Joseph O’Malone was in search of something “sticky”.
Really, he wanted to spend some time doing something that he could market to himself as “life worth living”.
Sure, lots of people around him thought of Joseph as mellow. That was just a word that Joseph couldn’t really feel.
Here he was, burning the Michelin tires, crossing a great distance. Over the course of this journey, he would camp in the middle of open fields, in a forest, in a cave, on a beach, and stuff that was natural like that.
Lucky Joseph, he could look up at the night sky. Except when he was in a cave. On all other nights, he could look up at the night sky, listen to the maudlin cry of the whippoorwill, or the hum of the silence of the world, see the mauve vibrations. Joseph didn’t know that the color mauve was the French word for the mallow plant, which itself was that color. And still, the sky was of a beauty that he couldn’t buy for all the bitcoin in the world.
Driving from Michigan to Michoacán was indeed very far. And yet, not since he was in the womb had Joseph felt wrapped in the world like a tortilla.