A Business Trip

'I have seen the stars fill the night sky to the rims of the horizon.  Behind them, entire galaxies...though mere visual suggestions.  Like colored whispers that are remnants of when God spoke the heavens into being.'

It was late in the night as we got into the car and headed West.  The highway took us out of the city like a dirty, black conveyor belt of lights.  Somewhere ahead, in the pitch darkness, was nowhere...our destination.  In the quiet night we slipped unnoticed onto back roads, winding into the Heart of the South.

Morning found us in a sad hotel that hugged the north/south bound interstate; a hopeful leech on a Mississippi artery.  We were less than a day from the city, but already we were in a new world.  Familiar, yes, but all the while something known only through old books and the garbled dirges of ancient Blues.  The roads rose up like causeways, the pavement stained the color of rust from the minerals in the soil.  The rumor of rivers was everywhere, in pools of swamp and vast muddy fields that in the warmer months held crops.
The Delta.

Guitar music and heartbreak, and all the long history that is the slow death of dreams played over the radio.
Small towns, and then past them smaller towns until we reached their Jewel.  Here, there were a few stop lights as well as the vestiges of the rural idea of civilization: a strip mall, chain restaurants, a department store.  The Pawn Shop was in the center of the square, which was really only two blocks on parallel streets divided by a narrow park.  A reporter met us as we stepped inside.  The mayor came later to shake our hands.  The Old Man wanted us to eat Fried Chicken, and the best Cornbread in the world.  To them, we were something special.  To us, they were America.

It didn't take long to get what we came for and leave.  Using our cameras to steal their faces, their voices, their stories.  We were an un-looked-for, and visceral hope.  Cotton had been King in that part of the world once...but there was no royalty anymore.  Just pawn shops and poverty.  And Blues.

The roads wound us away once more through darkness that was the loneliest thing in the world.  The only lights were our headlights and we were the only people in the world.  It was hours towards the East when the moon loomed unannounced around a corner, enormous and low on the horizon, just above the trees.  It was the color of dried blood.

I talked about how all that darkness and all that quiet was making me think about my life.  How that highway back to the city was probably a metaphor, and I was scared of it.
'Close your eyes and think of your God.'
And then all you see instead is a pretty girl you once knew.