Picture yourself there like I was.

Hot desert sun, Route 66, thumb to the sky, feet on the ground…

Lots of yuppie fucks pass you by in their fancy LA Vanity rides.

Teslas! Model S, Model 3, Model X, hey wait a second.

Anyway, eventually this old beater pickup, uh, picks you up.

Like a ’67 Chevy with more stories than fuel economy

I guess sometimes you want a car that drives you.

Guy asks me where I’m going, I look him in the eye and say

“Wherever you are, pal, I’m just along for the ride”

There’s a pause as my would-be chauffeur considers what I’ve told him.

I have no plan, no agenda, just a desire to be part of something. His something.

Eventually, this realization dawns on him and he smiles.

Alright, hop in. You ever killed a god?

Well

“I can’t say I have,” I returned as I climbed into his Dawn Treader,

“But I suppose there’s a first time for everything. What’s your name?”

“Gil,” he says, and just leaves it like that. Makes me wonder how he’s still breathing.

I ask him about our mission, but he just shrugs it off, gestures to a pile of iPads.

“Everything you need to know’s on there,” he says, but the tablets are all broken.

I must have dozed off cuz I came to and we were stopped.

Gil was outside under the hood.

“What’s wrong?” I asked?

“Whole thing’s flooded,” he says

Oh.

So we sat there side by side, two strangers under the desert stars

As one with each other as we’ve ever been one with anything at all

Times like these, it’s easy to lean into metaphor,

But I think then you miss the wonder of what’s really there

It’s not often you get to exist without urgency and just let the crisp air be just crisp air.

You know what I mean?

It’s a beautiful night.