Wild Wheat Odyssey.

Chapter 1

      There is a ramp to get off. Should I take it? No, I want to get there early. I want to set up and clear my brain.Dear God lady speed the fuck up. What is it about white Dodge Caravans that attracts the most obnoxiously slow drivers. Is she handicapped? Thank God they're letting me pass. No, its a man, and he doesn't appear to be handicapped nor is there any sticker displaying such.

            Although having such long hair at that at age suggests that maybe his judgement is impaired. Maybe he's still on an acid trip from Woodstock. The traffic is jammed up. I can't get off of this road for miles now. I left that early just to make it to work on time. Maybe I will still have five minutes to spare. I hate how I have to smoke these damn things. I'm claustrophobic. Why would I take up smoking? Now if I don't roll my window down while I drive I feel like I will choke to death.

I feel like I'm going to choke right now anyway. Being stuck on this road with my windows down makes me feel like I'm shoulder to shoulder with people at the airport or mall. Dear God there is so much smoke. No way one cigarette created all of that smoke. Oh it's from the caravan hippy. My chest is tightening. If it is someone else's smoke then I can't handle it. I'm as disgusted with other people's smoke as I am their spit. I don't know if that's normal. I leaned out of the window, nearly straining the small of my back, to see an exit sign.

Nothing but golden wild wheat swirls around me and lines of traffic in front of me.

I toss the cigarette that I had just lit and roll up my tinted windows. The windows were tinted when I bought this car. It's a used early two thousands model red Honda Civic. The angle of the sun through my drivers side window seemed to be unaffected by the tint. It seems to ignite the ends of the wheat stalks so that they burn a neon pink. As if each is a single shred of burning tobacco. The sun is a giant pink orb setting the whole field to blaze.

I believe most people who looked at this would think that it was beautiful.

I ,however, could only think about the smoke from the field making it's way through my car's air vents and crawling up the cloth seats towards my face. The field wasn't actually on fire, of course, but my brain was. Such wondering of my imagination could trigger a very real panic in me. A panic that could set my hear to racing and my vision to blur. I further imagined that the smoke was attracted to my lungs. It was creeping up my hoodie like vines on an old maple. My lungs and nothing else had a magnetic effect on this imaginary smoke. I closed my mouth and inhaled through my nostrils.

The traffic started to move again. I feel my diaphragm relax just enough to allow me one deep breath. One deep breath. The GMC in front of me slams on it's brakes. It's a flat bed with dual rear tires. A diesel no doubt. My breaths are coming in pants. Short bursts of oxygen I consume greedily as if it will soon and suddenly become scarce. I'm searching for signs of an up coming highway. Surely one has to intersect with the dead road I'm currently crawling along. The hippy in the Caravan is no where to be seen. I'd welcome the sight of anything familiar at this point. Anything from a time where I felt less like this.

I decide to try to light another cigarette. How about a breathable stimulant to calm my nerves? For an irrational problem perhaps there is an irrational solution.

Another long commute to work. I work at a factory molding plastic drinking cups. Cups aren't the only thing the factory produces but I could care less what else is done there.

Even though I have no reason to worry about tardiness, I do. I'm rarely ever late to anything. No one would penalize me harshly for one of the incredibly rare occasions when I was late. Still, the more I felt like I was going to have to explain myself, the more uncomfortable I felt. This allowed the jammed up traffic to assault me. I tried to push these thoughts aside. Seeing the dedicated old hippy gave me the urge to listen to some of my more obscure music. I played a song on my phone. My car speakers are broken. So I played my music through a bluetooth speaker that's suctioned to my windshield. The speaker looks like a bomb from an old video game.

I adjusted my visor to block the amber sun to my left. I looked to my right. There was a cornfield. In the middle of the cornfield was a clearing and a line of trees. The trees grew on either side of a small stream that reflected the sun so effectively I wished that my car had a passenger side visor. The bright gleam was promptly tucked behind thicker trees. They grew larger as the stream grew wider. Beyond the clearing was more corn. The corn stalk grid was endless.

Suddenly my view was blocked by a large Ford S.U.V in the lane to my right. I was drifting towards it. The clearing had pulled my attention away from remaining in between the dashed white lines. The Ford's driver was just about to sound their horn before I corrected my course. I rolled my windows down and everything outside was so loud that they may as well have sounded their horn. It would have been lost in the monotonous symphony of engines and air rushing in. Somehow, despite all of the clamor, I could hear the song I had set to play in the background. Maybe this is because it was the only sound I could hear that had a pattern to it. A deliberate symmetry.

"Can't believe, how strange it is to be anything, at all." A nasally voice belted. Trying to make it's philosophical declaration over the sound of a million frustrated motorists. How strange it is to be anything at all. It is strange. The melody and the lyrics seemed like they were meant to be. I was quite the connoisseur of music. Usually i could tell when the melody drove a song or when the lyrics inspired a tune's engineering. This time, however, I was thoroughly convinced that they both came to be simultaneously.