Monday, August 18, 2003
In the middle of the night last night I wake up all hot and sweaty, with the sound of cicadas humming outside. I’m convinced I’m awake, and equally convinced that I’m in Louisiana in a roadside shack. I have to ride seventy miles tomorrow.
Something doesn’t seem quite right, but I’m sure I’m in Louisiana, and I’m disturbed, with heart racing. I thought I’d finished the trip, but apparently not. My SO wakes up beside me – ‘Where am I?’ I ask.
‘In Santa Fe,’ she says, ‘with me,’ and slowly I wake up properly, and realise the shadows outside the window aren’t swamp and bayou, but trees and red dirt. I have finished the trip, and don’t have to ride any more. Slowly I calm down, but am still left with the deeply unsettling recollection of being (I thought) wide awake and in a shack in Louisiana.
A flashback to the trip – I guess at some level I think I should still be out there. I feel like a Vietnam GI airlifted out of the jungle and sent back home before he has time to readjust.
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