Yesterday evening I was feeling
Nov 20 2001
Yesterday evening I was feeling smarter, but as soon as I stepped out the door
today I was dumb again. I'm sure that tomorrow will bring another dumb day. During
today's dumb day, I peered down from the eighth floor office windows onto the
interstate as a car burned in the left hand exit lane. At first a small orb of
white smoke began to rise calmly, then as the firemen went to work, a cloud of
swirling white and black plumed outward and covered the entire interchange with
a Dr. Suess like structure, tiny base founding an exaggerated plateau. For a few
moments, the car and flashing fire trucks were completely lost beneath the smoke,
but minutes later the passing cars had pulled down the tiny platform and it was
dissipating westward onto I-285. I sat back down and forgot about it; could the
victim have really been a bank robber making a stealthy escape in an unassuming
get-away car only to have the profits burn up in the trunk outside of Atlanta,
just 20 minutes away from the airport and an island-bound prop plane. And now
with such a ridiculous tale of irony to recount to all his buddies, he can say
nothing that won't incriminate him, so he catches a greyhound back to North Carolina,
the state of his crime. Around Greeneville there is a second ironic twist; he
realizes that his wallet was stolen by the kid in the Breeders
t-shirt that was riding in the seat beside him. Too beaten by irony to risk an
encounter with the police, he walks the remaining five miles home from the bus
station, opens the refrigerator takes out a can of beer, and turns on primetime
news to see what's happening in the world. He thinks his grandmother was right,
people are plum crazy these days.