Rosewater Press

         I’m sitting out on my deck right now, at eleven P.M. on the Saturday after 9/11 and Friday the Thirteenth. Mid-September nights feel how July nights used to. One major political party, representing one half of the seats in Congress, refuses to acknowledge this fact. The other refuses to do anything. They’re both run by the big industrial companies, of course, and bribery just keeps getting easier.           Sometimes I miss being close to that industry, though. I remember sitting outside in Little Detroit, listening to the factories churn death into the air all night long. The paper mill stench will never leave my nose, the industrial background hum remains in my heart years after it left my ears. I’ll take crickets and owls any day. I’m uneasy about this place. I don’t want to stay here forever. It’s too small for me and her to spread out in. It’s been a great bachelor pad, it’s got features good and bad that I’ll cher...

I checked Google Maps when I hit my first gas station. Apparently my destination was exactly 666 miles away. A lot of people in my life were concerned. I told everyone I’d start driving after work on Sunday, hit a motel around Dubuque then finish the drive the next day. Now here I was on Monday, less than an hour from home, prepared to go the whole distance in one sitting. This is the story, as uncensored as I’ll allow myself to be, of the dumbest goddamn thing I’ve ever done. It’s the ugly, messy story of the happiest and freest I’ve ever let myself be. It’s also, unless you’re disturbingly invested in me as a person, a completely worthless piece of writing. Here there be no morals, no lessons, no themes at all. Sound and fury signifying nothing greater than my own incessant desire for sound and fury. The trip started off on a blisteringly normal note. A couple hours on the open road, music loud as I’m comfortable with, phone charging in the cup holder with the GPS up, Kwik Tr...