TRAVEL, COLD AND SHUT DOWN
February 2019
Fourth week of the government shutdown, air traffic controllers are calling out. You imagine someone saying :He should fire them like Reagan did.” Demand the weary unpaid protect you from collision. The economy to a grinds and the planes a halt as you rush to an earlier flight and monitors start to flash: delayed delayed delayed.
January 27, 2019: Senator Kamala Harris, Democrat of California, as seen on MSNBC in a hotel in the Midwest. Harris is announcing her 2020 presidential run against Donald Trump.
Inertia to lethargy when you hear tomorrow will be the coldest day of the year, 40 below wind factor. There is no use in being poetic. Here, heads are sharp playgrounds for tripping up hot mouths.
January 29, 2019: Refrigerator stocked with sushi, fruits, ice coffee, hummus, and seltzer water in preparation for the anticipated extreme-cold weather emergency the next day.
January 30, 2019: View from the Hilton during an the weather-emergency. Roads are closed. All residents advised to stay inside as temperatures reach minus thirteen Fahrenheit.
Steam above rooftops. Heaters on full. No place to go, no place to be. If you think about it from a certain perspective, you can imagine the hotel is moving high speed. It’s a ship through the coldness of outer space. You can get unstuck like Vonnegut said. Was it a day like today just a bit farther south, in Indianapolis, when he got unstuck with that observation?
Coldest night of year. Advisory to stay inside. Stocked up on sushi, fruits, water, and coffee. Hibernation's comforts seem threatened by the inevitable running out. Senator Kamala Harris announces her candidacy. Questions of where one wall ends and the next one begins.
January 30, 2019: View from the Hilton during an the weather-emergency. Roads are closed. All residents advised to stay inside as temperatures reach minus thirteen Fahrenheit.
February 2 or 3, 2019: People gambling in a service station somewhere along Interstate 65 in Kentucky. The gaming machines operate in a legal gray-area. Slot machines are illegal in Kentucky. A sign tells patrons there are no cash payouts, winnings can only be claimed for fuel or in-store merchandise.Questions about overhead sounds, who made the bed, the context in which we all exists, and the generational voices are terribly quiet.
Somewhere in Kentucky. Dark out. Don't get too judgmental, city rat. There's a comparison I'm trying to swing. A new type of identity politics in a stick vending machine. Every day runs into every night, the dreams uncertain, the body pressed, loneliness still holding firm. Then somewhere in Brooklyn: like I said, comparison here.
February 8, 2019: A street vendor in Brooklyn, New York selling sunglasses, bags, and clothes outside a bodega. About midnight.
