ST KHOU

ST KHOU A highway is an intergalactic raceway after night falls. Diving on the highway at night is peaceful if you are alone on the road. If not, you get lost in the space and the headlights of the closest car behind you that you see snarling in your rearview look like the eyes of demons chasing you, if they are close enough. No, actually, that happens when you are driving slow at night on an ambiguous local backway and the truck behind you smells angry all the time and its eyes are those of a feasting demon, starving, glaring right into your rearview. On the highway, at night, it's usually a much wider image in your rearview than on the local roads, because the cars behind you are galaxies away on the intergalactic raceway. Every headlight is a beacon of an existence that you'll never know. In the winter, when night comes early, there are still many cars on the road after dark and there are infinite beacons beyond you and behind you and you are caught right in the middle and in your car none of these other cars mean anything at all; unless one cuts you off or slows you down or wants to merge and you don't want to let them. But in reality, you are of the nothingness yourself. You are only what you share of yourself with others, and it is almost a certainty that you will never be more connected to the next living person on the highway - wherever they are - than you are right there on the road. But whether you passed them in an instant and all you can do is flick off your highbeams before they come around the bend, or whether you follow them for hours going a longway to somewhere, you are galaxies away from whoever is driving in the next car. You're living in an entirely different universe, and the only clue you have to appreciate their perspective is the car that contains them. The car has evolved into a creature which carries its own character that almost always overlaps at least a little with that of the owner. And inside this creature there is a unique universe which has whatever evidence of food or has whatever music playing or there are whatever people talking. They are infinitely distant from yourself in your own car. My dad was driving his blue minivan, but we were listening to my CDs. There was a bag from Roy Rogers with both our french fries poured inside, and an old McDonalds bag that was our garbage. It was the first Friday of December, and we were going to Hartwick for the weekend. My dad is an overenthusiastic Alum, and my cousin Rosie is a sophomore there. My dad knows the area well and when it was advantageous to get off and take the backway, he did. The road was not a slow one and we cruised along, almost always alone. It was peaceful. He talked about politics; I half listened. I talked about music; he half listened. As usual, we talked lots of soccer. After a couple hours and a couple stops I was tired and leaned my seat back to sleep. Before I closed my eyes, I saw a red sign that read: ST KHOU. It seemed like a sign that had several letters missing for whatever reason, but in the night, there was no way to tell what it was meant to spell. "ST KHOU," said the side of some building that looked to me like a large department store or something of the sort. ST KHOU, I thought, in the midst of half-functioning materialistic America, looking over every separate universe that came by this backway at night. ST KHOU: the shepherd of souls lost in the abyss of America's vast infrastructure. And the God of Wine comes crashing through the headlights of a car; that took you farther than you thought you'd ever wanna go: you can't get back again, we can't get back again... Don't worry Stephen, I thought, ST KHOU will get us back again. Then I shut my eyes and slept.