i only hate life when i think about it

that was the latest jeff shyman story title.

the craigslist ride picked me up in an 80s rattletrap volvo, midtwenties and about what you'd expect someone who ended their post with "thanks for using rideshare!" would look. the only thing coming out of those pores being idealism. he had some interesting jobs, helping with a movie on the oregon trail, camping out in eastern washington state with a bunch of covered wagons and people dressed up prairie style. then another one in the swamps outside of m?, filming some kids monster flick. and then some ecoterrorism flick where he bought grey, tissue thin tshirts off of traveling kids for 300 bucks and then got to watch the expressions on hollywood's finest when they had to put them on unwashed so they could go out and get paid to look like they were dumpsterdiving. sigh. i rattled away about this and that until i discovered i was raving about radioactive frogs and recounting my entire family history and decided to take a nap. the rest of the ride was quiet and peaceable listening to ira glass shows and npr streaming from his ipod, coming through speakers that were installed back when they could feel cocky that they had just left 8 tracks behind.
he dropped me off at an exit that i recognized from a few years previous, for some reason i always ended up stopping there, the first time being back when i had no electric or water and it was grey and silent at my house and i just got into my truck and drove, ended the night in tennessee sleeping next to bobby's rumbling snore, anchoring us to the bed. in the morning when we awoke the first little flecks of white were fluttering around like moths, and we leaned against the pillows and watched them gather and come down faster through her wall size windows, a moving painting on a floor to ceiling screen while we reclined in the warm yellow light of her bedroom. when i got back to nola i realized noone had even noticed i was ever gone. much of the first year felt that way, as if i wasn't there, a grey ghost in her own right, haunting the rooms and barely registering heat.
there was steady traffic and many people stopped, however none of them were really literate. waving a sign that said chattanooga/knoxville, and noone seemed to be going anywhere remotely near. finally a trucker pulled over, i passed a man who had just pulled up to speak to me to get to him, thinking i had a long haul, his passenger cab was open but when i got there he looked at me like i was crazy and told me it was a company truck in a shocked indignant voice like i had just asked him if i could date his teenage daughter. this sort of thing went on til the sun was beginning to set, so i caught a ride with a man going to just the other side of birmingham, cigarrello clamped in his teeth, old school r n b playing on the radio. he dropped me off at a nasty industrial nowhereland, where i soon got picked up by a construction worker who dropped me off at the "good" exit, directly across from some cops fucking with a homebum. needless to say after about two minutes a copper pulled up and got out, still wearing tar colored shades even though the sun had set,flesh all pink and white just like their moniker. after running my name and grilling me for a bit, he told me to get in the back and started driving. right as it became fully night he dropped me off at a rest stop, with one car in the parking lot. things were not looking up, and i had for once decided not to bring my sleeping bag. i sat on a park bench in the tiny bit of light right next to the bathroom doors and began trying to convince every person walking out the doors to just at least get me out of that spot. after about ten can't do's my saving grace came along in the form of a trucker who owned his own rig driving right through knoxville. Thank you big mack!
we spoke of hunting bigfoot, aliens, divorce, his son's video game addiction, usual trucker fare. then he was talking about his sons skills and how he worried that he wasn't learning much from just playing video games, but then decided it would be alright because the army had all these people who needed to operate drones, and he heard it paid pretty well. it's always strange when you are sitting right next to someone and everything seems so tangible and normal and then you realize that they aren't sitting next to you at all, that they are on the other side of an impassable chasm, or just in another world entirely. i guess meaning well just really doesn't mean shit. and it really Is those kids, so utterly divorced from any sense of reality, pressing buttons, getting thrills of satisfaction at the explosions on the screen, who are perfectly self trained to commit mass murder and just look at it the same as they would the saturday morning cartoons. or do they still have those?
god i haven't even got to the family yet. tomorrow.