Dad tells us to stay alert, as if we’re mentally challenged. I’d get mad, but I know he’s worried sick, my poor war pig Goggy. He’s always been a reactionary kind of guy, but even the most radical anarchists are probably on his side now, wanting the world to go back mostly to the way it was before.
I trip over clumps of grass and my feet make crunching sounds when I stumble over patches of old snow. The sky is the same color as the snow today. It’s dirty and cold. I used to love to see snow under cloudy skies, but I don’t anymore. I try to pay more attention to where I’m going so I can manage to stay mostly quiet. It’s freaking me out, walking into a place that might be inhabited, but I hate myself for thinking the worst of others. Here I am, making my big pacifist statement, trying to believe other people are just like we are, and worth saving, and worth inspiring to higher causes and teaching the ways of justice, but aren’t I really just a member of an armed gang now?
I can’t let myself think about that, though, so I try to remember the good times. I used to love walking in crowds. When I went up to visit the Cal campus, I’d make a point of walking the streets of Berkeley. I usually ended up, sooner or later, in a conversation with someone cool. Someone real, like a bus driver or a flower seller or a bag lady or a handyman. Working people. People like the ones who used to live right here.
Just after the bombs, the whole West Coast of the country was on foot together, as if we suddenly got an urge to march together for some great cause. And I think our walking was at least partly a protest. So yeah, I miss walking in crowds in the time when people were sane and helpful and giving and kind. Brave. Noble. Someday, people will be like that again. I truly believe it. We’ll be comfortable again, and we’ll surely bitch about the things that annoy us, but our bitching will be ironic after this. We’ll actually learn from our mistakes this time, won’t we? I understand that life happens in cycles, and we need to live through bad times to recognize the good ones.
We’re all alone in this place, and the sky is brown and the air is so cold that I can’t feel my hands and feet. I’m not sure if I could break into a run if I had to. I feel a panic attack coming on, so I try to fill my mind with something else. Anything else. Something symmetrical and orderly. So I think about the train set Scotty had when he was a little kid. He had a train set and a slot car track, both, and he set them up together, with bridges and banked corners. He had a train crossing for the cars, and he ran the cars and the train at the same time. Most kids would’ve gotten off on having the train slam into the slot cars, or having the cars slam into the train, but not Scotty. He timed everything so there weren’t any collisions. He loved to watch all that perfectly timed movement and energy, and I have to admit that it could be hypnotic. But sometimes I got sick of the sound of those little wheels and motors going around and around and never actually getting anywhere, so I’d sneak up and pull the plug, and everything would come to a halt.
And that’s exactly what happened to us on the freeway. One minute we were cruising fast in our air-conditioned, gas-sucking Chevy Suburban, listening to good music on high-quality headphones and looking through tinted safety glass at the beauty of nature, sucking down resources like they were cheap beer, and the next minute the electrons stopped flowing and our truck died and all the other cars and trucks around us did, too.
We coasted without making any sound. We didn’t see any flashes or mushroom clouds or anything
Dad tells us to stay alert, as if we’re mentally challenged. I’d get mad, but I know he’s worried sick, my poor war pig Goggy. He’s always been a reactionary kind of guy, but even the most radical anarchists are probably on his side now, wanting the world to go back mostly to the way it was before.
I trip over clumps of grass and my feet make crunching sounds when I stumble over patches of old snow. The sky is the same color as the snow today. It’s dirty and cold. I used to love to see snow under cloudy skies, but I don’t anymore. I try to pay more attention to where I’m going so I can manage to stay mostly quiet. It’s freaking me out, walking into a place that might be inhabited, but I hate myself for thinking the worst of others. Here I am, making my big pacifist statement, trying to believe other people are just like we are, and worth saving, and worth inspiring to higher causes and teaching the ways of justice, but aren’t I really just a member of an armed gang now?
I can’t let myself think about that, though, so I try to remember the good times. I used to love walking in crowds. When I went up to visit the Cal campus, I’d make a point of walking the streets of Berkeley. I usually ended up, sooner or later, in a conversation with someone cool. Someone real, like a bus driver or a flower seller or a bag lady or a handyman. Working people. People like the ones who used to live right here.
Just after the bombs, the whole West Coast of the country was on foot together, as if we suddenly got an urge to march together for some great cause. And I think our walking was at least partly a protest. So yeah, I miss walking in crowds in the time when people were sane and helpful and giving and kind. Brave. Noble. Someday, people will be like that again. I truly believe it. We’ll be comfortable again, and we’ll surely bitch about the things that annoy us, but our bitching will be ironic after this. We’ll actually learn from our mistakes this time, won’t we? I understand that life happens in cycles, and we need to live through bad times to recognize the good ones.
We’re all alone in this place, and the sky is brown and the air is so cold that I can’t feel my hands and feet. I’m not sure if I could break into a run if I had to. I feel a panic attack coming on, so I try to fill my mind with something else. Anything else. Something symmetrical and orderly. So I think about the train set Scotty had when he was a little kid. He had a train set and a slot car track, both, and he set them up together, with bridges and banked corners. He had a train crossing for the cars, and he ran the cars and the train at the same time. Most kids would’ve gotten off on having the train slam into the slot cars, or having the cars slam into the train, but not Scotty. He timed everything so there weren’t any collisions. He loved to watch all that perfectly timed movement and energy, and I have to admit that it could be hypnotic. But sometimes I got sick of the sound of those little wheels and motors going around and around and never actually getting anywhere, so I’d sneak up and pull the plug, and everything would come to a halt.
And that’s exactly what happened to us on the freeway. One minute we were cruising fast in our air-conditioned, gas-sucking Chevy Suburban, listening to good music on high-quality headphones and looking through tinted safety glass at the beauty of nature, sucking down resources like they were cheap beer, and the next minute the electrons stopped flowing and our truck died and all the other cars and trucks around us did, too.
We coasted without making any sound. We didn’t see any flashes or mushroom clouds or anything
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