The Drive.

It rained for the first time in a month last night. The cyan sky had become stained with gray that evening, and eventually became completely saturated with thunderstorm blackness.

I was stoned out of my mind, and driving back from a friend's house because I'd gotten too claustrophobic around all those people. I'd gotten stuck in my head, and was unable to find a way to properly interact with the outside. Every word or phrase I thought to say would not come out at the right time, and I had to swallow them. Every moment that went by I felt sicker and sicker. Every sound I withheld was making me nauseous. Wishwashy premenstrual hormones and antibiotic pills for a bacterial infection were putting a spin on things that was making me a bit too dizzy.
So since I had no choice, I awkwardly and abruptly left.

The usual disappointment in myself set in during the most straining car ride back from any pothead's house in my life. My eyes could not focus, my head was spinning, I could hardly stay awake. The gas pedal was the heaviest thing in the world and took two feet to press. Faint, continuous rhythms and voices, singing, were reverberating from the corners of my mind, like some regurgitated orchestra of subconscious echo psychobabble.  The rain was pouring like a glass wall and it was already hard enough to see, much less while being mind fucked by oneself. I drove slow. Not above 40 miles an hour, it was taking eternities, lifetimes, to get home. I hadn't even remembered that I'd pulled a Lynda and left my shoes at Sarah's house, unable to give a fuck about the trouble it would be to go get them. Sarah, merely using the means the universe had tossed to her, would later be arrested in those shoes, and I never got them back.

I was nauseous, my head was spinning in a fog. An unyielding ache was glowing from my inside me. I said to myself, I should pull over for a minute. Moments and opportunities to pull over passed, one after another. I thought, what if a cop pulls up, and I'm stoned as fuck. But that was my excuse for not being able to just find the courage to pull the car over. I turned on the radio to try to help synchronize my thinking. The radio forces knew what I was going through and were playing something chill, slow, and trippy. Eventually, I was able to pull over on a clear shoulder. I took in several deep breaths, trying to reconfigure. After a moment, I inhaled my best breath and drove on.

Finally, I reached home. After putting my stuff inside, I immediately went back outside and laid under the tree in the backyard, whose thick, y-shaped branches had been cut at the cross by lightning, its dead arm now sprawled out over the ground. It was elegant like a giant fallen antler. The remaining half was seemingly still alive. I let the rain sprinkle on me at its slowing pace, letting it wash off whatever terrible soup I had been boiling in. My clothes absorbed the rain, and my skin, which had become clammy and hot with anxiety pains, drank in the cool refreshment from above.

I went upstairs, took a terrible shit, did my best to clean up, and went to lie down. It felt good to be still. A few minutes later I ran back to the toilet to dry heave. All that came up was spit. Went back to bed, listening to the echos in my ears that had been growing louder and louder all night. In the darkness of my room, all I could hear were the hundred voices and songs, nonsensical, but so heavenly in their cosmic harmony. Unable to keep up with itself, the words and rhythms I heard were echoes of my mind's unstructured, lost ideas. So present but so ephemeral, the godly mental smoke escaped my capture that night.  I was glad to be safe in my bed, as it had now clearly become a sailboat starship.

completed another drive through space and time.