Elko, Nevada

Traveling through the Nevada desert puts me in mind of tombstones and what might be written on mine:

Here lies
Brooks Roddan
Who never knew
Who he wanted to be

Hurtling through the state via Interstate 80 at 90 mph, the distance to my death is measured by the vastness of the desert's great emptiness; and the direction my life is to take from now on is to be found in the little dirt roads that intersect the highway and run diagonally, beginning and ending in their disappearance.

I know it's not like that--that the desert is a place of great beauty, gold mines, Christian mystics wandering around seeking the Godhead--but it looks like that.

Near Winnemucca, tired of driving and thinking I'll stop and find a cheap motel for the night, a new image appears out of nowhere, replacing the image of those words on my tombstone: that I am a monster, I always have been and always will be--and that you are a monster too. We're all monsters, but monsters capable of feeling real tenderness, and what a poet could call love, when looking at the form of a sleeping child.

Passing Winnemucca, pressing on inexhaustibly through evening shadows stolen from the palette of a minor Fauvist, passing the settlement of Battle Mountain, which I know from a past life holds nothing for me, toward Elko, a town that had always been welcoming in a windswept, forlorn way.

After checking in to The Stockman's Hotel, freshening up a bit, affixing my Bolo tie to the collar of my Wrangler shirt, I make my way downstairs and out into the street.

By now the day has almost fallen asleep in Elko, Nevada. I 'm still awake, tired and hungry and seeking the Basque restaurant that offers a world-famous rib-eye steak.