My Future’s So Bright II
Riding home tonight from a day long errand, the smooth gliding motion of the warm capsule that separated me from the world melded with the darkness pouring in around me to form a thick cozy blanket wrapped around my body and mind that I never wanted to take off. I just wanted to stay there, infinitize the feeling and conditions. I didn’t want to go home, and I didn’t want the night to turn its page.
The song Fast Car by Tracy Chapman came on the radio and like every time I hear that song, I began to think of my mom and all the time she and I spent driving around together when I was a child. She was quite the wandering soul back then, and the two of us, from as far back as I can remember, age 3 or 4, always seemed to be in the car late at night with neon lights passing and hovering over us from the cars and skyscrapers around. She was often restless very late at night, and I would be doing my homework while she was grading her students’ papers or just staring at them, emotionally unable to begin, and she’d suddenly ask me if I wanted to go for a ride. I always perked up at this, left my homework for when I got back, not caring, and we’d hit the road. This usually happened after midnight, and we wouldn’t arrive back until 2 or sometimes 3 a.m. As I approached age 12, I would climb over my seat and lay in the back seat, usually on my stomach with my calves up and my feet bobbing and intertwining, easy listening and love songs she usually had on the radio swirling in and out of my ears, staring up into the vast grey heavens above me, looking for stars, my mind wandering everywhere, daydreaming, thinking, digging, floating. She listened to Tracy Chapman a lot, and the song Fast Car always reminded me of the two of us. We would stop along the way and I usually picked out a big strawberry frozen fruit bar from the ice cream freezer and would suck on the huge bits of frozen strawberries embedded into the popsicle until the warmth of my mouth and tongue thawed them out and softened them, and then I’d gnaw on them gently and slowly suck out their juices until what was left of each strawberry would fall out into my mouth, and I’d chew them slowly and lustfully, thoroughly savoring them, teeth sinking sharply against their metallic seeds. Eventually, my popsicle would begin to drip and so I’d have to suck on the droplets forming at the bottom. I enjoyed doing that too. I still eat frozen fruit bars this way, and strawberry is still my favorite flavor.
On a different but slightly related note, I seem to have obsessions with taking pictures of myself either wearing sunglasses or with various types of frozen confections. Continued from a previous entry of mine from this past summer, here are some more effects of my future being so bright:
