The Big Orange Moon

The moon - orange and large - danced at tree-top level as I drove out to do a job last night. Sometimes to the left of the asphalt path I was on and sometimes to the right - shifting with each curve in the road. A bit to the left, a bit to the right, but always there in front of me, bobbing like a boxer.

Thoughts crossed my conscious, coming in Chandleresque bursts like slugs from an automatic. That's just how I am. The latest reading seeps into my being and sweats it's way out of my pores.

Of course, it wasn't really reading at all that was clipping my inner dialogue shorter than a drill sergeant's cropped hair. It was 'The Adventures of Philip Marlowe' on my iPod that was doing that work. Episode after half-hour episode, LA's best-known private detective was seeping into my head.

"Damn you Marlowe! Let me go. Let me go I say...or else."

"Or else what? You've had me locked up in there for long enough. Now I'm long on time and short on answers, and you're going to change the answers part. And if you don't give me the answers, you're gonna at least do some listening. Brother, have I got a story to tell."

He had me. I bit like a hungry small-mouthed bass on a warm summer evening.

It wasn't till I sat through a marathon of his stories that I realized what a chump I was. Yeah, he played me like a patsy and I sat there and took it. Took it and kept coming back for more.

I couldn't get enough of his stories. The Orange Dog, The Panama Hat, Red Wind - his stories filled my night.

And when the I finally dragged myself home early this morning - just beating the sun and chirping birds, the bane of all drunks and night workers - the moon was still there. Higher in the sky and bright white instead of orange, but there.

Was it laughing at me? Maybe, but I was too tired to care and just smart enough to know I couldn't do anything about it.