Nothing But Dark Skies...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas | You could head out into the smoke-like, charcoaled night with your vehicle lights on high beam, tell yourself there'll be no turning back and spend enough time wondering about it all that you'd be tired not of driving, but of thinking.

There was much of that going on across the ragged country.

People spent hours glued to the TV set, watching news, most of it political and damned near all of it a waste of time. Best, they were saying in psychiatrist offices, would be a retreat from that shit. Mental states looked awful.

You could stand quietly behind a painted woman in line at Starbucks and know that she was a danger to society just by what she ordered. A balding, skinny-legged guy at the grocery buying too many bananas was about to go there, it was being said.

Daytime brought the big and hot relentless sunball, one to deliver time zone headaches across the planet. It was sundown, and especially the Dead of Night, that offered a true respite. Alone and in a quiet setting, you could hear yourself, think especially.

Too bad the world was now over-populated.

There was less and less room for the individual, and more and more criticism for the ones who wanted to go at it alone.

Loners knew the score.

They also breathed easier as time and temperatures went by, comforted by the quietness they chose to have around them. If you dared ask them, they would tell you to fuck-off, your civil question left to fend for itself in your own mind, not theirs.

It was fun to be somewhere lonesome and hear a pin drop...

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