|
FA/MC
|
What's the best way to get from Memphis to Louisville? Just stay interstate, would be the fastest way. 40 over, 65 up, simple as that. Legs of the triangle are better than the hypotenuse. Because that's how interstates work. Right?
Wrong. You take a 45 minute detour to avoid Nashtyville. Hell, I would take a 45 day detour. The way traffic can get there, at any time of any day...and is there a worse way to experience Tennessee than 40 East from Memphis to that snake pit? I'm pretty sure there isn't. I'd rather be mugged in Clarksville or shot in Chattanooga than be passing through Jackson and every shithole left and right of it. As if the risk of losing your soul wasn't bad enough, you're running the risk of falling asleep at the wheel.
The 9th is reserved for traitors. You can see the footprints of Judas, and the vines that clung to his body. You can see Benedict Arnold's uniforms, both of them. A pound of flesh from every mutineer to ever sail, scattered about. And yes, the lonely wandering Adolf, muttering to himself with a hammer and sickle sunk in his chest.
There are those like him who still linger there, and there is evidence of those who have served sentences and got out. What's the difference between those who can make it out and those who can't? It's whether or not they can admit their wrongdoing. If they can break from the curse of Lethe's waters and repent in their hearts, then the time they spend trapped will depend on how much harm they've done. But they will eventually unbury themselves.
I did my time.
Will you ever be able to admit that you were the one who started this? That you played your part in this circle of betrayal? Or will you die in the filth of your mother's house, with a broken back and a broken home and a broken heart?
You're just going to live with this wrong aren't you. You'll never escape.
I won't save you. I won't be there. You're the only one who can help yourself and you won't. Because you hate yourself enough to keep living this way. To keep living at all. It's your city. If home is where the heart is then your heart will tell you where hell is too.
You can take 55 from Memphis straight up. Take a right at Mt._Vernon, or pretty much anywhere north of and including Cairo. Cut through Indiana. But there really isn't much there either. Cornfields and dead dreams. No hand of god ever been there. What I would do is cut the corner of Northwestern Tennessee and run the length of Kentucky. Not exactly paradiso, but the towns and the landscapes are interesting enough. And you dodge the nautilus shell of hell. It's not the fastest or most direct way under ideal conditions. But it's the act of swimming parallel to the shore and not being sucked in by the tide. It's about self_preservation.
It's about avoiding the truth. Lost souls in a fishbowl, that's still what we're doing here. The more things change the more they remain the same.
There's no tiendas in hell though. The malinches never say a word. You couldn't get a good bowl of posole in hell if you paid Cortez himself. But that's about the extent of the differences. If you want redemption in either realm you'll have to work hard and swallow a lot of pride. Go through it, get over it, or go around it. There's not much difference. It only matters in the way you suffer and the ways in which you can live with yourself.
Just like everything else.
|
240527
|
