a Joy-ride.

conjunction
Originally uploaded by Clock Work Orange

a child of the internal combustion era, for most of my life i've thought nothing about jumping in the car and just... driving. sightseeing. flagrantly burning precious fossil fuels for personal entertainment.

not only because of my conscience (despite the fact that i've hardly ever transported myself by more than four cylinders at a time), but also the shocking expense over the summer, my trips have been more... shall we say... "utilitarian" over the past months. to-work-and-back. to-the-station-and-back. to-the-store-and-back. totally boring. the equivalent of the old-school Russian method of standing in line to buy toilet paper (which is getting to be ever more the M.O. here, now that i think of it. thanks, FoodLion. and CountyBoardOfSupervisors).

i was about to do the same thing, today, until my accelerator foot got the better of me. i had to "git". see something besides the same four walls... the same streets... the same route. conservation be damned, i made an eighty-mile round-trip for no good reason besides abortive Christmas shopping and taking pictures.

it's rare that i do this without someone occupying the passenger seat... preferably of the opposite gender (and the old adage of "a man without a woman ain't no kind of man, at all" rings so loud these days that it makes my ears hurt). but... sanity and sobriety were a bigger pull than being "green", today.

besides, i'd been having too many Fred Sanford moments, lately: you know, "the Big One, Elizabeth!" opening up the attic door, and having the foam bed roll for my sleeping bag immediately fall from a height on me. tossing my mom's old kiddie pool into a dumpster (the one i had to fish dead squirrels out of, years ago) and having water dump out on me (to a chorus of "Ptui!-Ptui! Ptui!", spitting until i could run my head under the faucet). the spider in the bathtub.

so, i plugged in the iPod, hit "Joy Division" and "shuffle", and i was off.

not fifteen miles later, i saw what no sane person should ever see:
a Toyota approaching, with the driver painted in full clownface. the RonaldMcDonald/Bozo/Tim-Curry-in-Stephen-King's-IT type.

not for the weak.

yet, still i pressed on. if that doesn't turn me in my tracks, nothing will.

and, it was good. the pictures. the low-slanting winter afternoon sun. the shuffle setting on the iPod. the biting cold... maybe not so good.

but, after seeing the Moon, Jupiter, and Venus all occupying the same space, this week, i feel like something is up. as in "Up".

one afternoon of wasting precious resources might not be such a bad thing.