Dear 1.0, I think of you on your Grand Tour of the West, look up in my atlas each morning the various places you've been. I'm so glad that you were in Montana the day I wrote that short ribald poem. Idaho wouldn't have been nearly as poetic, nor Utah. I have a wild guess that you'll be in Nevada next, which I gather is a great deal more fun than Utah. Pretty much whatever I know of either state, I've learned from HBO.

The light here is beautiful just now, the sun finally came out after days of gloom. I imagine you driving down a highway, earth stained red, landscape vast and empty except for keening lightfilled air, sandstone formations in high relief against blue sky throwing down black shadows on silent desert floors.

Dear Creature, I lie back on the hood of your truck which in reality would be mighty uncomfortable but in the staged photo shoot of my imagination is the perfect place to be, reclined, arm across my face to shield my eyes from blazing sun raining radiance and Vitamin D down on my light-starved body. I'll just lie here and take a nap until you organize what it is you need to do, check messages while we're still in range, glance at the map and wonder what's between - what was the name of that burg?, oh who cares, we'll never see it again. And they looked at me funny anyway when I asked at the liquor store if they had rosé. Rose - say what? said the teetotaler behind the counter. Pink wine, I clarified, raising sunglasses from my nose with as much politeness as I could muster.

Where are you anyway? It is so damned vast and empty around here that I feel perfectly comfortable (given proclivities on either side of state lines, married that I am) to shed my top and throw my long hair back across the hood. Darn, wish I'd brought along a lemon to squeeze into it - naturally bleach my hair. Wait! I think I did. Let me fish in my bag. Yeah here it is, along with my nail file, let me cut it in half. Oh never mind my hair, let me squeeze some on pale halved parts that haven't seen sunshine since I left L.A. The juice dribbles onto my sunwarmed skin, mmmm, I taste the lemon - oooh it's so sour, reminds me that I'm alive, not like this vast desolate landscape in the middle of nowhere with me lying in only my panties on top of your truck, and there isn't even anything good on the radio, I thought you'd bought some satellite mobile provider, oh never mind, it's just Prairie Home or Rush all the time anyway, when what I want is The Book of Love, and I mean by Peter Gabriel. Man, it's warm here and I'm getting sleepy, and I'm enjoying patting my flat tummy and running my hands over my lemony self and inhaling my fingers. It's too much to ask if they have sushi around here, isn't it? Yeah, guess so. I could go for a tuna roll... Oh sweetheart, where are you? Don't make me prop myself up on my elbows and look out across this bleak terrain for you. Probably the pose I'm in now would attract a trooper's notice, but that's just how bored I've become, you. There - I'm going to will for a trooper to appear, way in the distance, just so you'll show up and do what makes me happy! (Well, that's how it always seemed to work in the past, but that was nighttime, with flashlights in our faces.) Oh, here you are, finally, emerged - wait, you were in the cab of your truck all along? You have a microwave in there? OMG - my favorite - I'm going to sit up for this. Croque Monsieur for two - you're a genius! And I'm starved. Come here you, have some Vitamin C to go with that salty ham & cheese - I put some on special, just for you...

yours, somewhere in the wild wild west,
Lisamarie