4/15/10: Taxi

It was a sunny spring day, and I was in my truck, preparing to cut a beckoning plot of grass, when I settled on the song. Having just struggled into my lawnmower-man fatigues, I was shuffling through my battered MP3 player, trying to decide on the album I was least tired of, and that's when I noticed Muse's Black Holes and Revelations, a little nugget I hadn't listened to for nearly a year. However, for some reason that I would only later understand, I selected the song immediately preceding the Muse album, "Super Sex," by Morphine. I didn't feel like listening to it -- it's a good song, sure, a choice cut from the expired band -- but I felt that familiar old tickle in the back of my head, the one that says Do this and don't ask why. So, I did it.

I hit play, then at last got out and began unloading my mower, the legato instrumental intro to "Super Sex" in both ears. Cars zipped indifferently past over the two-lane road at my back, pelting me with ephemeral cushions of air as I gassed up and Mark Sandman readied his soupy monotone. There was a faint sense of prescience as I stood along the road, like watching a basketball player agonize over a foul shot; I knew I'd chosen the Morphine song for a reason, but I couldn't say why. It didn't take long for it to become apparent, however: The first word of the song is "taxi," spoken twice, and the very instant the first repetition boiled over my headphones, a van stormed into the driveway at my right, the no-frills magnetic sign on its driver's-side door advertising Boone Taxi.

My skin prickled.