friedseabass
07-29-2009, 10:37 PM
The sun came stinking and hot through every opening of the car, pouring through the windows by the gallon, but also sneaking in between the door cracks and the slits in the vents, baking the air until it was dry and abrasive and every breath felt like betraying my trusting lungs to this gaseous sand paper. It was the peak of the afternoon and the brightness burned everything in sight, amplifying itself off the asphalt and dead grass so it seemed that no matter where I turned my skin had no escape from the near blinding heat. The oil bled through my pores, giving my face a glistening slickness thickened with the sunshine. The sweat came in lightly, but evenly and with unwavering pervasiveness, forcing me to shift and turn my back every few seconds as my shirt crumpled and stuck to the expanse of flesh it was supposed to be protecting. The shirt had so quickly become more of a damp-fibered irritant than a piece of clothing, and as it thinned I could feel the cheap, ragged fabric of the car seat behind me. As the heat radiated from my back, resolutely pulling sweat at its tail, whatever portion could escape was caught in a layer of angry mugginess by the scratchy acrylic and was held captive to push against me once again.
In my lap I opened and closed my fist, slowly, allowing each finger to find its spot in turn. I could feel the stick in my palm and it seemed like I would never be clean and soft again. I let my arm drift out the window and my hand was blown sharply back as it caught the slipstream. I was hoping for relief, but the superheated air felt more like the blast when opening a convection oven than a breeze. But with nothing but the monotony inside the cooked shell of the car I let my fingers search the current, sliding in between the fibers of air. As I tried to focus my dulled consciousness on the sensation I was able to catch the slivers of cold hidden in the thick strands of heat that stained the wind. The sudden treats were quick and infrequent, but finding them was almost a game in itself. Proving that the sensation of cool did in fact still exist seemed an act of defiance to the ruthless sun.
My head fell back to the chair and the hard foam of the headrest pressed the damp filaments of hair into the now tacky skin on the back of my neck. The box of air held inside the car was growing a new breed of smell. The type of sour raunch associated with a boys eighth grade locker room had bonded with thick, seasoned breath that pumped from every passenger and spawned a sour, highly spiced type of air, made instantly stale and old with the sun. It was just potent enough to bring a gag to your throat if you let yourself smell what you breathed, but otherwise it just soaked itself into your skin, making every pore and hair permeable to this smell that seemed almost a cross between an armpit and old steak. Encountering this reeking piece of air anywhere else, I’d try to run from it before it soiled me with filth, but inside the car, it was so rife and pervasive that I had no choice but to simply sit and stew in it, trying to hold on to the vain hope that I wouldn’t be permanently stained with this sick smell of human essence.
This is a moment that seems like it can’t be measured with time. The type of moment that forces even the strongest will to abandon any internal hope that the sensations associated with it will ever end. Moments like this seem to taint the entire span of human existence, so that within an individual consciousness in an individual instant, it seems the entire world is this way and it suddenly becomes far too easy to be utterly revolted with being alive. Sometimes life is beautiful. This is not one of those times.
In my lap I opened and closed my fist, slowly, allowing each finger to find its spot in turn. I could feel the stick in my palm and it seemed like I would never be clean and soft again. I let my arm drift out the window and my hand was blown sharply back as it caught the slipstream. I was hoping for relief, but the superheated air felt more like the blast when opening a convection oven than a breeze. But with nothing but the monotony inside the cooked shell of the car I let my fingers search the current, sliding in between the fibers of air. As I tried to focus my dulled consciousness on the sensation I was able to catch the slivers of cold hidden in the thick strands of heat that stained the wind. The sudden treats were quick and infrequent, but finding them was almost a game in itself. Proving that the sensation of cool did in fact still exist seemed an act of defiance to the ruthless sun.
My head fell back to the chair and the hard foam of the headrest pressed the damp filaments of hair into the now tacky skin on the back of my neck. The box of air held inside the car was growing a new breed of smell. The type of sour raunch associated with a boys eighth grade locker room had bonded with thick, seasoned breath that pumped from every passenger and spawned a sour, highly spiced type of air, made instantly stale and old with the sun. It was just potent enough to bring a gag to your throat if you let yourself smell what you breathed, but otherwise it just soaked itself into your skin, making every pore and hair permeable to this smell that seemed almost a cross between an armpit and old steak. Encountering this reeking piece of air anywhere else, I’d try to run from it before it soiled me with filth, but inside the car, it was so rife and pervasive that I had no choice but to simply sit and stew in it, trying to hold on to the vain hope that I wouldn’t be permanently stained with this sick smell of human essence.
This is a moment that seems like it can’t be measured with time. The type of moment that forces even the strongest will to abandon any internal hope that the sensations associated with it will ever end. Moments like this seem to taint the entire span of human existence, so that within an individual consciousness in an individual instant, it seems the entire world is this way and it suddenly becomes far too easy to be utterly revolted with being alive. Sometimes life is beautiful. This is not one of those times.