The Joy of Godzilla Website, the web extenition to the radio show on WRAD 91.5 FM
Broken Words / Redundant Systems by Dom Barnabei
I love to drive. I love...
..."Strange gray dawns at 5 am, strange gray pavement rolling by. Memories of last night's snow lingering on the hillsides, stark gray white against black dead tree trunks marching like beaten armies across the the empty spaces. Driving on reflex, driving on brainstem instinct at unwavering sixty miles per hour and no joy in gray dawns, like the world just turned over and went back to sleep. She's asleep in the passenger's seat, troubled with dreams of motion. Dreams of leaving, dreams that have cars and exit signs and the staccato glare of streetlights passing above like angels or UFO's or some long lost childhood memory of light.
I talk to the steering wheel, in between sips of lukewarm tea long sour from leaving the soggy bag steeping. When you drive it's easy to lose yourself. You stop to exist, you become the machine on those long drives when the bones grow into the metal frame of the automobile and every vibration from the microscopic silent topographies of the road echoes in you. When they built the freeways they tapped into the vast unknown resources of the Americas, they tapped into the vast heart of desolation beating at the center of a land so huge that it still takes days to cross. I talk to the steering wheel to keep that heart from beating in my chest, to keep my bones from becoming comfortable in their sheaths of steel. The words from the radio turned down low mix with mine, the one dusty cassette we found in the glovebox turned on repeat to keep away the static on the radio in the great empty.
I say my problem isn't that life has no meaning.
I say that my problem is that life has too much meaning.
I say that every action, every inaction is an affront to some dream, some fuzzy notion of destiny, some half-realized talent. I wonder out loud if we can really all be concert pianists or chess prodigies if we worked hard enough. I say I wish I was the master of my obssesions rather than their victim. I sip some bitter tea.
She stirs in the passenger seat and rubs her nose in sleep, becomes quiet again. I lower my voice.
The pavement is cracked here. The vibrations like a beating heart, I speed up and slow down to change its rhythm. I talk about maps. I say that there are deserts everywhere, drive through snowbound midwest at five a.m. and you will understand the great primordial desert at the center of everything. Somehow you hope the tank stays full forever and you're three hours away forever because I don't know why, you just feel nothing but you feel everything, you can feel the warm food slowly digesting in your stomach and still taste grease at the back of your throat. You feel your joints hardening, settling into their lowest energy level. You become uncomfortably aware of the soles of your feet. Your body turning to stone.
She murmurs softly and shifts, very uncomplicated, serene in sleep. Beautiful like new snow. I'm turning to stone. I sip some bitter tea. "
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