dark road and missing time

Coming home from a Halloween Party in Long Beach, it was clear driving for the first 50 miles or so. Then the world got moody. There was a serious marine layer, with waves of clouds passing in front of the yellowish half moon. Looked like smoke at first, but it went on for too many miles. We stopped at a rest area to switch drivers, and there was the moon, low over the Pacific ocean, with it's reflection shimmering off into the distance on the sea that never ends.

We hit highway 78 and it was a wall of brake lights, then twenty minutes of merging lanes and selfish people not giving an inch of room, even though cooperation would actually SAVE time. Lost the two left lanes. The stink of flares. Bored highway patrol officers waving us over. We must look like an endless stream of idiots to them, but we didn't have the luxury of knowing what was going on. The whole highway was closed, and we were forced to exit. We got a glimpse of some line of emergency lights under one of the bridges, cutting across all lanes. Probably a ghost or two sitting on the median that night.

So we took back roads home, and there was a wall of fog covering San Marcos, waves of clouds scraping the ground, looking for souls to consume ...

... if only we could remember the spirit of Halloween, not just buy buy buy all the crap we can get. And not plastic masks and cheap scares? How about breathing some of the old spirit and realizing that we're powerless fleas on the skin of the earth, and there are secrets all around us?

I don't know. Maybe the magic is truly gone. The cure for cancer is probably waiting in plain sight, in some kind of crab grass that we never pay any attention to, because we're only looking for the big thrill of the moment.