Orange Rumble

On the night of July 3rd, I had a strange electricity surging through my body that I was unable to shake. This was very unfortunate because it was a little after midnight in the middle of nowhere Montana and there would be no other solution than to go to sleep and wake up for the 4th of July in a few hours. Something had to be done. So I searched my journal for passages where I had similar feelings and longings to do everything at once and this is what came from that night. This is my first new writing for The Compass and I'm proud to display it here first.

-Anthony
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Orange Rumble


Tonight, the moon seems further away from the earth than usual. A distant, unreachable dream. Perhaps it's an optical illusion. The stratus clouds and fog swirl around its dirt-colored surface. A select few have walked its craters, or so we are told. I believe it. Why not? But why can't I believe that I can ever do the same? I haven't talked to the right people. The moon will always hang as if it were just an image on television, broken down into blue, green, and red bars. Not a dream but an conjured hallucination that no one but myself fully understands. But tonight, something seems different. Off. It radiates that I should not care. This is unacceptable.

When I travel near New York City on the other side of the country, this lunar distance is also very noticeable. I've only been near NYC three times and only once in its interior. Inside, my internal compass spins and I can never truly find my bearings. Each street looks just like the next. People walk with an involuntary strut because they know where they are. I usually have a great sense of direction. They spend money on mutations of what the rest of the world is used to. Everything is better there although from a quick glance, it is negatively undetectable.

The second time through the city was by complete accident, driving from Delaware to Rhode Island. Before we had time to respond, we were cradled in traffic waiting to pay $8 to cross the George Washington Bridge. The third time was from the air, flying into LaGuardia. I didn't realize that planes were allowed to fly that close to the city still. Sitting in the fuselage by the window in a row by myself, the smeared, plastic panel revealed water, then the Statue of Liberty, then skyscrapers. The whole time my heart had stopped completely and I was swimming in a cold sweat not knowing that everything was alright. I was the only one panicking, wondering if I could pry open the panel that holds the oxygen masks with a pen.

The fourth: At night, we entered the city through the same way as the Delaware trip, impossible not to notice the close planes as we crossed the George Washington into the concrete, graffitied chasms of the Bronx. The starless sky replaced with orange street lights and support beams. My stomach replaced with syringes filled with coffee, my head filled with the want of tobacco smoke to marinate my brain inside my skull.

My nerves begin to peak at the edge of New Jersey as we entered the city. Maybe it was a post-9/11 mentality. But once we crossed the bridge, the anxiety was still present. There wasn't much traffic but then the realization sideswiped me and hijacked my thoughts for the rest of the drive into Long Island.

I have a large distrust of other people. With all the stimuli from a large area, (for example, this massive metropolitan area) the brain must not only take in everything it is exposed to, but must also process, analyze, and act upon this massive amount of data. I do not trust the individual human brain to stay 100% healthy from this constant computing, thus these internal defenses go up. Anyone of these people could snap at any point of time and it is my nature to stay prepared if it does. Then again, it could all be a result of thinking far too much. Every bump in a jet makes me think that the wings will shatter off, the plane's hull being peeled like a banana, and slamming nose down in a fireball on some family's farm in the Midwest. Rattles in unfamiliar taxis on the way to the airport equate to loose rattlesnakes that the crazy driver keeps as pets. It'll strike and I'll die before the plane can even reach the borders of the county. Every sore throat is tuberculosis. Every headache is an inoperable brain tumor. Trains slam into each other head on. Plagues at the mall. Hostage situations at banks. Tornados at the sight of rain and wind. Every car in the rearview mirror at night is a murderer. The brain is too overpowering for human hearts. Sometimes it needs to rest.

Another hijacker. The anxiety then came from excitement. The people in New York City give a damn about where their lives are going. The people in some parts of the city live in horrible conditions like those in unfortunate parts of Elmira, where I've been spending the last few years. However, the city crowd pays so much more for the same conditions because they have certain goals that they wish to achieve. That is the difference. I'm glad Mark Twain never saw Elmira hit it's tipping point and transform into such a suffocating environment. Being stuck in such a poisonous shipwreck of a town makes a person want to discover where happy people dwell. People who haven't quite given up. The small apartments of New York City are where this is. They reject the rust-stung water of their hometowns and move to where their neighbors still dream and can see clearly to infinity. No one lives here to strive for mediocrity. People move to New York City to be someone, to accomplish. My anxiety was the excitement of seeing this. I could feel it radiate through the ground. All the undiscovered potential of every single person in this city could supply it's electrical needs for years.

This city cannot be the only place where this feeling exists. Everyone everywhere is doing something, swimming in the streetlights not knowing for certain what is to come. People look into campfires and feel like everything is ok, was ok, will be ok. A tranquility in orange. Staring at tangerine streetlights of a small town with blank mind not knowing what to feel is no different. In the late hours of the night, some unknowingly gaze upon their sleeping neighbors behind walls and under sheets. The sleepers feel nothing but comfort. A few of us are awake and cannot find a way to snuggle in.

When the trip is over, when lightbulbs are replaced with logs, I look into a campfire with confusion and everything floods back in a hug of acceptance. Someone may play guitar while another pokes at embers with a stick. Everyone stares into the light. Our ancestors did the same. Their eyes wondering, examining flickers and thinking of what the next day will bring. Soldiers from the Civil War, Vietnam, World War I and II stared in the same way. Slaves escaping the Devil. Any moment, every thought can face the intrusion of a bullet. Absolutely no one knows what their tomorrow has in store. I stare into the fire just as they were. In the ancient flame, we share the silent knowledge of what it means to be human. Dreams and aspirations cannot become just embers. The fire must be tended to.

From this I have a large amount of energy built up and I have no idea how to get rid of it. There needs to be some sort of release. I need fireworks, greasy food, sweaty families, shitty cover bands. I need to hear explosions that you can feel in your chest that bounce and reverberate through the mountains. I want to smell gunpowder and scorched chemicals drifting towards the next town. I need that patriotic feeling of watching something combust. I want the rumble of our capability to rattle the coffins of the dead presidents. Celebrate our freedom. Always.

I must travel this country in which I call myself a citizen, for I do not know it well. Each of us have wandered to different states here and there but I need to experience it fully. This trip will aim us towards the people and places we do not know. But another part must be to see the nothing. To stop the car on the side of the road in the middle of infinite fields, shut everything down and stand on the hood, gazing out into the ocean of Middle-America and not hearing a sound but the wind and our nervous systems. Cell reception will not touch our bodies. Electricity a recently lost friend. The smell of campfire, gasoline, and hash browns in our hair. Coffee sludge on our tongues. A greasy tear of happiness and the jingle of keys. Our souls will explode and vibrate into the sky. The Presidency will take note. Yesterday they did their jobs. Tomorrow we do ours.