That feeling in the morning before you’re supposed to wake, prior to 6am, that half dream state, apocalyptic dreams ending…it’s cold out and you’re anxious and you don’t know why.  You put on your blue jeans and white t-shirt, white socks and boots, grab your keys – it’s almost like you’re high on something, you wonder – am I the only one.

You hit that Thread I-80 and the I-70, roll through Boonville Missouri and pass two pre-fab corrugated metal barns with triple X poorly lit neon signs, you’re going home, you tell yourself that...  Keep pushing that thread.  You try….but man!

The lights are dim and remind you of the repeating painted dashed lines of the highway.  There are no windows on this commercial strip box, just parked cars outside in the dark.  You walk-in, low light, you have no idea the bartenders hate this place.  You sit down, have a drink and wonder about her thread, the girl that is not all that interested in being half naked and getting bills stuffed in various places. 

You leave.  She leaves.

Quickcheck – get some diesel.

The suns coming up somewhere in the middle of thread I-70 Ohio and that guy in a silk shirt rolls in with a Ferrari GTO.

You and your brothers of the grind, random men who wake up with the same anxiety before the sun rises and drive the diesel burden; men that are not happy to see the man in silk, but ecstatic about an engine with twelve cylinders in the back of a car -  beg the silk man to pop the hood – “Let’s see that workhorse engine.”

Quickcheck – get another Redbull.

Remember that night you’re pop came home and just ripped the upper cabinets off the kitchen in the trailer.  Pop, you get him now, 20 years of same shit, meaningless shit of putting toasters together in Macon, Missouri, same shit everyday….

What was work? What was the toaster? His entire existence was him doing what society expected of him, that was his existence’s safety net, and now you’re asking him after 20 years to re-think it? 

So here we go.  Mr. Silk is an architect. 

Being an architect, takes some serious narcissism, it’s not easy if you’re human.

"The party's over son.  The column done hit the pantheon!"