July 3: Several Hundred Miles an Hour, Roman Candle, a Sign

Arthur is on a trip to an unknown destination . . .

Silently the aircar coasted through the cold darkness, a single soft glow of light that was utterly alone in the deep Magrathean night.  It sped swiftly.  Arthur's companion seemed sunk in his own thoughts, and when Arthur tried on a couple of occasions to engage him in conversation again he would simply reply by asking if he was comfortable enough, and then left it at that.

Arthur tried to gauge the speed at which they were traveling, but the blackness outside was absolute and he was denied any reference points.  The sense of motion was so soft and slight he could almost believe they were hardly moving at all.

Then a tiny glow of light appeared in the far distance and within seconds had grown so much in size that Arthur realized it was traveling toward them at a colossal speed, and he tried to make out what sort of craft it might be.  He peered at it, but was unable to discern any clear shape, and suddenly gasped in alarm as the aircar dipped sharply and headed downward in what seemed certain to be a collision course.  Their relative velocity seemed unbelievable, and Arthur had hardly time to draw a breath before it was all over.  The next thing he was aware of was an insane silver blur that seemed to surround him.  He twisted his head sharply round and saw a small black point dwindling rapidly in the distance behind them, and it took him several seconds to realize what had happened.

They had plunged into a tunnel in the ground.  The colossal speed had been their own, relative to the glow of light which was a stationary hole in the ground, the mouth of the tunnel.  The insane blur of silver was the circular wall of the tunnel down which they were shooting, apparently at several hundred miles an hour.

He closed his eyes in terror.

I would love to say that today went by like a aircar screaming through a subterranean tunnel, but it didn't.  My last day of work for this week seemed to crawl at about the pace of the Donald Trump presidency.  Translation:  it went on FOREVER.

Don't get me wrong.  I really like the people with whom I work.  One of my best friends, Steph, makes the hours more bearable, but, when you're waiting for a long weekend to begin, seconds can seem like minutes.  Minutes like hours.  Hours like days.  So, ten days after I punched the time clock this morning, I was done.

When I got home, I had a plan in place for the evening.  Mow my lawn.  Write this blog post.  Finish a writing project.  Well, the lawn mowing was a little more draining than I anticipated.  It was about 100 degrees outside, and the grass in front of me stretched to the equator.  (Okay, I'm exaggerating again.  Or maybe it's heat stroke.)  One-and-a-half days after I began, I was done.  (Remember, hours = days.)

On my way to putting away the lawn mower and gas can, I managed to douse myself in enough gasoline that, had anyone decided to light a cigarette in my general vicinity, I would have been the first firework of the fourth of July.  However, I was able to avoid all static electricity and didn't light up like a Roman candle before I changed out of my clothes and took a shower.  (I did, however, find a tick on my arm, which led to a frantic tick check over the rest of my person.  I looked in places on my body that haven't seen daylight since I got drunk one night as a teenager and woke up naked on a beach.  It's a long story, involving, I believe, a fifth of raspberry schnapps, a very large joint, and a camera.  I'm going to leave it at that.)

Now, I'm moving on to the leisurely part of my night--the one that I've been looking forward to all day.  I'm sitting and writing, which is one of my greatest pleasures.  I have no idea, when I start typing a blog, where my thoughts are going to lead me.  I rarely plan my posts out.  Instead, I like to see where inspiration takes me.  Sometimes, I sort of just wander around in a literary desert for a while and then collapse and let the post die a slow, painful death.  Other times, I'm on an aircar going about three hundred miles an hour, still unsure of my destination.

When I woke up this morning, I took a picture of a tree as I stepped outside my front door.  It was a pine framed in the dawn's early light.  (Yes, that's a cheap allusion to "The Star Spangled Banner.")  It literally looked like it was on fire.  I took that tree as a sign that my day was going to be full of joy and laughter and brightness.  And it was, thanks to Steph and my other coworkers.

That is my destination for this evening's post, I think.  A blazing tree reminding me to appreciate friendship.  And to check myself for ticks.

Saint Marty is now going to slip into the bathroom, disrobe again, and make another tick sweep.