Katie

Red plastic, pebbled, molded. Shiny. Reflecting the morning light. The feel of it against the skin of her cheek, cool and smooth, it had rolled over in the night, or she had rolled over to it she realized, since she was off of the quilt and onto the dusty earth. Some bits of rock stuck in her cheek. She fingered the thermos, caressed it in the space before full consciousness. Pale blues and shiny yellows reflected some how from that red mass of chemical chains--textured but smooth at the same time. Tiny dips and divots pressed into the plastic by giant machines, in a factory, spewing smoke. It had a white, smooth, plastic lid, the Marlboro logo stuck on or painted on or something. Coffee inside. More chemicals. “My chemical thermos,” she thought. So far from where it started in that factory. Now it was in the middle of the desert, in the cool dry morning just before it could be called sunny; the sky, gigantic overhead, the mountains and hills visible in the distance, pinkish in the morning. Somehow she could just sit there and drink it all in. No motion. No action. She just absorbed the beauty of the place; letting some romantic nostalgia wash over. The quiet. The cool air in her lungs. Then the modern brain kicked in, accessing scenes and snippets of Georgia O’Keefe paintings, Georgia herself in a black Stetson hat, all wrinkles and sternness. Picture an oriental rug, and the perfect rock. Red and dark brown patterns intertwine intricately woven by fingers far away. Black surfaces smoothed by time. Beautiful textiles, light and airy, blowing in the wind, with a floral pattern, the subject of a false ad in a fashion magazine. No one dressed that way in the desert. She accessed the beauty of material culture that she for some reason thought of here, in the beauty of nature. She didn’t want to do anything. Paralyzed by the dry cool air and the perfect light. She couldn’t spit it out in any cohesive way. Couldn’t write a song about it. Couldn’t make a dress about it. What about a painting? She wanted just to be it. Be the hills and the sky all at once. She could forget about politics and fracking, and how the whole world was going to shit because this was such beautiful country. And what was there to share it with her? A thermos, from a thrift shop. Marlboro. She had never touched one. That’s not true, in Paris when she was 23 she smoked a cigarette to see what it was like, but had no idea if it was a Marlboro. It was bummed from some sleazy Frenchman just before she went upstairs to the small women’s bathroom of the gay dance club and almost passed out in the bathroom from too many glasses of white wine. That thermos. A worthwhile companion with its coffee flavored water inside. But she had to do something. Fill up the thermos. It was from a thrift store in New York City. Fucking New York City, with everything, except this landscape and this air and these clouds. Did she have to move today? There was no job to go to. She had to meet basic human needs though--water, and later food. Go back into town? She was getting practical which felt wrong in the moment. Dreamy loose knit thoughts always came easier. She’d stay with the thermos as her only companion for a little longer.