The Weather

I drove through the fog-filled Alleghenies.

So, this is where they are, I thought.

The incidence of geography.

Then the march.
I went.

My knees keep swelling without explanation.
And then I have to be carried.

It is awkward.
Strangers' shoulders.
Or. 
Sometimes in the middle of the night.
I wake up.
Wailing.
I am carried to a hot bath, with salts.

And then I leave again.
I drive.
I look at the darkness below my lower eye lashes. I wonder if it is seeping across my skin.

"Athens is beautiful," I said. "Captivating."
"Except, they are all Trump supporters."
"Nobody is perfect," I reply, watching the trees move.
"You are working through some karma," she said.
"It all keeps repeating," I said.
"I hope you figure out what you are supposed to do differently."
"Yes. Before the irony kills me. And I have to do it all again."

I think about getting a massage. Going to yoga. Running three miles. I dismiss them all.
They are beside the point.

I muse about Trump as an emblem of post-modernism.
I consider the relationship between Personality Disorders and feminist standpoint theory.
Didn't all of those theorists say, sometimes a fact is whatever you declare to be true? Wasn't that the idea? More or less? And then all that matters is how much power you have when you say it?

"This kind of thing tears people apart," another woman says to me, for the second time, at my kitchen table.
I look at her again, annoyed she has ignored my deflection. "It has been hard, sometimes," I agree.
But we are speaking past each other.

She knows this attorney. But not those other ones. Hell, I don't even know them all.
She tells me she thinks I am seeing clearly. "I was disappointed he didn't put that information in the report. But you can't tell another professional how to do their job."
She concludes by telling me her hands are tied.

You can't tell another professional how to do her job.

I wonder how burnt out she becomes.
If the darkness spreads beneath her eyes, too.
I begin to wonder if we all believe that.
Too much of the time.
About our hands.
Even when, the truth is, we are the person, most perfectly positioned, to revolt.
But then the truth also is, we are also the person, most perfectly positioned, to suffer at our own hand.
 
There was sheeting rain ten of the fourteen hours to Ohio.
And darkness for six of them.
In Virginia it was more rain and then the fog.

Did you know that in New Orleans it is illegal to put your flashers on during adverse weather events?
They say it prevents depth perception.

I have concluded that they mean: it is better, instead, to simply collide without warning.
My interpretation is not widely accepted.
We fight about this, every time it rains.