Late last night I stood outside this room
Without the moon these windows were black
But I could see that I was not mistaken
And I would never be coming back

There was a gunshot-moment of thought at 3am.  I take it back. There are always gunshot moments of thought at 3am, those that streak through the dead bedroom air like a comet or a missile.  They stroke the molecules into shimmering activity; unrest is met with sleepless eyes.  The old fuck you moment of cold sweat and assignation: here's a list of what I done wrong, and here's how I feel about it in technicolor, filling in the dread black spaces of air above my head, a cinescope of shame and regret.

Success is a lousy teacher.  I am taught well by my failures.

Way way back in, let's call it 1992 I woke up falling, flailing, failing my way through the soupy post-spring pre-summmer air of Mesilla Park, and I walked myself from worried regret to Get The Fuck Out Of Dodge in a four hour slide down the list of my failures: school, work, love, life, religion and sex, money and blood, family and friends.  I slid out of bed, I got the keys in my hand, I drove to Alpine.

Down the street the shadows followed them
I guess some men were meant to grow cold
They just get lost and make it their discovery
Long shadows turn some hearts cold
Somebody please tell Mary
Somebody please tell Mary

The world was dark and cold when I left from a friend's house-sitting gig the next morning.  I'd stayed with him because the house he was sitting was quite nice, and I could start early from there without waking my roommates.  At 4:30am I got into my car, a Pontiac Sunbird coupe, and started out the old road to Hillsboro, the valley road that follows the river, the air cold and still in pre-dawn.  Past Ft. Seldon, past Leasburg Dam, out on state road 185, out past Radium Springs, well on my way to Hatch, NM.  Lost in cold black pre-dawn thought, mind empty and ehoing, speeding along ghost trails through the valley, Rio Grande on my right, the entire universe on my left.

Late last night I stood outside this room
Without the moon these windows were black
But I could see that I was not mistaken
And I will never be coming back
Somebody please tell Mary
Somebody please tell Mary

To the Gila wilderness, ignoring Hillsboro's lack of taste, it all too bright and cheery.  I don't remember much of the woods, the mountains.  I was so lost in my head, with so much music and so much trouble in my eyes, and nothing could rouse my instincts for realizing that I'd never see this again, not this way.

The road curved a lot, and was a joy to drive fast.  That much I knew.  Ignored Silver City except for gas, smokes, and caffeine.  Drove into the heart of the Gila, forest as dense as any. Hours in that pine.  By mid-morning the sun was at my back as I rapidly descended the mountains down into the sub-sonoran, down into the alien rust desert, the flast scrub nothing that hangs high between plateaus on the border of New Mexico and Arizona.  Fast onto laser straight state and county two lane roads burning in the early summer heat, my head racing the car, trying to find the edge of the world, my world, the bare edge of my trouble.  My trouble was a headfull, a heartfull, a bucket of blood and bile and a whole chain of hooks that dug deep with each mile, pulled harder with each step of escape.

I stopped at the foothills just before the turn onto hiway 666.  There were no coincidences.  I got out of the car, lit a cigarette, and stared the the gathering storm.

Everyone Gone After Me.

The air before one of those fast violent purple and deep green apocalyptic storms is unique, has taste and texture and smell.  It has dimension and weight and is not breathed without notice.  The added ions stir primordial responses, deep-core processes that invigorate and make ready.  Flight.  Run and hide.  Find shelter.  In front of my car, a blueblack sky cut by jagged edges of mountain, around me a flood plain desert soon to be slick with alchemical mud, the stuff of life.  Lightning and notice; my eyes drew out of their steady inward gaze.  It was like waking up on the moon.

Failure makes you self-centered.

Trouble comes up slowly
A neverlasting light come to shine all over me
Bright as the morning
Like all of heaven's love come to shine on me
And to you who never need
Fuck yourselves, I need some more room to breathe

There's a spot on the drive between two mountains that is tied together with a road that edges parallel to them, a string taut between to points of fuzzy granite sharp against the black sky.  The road is miraculously new asphalt, quiet straight and recently poured.  I'd just come off a section of road too narrow, too curvy, too pitched and unyeilding and pot-holed to be real.  My car's brakes were squealing from heat and exhaustion. I pulled off onto a soft green shoulder and got out of the car, trying to focus on anything other than the road.  The air was 40 degrees cooler than the desert floor, the storm pushing cold air past me as it rushed downhill.  I smoked a cigarette and tried to relax.  The road would turn twisty and stupid and rough again, with switchbacks and corkscrews and 5mph! Danger! signs.  I'd already hit a stretch where I'd had to back up, in reverse, around a corner, to make way for a coming RV that was grinding slowly down the hill...the two lanes too narrow and no shoulders, the whole ordeal tricky and slow.  The driver of the RV was squinting at the front of my bumper the whole time, furiously sucking on a cigarette, eyes red, baseball cap a dark ring of sweat.  He never once looked at my face.

The storm rumbled ahead of me, moving my way, black and big and everything I needed.  I got in the car, I used the new straight road to cool the brakes and smoke and think about nothing, which is a way of thinking about everything but not committing to a single idea.  The nice road lept from under my wheels and the old 1940's concrete two lane, poured over a logging and mining road that predated the United States, became demanding again as my speed crept up and the rain started to hit the windshield.

Here comes the devil prowling around
One whiskey for every ghost
And I'm sorry for what I've done
Cause it's me who knows what it cost
It breaks and it breathes, and it tears you apart
It bites and it bleeds
And this desert turns to ocean over me

Failure makes you stupid.

The switchback in front of me was one lane wide, signs as big as my car warning me to slow down, warning drivers of large vehicles to get out, walk the road, close it with a marker or flare, and proceed with caution.  It was a blind 120 degrees around a point, with a steep dropoff to my left and a sharp cliff to the right, the road carved into it.  I took it at 20.  Just because.

My body was trying to eject my head.

The rain and the lightning got serious another quarter mile on, with hail forcing me to stop and park under an overhang, half my car still in the lane.  I hadn't seen a car since the RV.  Lightning lit the sky, furious strobing bursts that lasted ten, fifteen, twenty seconds at a time and had no real delay between bursts, causing the air to rumble continuously.  I took stock:

I was in the middle of nowhere.  No one knew where I was or when I was supposed to return.  No one knew my route.  I doubted anyone could describe my car.
I was in the middle of a terrifying thunderstorm on a road made of low-grade concrete in the 1940s.
I was a thousand miles from every problem in my life.
I had a carton of cigarettes and a Public Enemy album blaring, Kate Bush on standby waiting for more self-indulgent moments.
I was tired, fried, road weary.

Here come the devil, prowl around
One whiskey for every ghost
And I'm sorry for what I said
I said I just don't care anymore
A fool can feed on the notion
Sees and believes
And this desert turns to ocean over me

The problem with escapism is that it doesn't work.  I arrived as the storm misted it's last over the entrance to Alpine, the air thick and wet, the road slick and reflective.  Late afternoon sun tried forcing through high clouds, the air was downright cold.  I drove slowly, the town filled with deer hunters who paid little to no regard to my coupe, and found my lodging.

The world spun to a halt as I sat on a covered porch drinking scotch and smoking.  The forest made all the drying-forest noises, slow ticking sounds as treebark expanded into warm moist heat.  My head found me an hour into my vacation, and I pondered why I'd come.

That 3am moment, those shots of disaster that arrive like firelight.  I stared at the front of my car.

I drank a tumbler of scotch.

I recalled my reasons.  I still do.