600 Miles in One Afternoon

Woke up this afternoon, and decided to get off my lazy ass and drive the 8 hours to go see my parents. Hastily wrote a letter of notice to my landlady to tell her that, pleasant as the hair-splitting has been, I was on the lam in just six weeks, and then threw my dirty laundry in the car and roared down the southbound 'autoroute' to Albi, city of my birth.

You are, of course, my passengers on this flight at 80 miles an hour over the smooth pavement of expensive French blacktop. The white bag behind us is the dirty laundry, which it is traditional the prodigal son should bring when he goes to see his Mom.

As you can imagine, it can get pretty boring on such roadtrips, where, gasp, there is NO network, and you don't know that you've been emailed, that Coquette has posted to her blog, or that the Princess is pinging you on Instant Message. Yea, verily, a valley of darkness...

frought with many occasions to sin, not the least of which is the dreaded roadrage. Yet, O Lord, canst one not smite thine enemies when they perform the heinous fishtail maneuver, which is an abomination in thine eyes?

Hour after hour, we drove, stopping only for coffee, icecream on a stick, and batteries for the digicam. Lo, soon, night was upon us!

Pretty lights began to glow, first inside the dash...

and soon, they raced across the skies before us, in a fierce battle of laser beams and lighting bolts!

The space gate had opened, and I felt time sluicing around me like molasses and snake oil while the seconds exploded on my mindshield with a roaring patter of cratering fluids in a rain that had fallen inplacably since the first turn of the wheels in this epic journey to the roots of my life, when suddenly, they appeared before me.

Triple, self-contained, and awash in light...

The Geisha-Balls of Destiny.

Location : where it all started.