Not long ago I saw Frankenstein's monster hitchhiking along Interstate 35. He looked like he was heading north, maybe looking for work, maybe just trying to get away. There's big empty country up north on I-35, plenty of space for a monster to get lost, to avoid the cudgels and torches of angry villagers. There are wide, flat plains for miles and miles, little towns where nobody ever goes, barn lofts to hide in and tall grass where you can lie and rest your tired boots.
He looked a little worse for the wear, haggard and ragged from too many miles, too few friendly conversations, dogged and anxious but with that same stiff forehead, resolute in giving no foothold to the sinking, final despair that brings travelers down, lays them in the ditch, feeds them to the buzzards. One wonders how he can hold on, wonders at his crazy resolve. Were I in his place, a victim of the madness of manmade reincarnation, an alien to the circle of birth and death and lineage we all share, I don't know that I'd want to keep stalking the shoulder of the highway, putting one boot clumsily in front of the other day after night after day.
But there he was, nature's special child, heading north on I-35. No one stopped to pick him up, of course. No one liked the look of him. No one ever had. But nature loves him, perversely fascinated by this new thing under the sun, this unnatural selection in an otherwise featureless sea of survival of the fittest. Rain and wind caress his stitched, scarred skin as he sleeps each night, more alone than you can imagine, the loneliest sleep of all time.
Hello, friends. I hope you're well. Are you?
Later. Love.
