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Thursday July 19, 2001
"L'absurde est la notion essentielle et la première vérité." Albert Camus
a phalanx of Mercedes
pipe dreams Sorry about the distracting backgrounds lately. I can't help myself. I really love the word phalanx, don't you? |
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seeing with new eyes Everything about the day looked different. I can't say why. In some cases, I just open my eyes in a new way and saw things that were always there. In other cases, something entirely unexpected appeared. Morning spent with customers affirms everything I know about this business. Mostly that it is hard. But it is just as hard for the competitors as it is for you. That's the good news. And I drive the road again. I entertain myself with books on tape and I talk briefly on the phone to my friend LG. The rain seems strange. The other vehicles seem strange. When I stop at Ellinger for my traditional Wild Cherry Pepsi, there is a phalanx of Mercedes and a rental truck stopped there. It's strange. I ask the girl at the register about it. She has no idea what it's about. They are gone when I leave but I took a picture. So I didn't dream it. When I arrive at the intersection of 183 and 71, an intersection I must have driven through a hundred times now, I notice a small cemetary trapped in a grassy triangle cut off by the roads from the surrounding area. I'd never noticed it.
FFP and I decide to go to Marisco Grill for a Veulve a la Vida Cocktail. Return to life, indeed. Stuffed with spicy seafood and queso, we go to Blockbuster, rent The Gift and go home and watch it. Billy Bob Thornton is an amazing film maker. And in this one he has topped the Coen brothers' Blood Simple. I'm kind of squeamish about scary stuff, but I get through this one. FFP used to be less squeamish. I think my reactions get to him now. At least once he says, "I don't know if you want to watch this one." Or maybe it was even "I don't know if we want to watch this one." My stomach is espeically impatient with wife beaters. Keanu Reeves plays one well. The details in this movie are so right on. The red plastic 'apple for the teacher' on the counselor's desk, the rust spots on the car, the East Texas feel. Billy Bob was born in Arkansas but this place looked like east Texas to me. The mother is patterned after his own mother, a psychic. I suspect the wife beater was probably based on a real character.
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