note: Money1 should be Money sub 1 - a subscript. Doesn't register
apparently in this format. 7/11 is a US national chain of small markets,
often attached to gas stations. NPR: National Public Radio.
On the Road
He had to drive. A client wanted
a potent document hand-delivered;
mistrusted planes, which can be hijacked;
and insisted. The client lived
one state away in a small town.
The lawyer was amazed there were still
small towns that functioned, their people
employed by a single midsized firm,
the firm owned by a rich man on a hill.
He imagined the client would offer
at least drinks. He imagined
conversation transcending differences
in status, a charming plausible old cynic.
So he drove. But encountered delays.
At home, the sequence quarrel – chaos – quarrel
or chaos – quarrel – chaos:
aporetic, but paralleling
the mutation Money – Commodity –
Money1 in Marx; in a former life
the driver had known such things. And delays
on the highway: a stately passage
of time and exits at ten miles an hour
for hours, causeless, without even
the moral of an accident at last –
paramedics, flares, twisted metal –
then the grace of speed and openness,
the fleeting thrill of horror and pity passed.
Evening outpaced him. He had to stop
at a 7/11, his cell-phone
in a sudden void, to call
the client, who didn’t answer;
his firm, where his superiors were not pleased;
then, because the staff at the 7/11
were brain-dead, drive on seeking a motel.
Did they still exist? The price
of oil rose as he drove. Genteel
discussion of disasters on NPR
succumbed to the twin solvents of the region,
acidulous song and preaching; until
there was only flatness, scrub,
and darkness, then only darkness.
A truck-stop appeared like a galaxy
in space. The view
from his room was of a metaled plain
in sulfurous light. TV and other sounds
through the walls were of joy like war.
Exhausted, he had to try
the client again, then plunge into
the waste of recriminations, negotiations,
and cautious deals at home. Suddenly
he remembered a book from his youth –
boy-men and their sometime women driving
back and forth across country,
ecstatically, endlessly,
penniless, in a kind of carefree
despair. The vision,
which had buoyed him once, now seemed
like that of people bathing, chanting,
praying, oblivious to the carcasses
and sewage passing in their holy river.
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