Tomorrow's early morn. The highway beckons not a minute too soon.
Sanity regained -- assuming I've the fortitude to resist the race-baiting, Obama-hating, fear-mongering madness of my vehicle's AM dial -- for a few cloistered hours. Beethoven on CD I think, perhaps Brahms, or Ellington. Then, four sacred days with family and Shakespeare and Auden and Hemingway in the Missouri Ozarks' modern wilderness; yes there's satellite TV there, but on it is Turner Classic Movies -- sanity secured, however briefly.
No cable news or major press. My personal pledge. Well, maybe a peep now and then, just to confirm that the tea partiers haven't yet flamed the Reichstag or anything like that. Though only in part I'm a political commentator, so if they were, say, to burn Washington, I'd likely feel obligated to comment. It's my unholy cross, for others to bear or not.
I'm giddy just imagining the sensation: four whole days -- five if I fully recover -- absent from the liberal media's earth-shattering insight that Sarah Palin is maybe a trifle wanting in the presidential qualifications department; an equivalent recess from the conservative media's insight that Barack Obama is a jackbooted fascist bent on pressing my "junk." (Ah, but I'm fooling the oppressive bugger, I'm driving).
Can I just say No to Dionne? can I betray Brooks? can I impoverish my Sunday by ditching Rich? can I resist watching Schultz re-air the exact same program for the 500th time? It is that -- that "time" thing -- as they say, that will tell. But because my heart is raw my intentions are pure.
I may yet be back today. It's early and this fierce addiction tugs. On the road, though, tomorrow morning, I'll arm myself with cold presses and nerve-calming aromatic coffee -- (in my nagging, maturing mellowness I've forsaken whole vats of wine) -- and perhaps I'll even partake of snippets, just snippets mind you, of NPR methadone.
No, no consciousness-streaming Kerouac-tripping for me. I'm in pursuit of merely a mind-blanking, news-negating, contemporary-culture-denying total escape. And not to unduly project or anything, but I hope you have one too.