Usually I use an old photograph I have lying around for a muse. Today is a little different. Charles Harris, whom I found on a link from the NPR site as I was listening to a live Wilco show , agreed to let me hotlink an image I found on his site, and I went through a couple of ideas in my head over the next few days about what I would write.

So I am breaking with tradition in that I have seen the image more than 30 seconds before I write about it. So, I decided to go back to the original premise of writing only for 10 minutes. Recent writings were 20 minutes or so because I had someone else involved who was not used to the structure, and wasn’t ready to write like mad. For those folks, I extended it to 20 or even 30 minutes.

But now, I am back to bare bones. 10 minutes does not seem long enough, actually; 20 minutes feels about the right length in order to capture something raw and full of truth without too much over-thinking, so I will likely go back to 20 minutes in future endeavors.

But now, I present to you Driving to Warm Springs, 1985*

She looked away from me when I got out of the car. I kicked the dirt and inhaled on my cigarette. I had pulled off on a backroad off of 48 just outside of Anaconda and wanted to tell her how much I loved her and she sat in the car and turned away.

When she told me I had to take her to Warm Springs, I was not surprised. When she told me she wanted to ride in the back, I was not surprised. When she told me why she wanted to ride in the back, I was not surprised.

She said she wanted to remember the car the way she found it. And the way she found it, was as a passenger in the backseat when five of us clamored into it, me ending up at the wheel, for a ride on the highway, past Soquel, past Santa Cruz, after a drunken night on the beach back in ’77.

Seven years later, I’m driving her to Warm Springs and she won’t look at me and I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again.

It’s early morning. The smoke from my cigarette mixes with the fog in the air and I wonder where the past seven years of marriage went.

I flicked my cigarette to the ground and stomped it out for fear of starting a fire. I kick at the tire as I open the door and know that I loved her the best way I knew how, and that I infused our marriage with a tenderness borne of empathy and the understanding I had of her.

I got back into the car and started it up. I knew that it wasn’t my fault she’s mad, and I did not know if, or when, I would see her again. And I was sad. But I understood.

Full size image here

*Note: Warm Springs is where the insane asylum is in Montana.