Whip it away! the age-worn fray, the hunchback's hump from birth! Whorl, these winds! shred spirits from skins, and the din thus destroying the Earth. See brain-dead Feds fill fine young heads with notions vain and bland, see them blather and rant, see them lather and pant, until the froth on their lips leaves them scant. Let these masters hands seal holes trepanned, defiling all of living's worth, let the genius alone to roll over the stone thus revealing new no-man's mirth. For strolling the well trodden path, my friends, living bland and forgotten in the dull witless pens of suburbia lends to the hazardous bends of these zombiesque trends, to the raw, bitter bite called the middle-class plight, leads one to desire rebirth. Swaggering along this mortal road one foregoes majestic turf.

It is, however, easier to make a living.

I once strode those paths less trodden, had done so gleefully for years and years. But there was one adventure that stands out amongst all the rest, and then was the time, when I was still a very young and idealistic man and I first kissed the fecund lichen Lady's hand of Power. I remember the journey like former life. For all I know now, it certainly may have been a former life. Gods are like that, you know. Always born and dying -- a naive, defiant child grown to a soft and cackling old man, over the course of a thousand millennia, with undeniable Power and a grand sense of humor, that's a god for you.

And it was the first time I nuzzled with the Power of Fate and Irony that strikes me now, in this last lifetime, as my requiem unreckoned. To recall the feel of Power reminds me of the lickety-split-like attitude of mortality and the security of omnipotence.

I once carried a mortal name, when I felt young and idealistic, a maiden name, if you will, and from rebirth I crawled from the ashes to reveal the last form of a dying god taken.

Gods have no proper names. We take whatever name proves convenient. Like a writer, we take many names. A Nom de Plume of the celestial. Sometimes it rains hard for a long, long time:

That may be our name.

Sometimes the sun comes out and the winds die down:

That may be our name.

Sometimes a tree creaks for no reason and the birds lift to flight seconds before the tree is struck by lightning:

That is one of my favorite names.

So you could call me, your humble narrator, any name coming to mind, and it would be fitting. However, if you need a pigeon to fill the bird house in your head, feel free to call me Thor. I am merely a tour guide, merely a game show host, yet I am the master of the Wellspring -- I will lead you through the final days of the life and death of Owen Dunum, and beyond. Please, follow me, strolling through this gallery, always looking left to right, left to right.

Hatred of things was common in the 1990's. It was a conservative time in America and  Owen knew it, but there had simply been no choice. He had had to travel. And now there was Greensburg, Kansas and the staring motorists, and the intermittent May showers, but all in all, he told himself, he felt good. He was back on the road. His layover in the Middle west had been long, but that was ending now and it would never return. He would not give it the chance to return. He was off now. Off to new adventures, new women, new cities, languages, taverns -- off to find the Buddha on the roadside and kill him. Or die trying.

Or trying to die.

He felt death there with him on the road, near Greensburg, but it was only watching.

"No wrecks today, you ol' bastard," he said out loud. The sentence was instantly torn to shreds by the wind and forgotten.

It was fresh now, the travel. The feel of motion, the destruction of routine, the slow drain of money, the uncertainty of sleep, it rushed back to him now, blasting like a turbo-jet in his ears. The wind still felt damp from the storm and there wasn't much cause for movement so he sat very still on the motorcycle and thought, crackling through Kansas at 80 miles per hour.

It's not like there's no sense to it. You have a plan. You can make it this time, without having to stop. You just need to conserve the cash. That's all. And you can make it. You feel the small wooden chair solid beneath your ass, and the dark skinned senorita' across the table offering to get you another beer. You can smell the thick coffee.

Yes, the coffee, you can smell it, can't you? Isn't this what you're supposed to be doing? This is what Fate had in mind, wasn't it? It's odd, the travel this time, you feel alone. When you landed in New Orleans and lived on the streets for two weeks you never once felt alone. Or maybe you just didn't care then. Used to hear voices in the wind telling you where to go. Where are those damned voices now, when you need them?

If you make it to the desert you'll find them again. Maybe Organ Pipe. Yes, Organ Pipe will work just fine. A return to the mesa. That Mesa. The one from a dream, the one from another life. Where to go from here? Damn those voices. You said the incantations, parted with sacrifices, all that rot -- now where in the hell are those traveling voices you left out here?

The motion now, yes, the vibrations from this beast. From Rocinante. The motor sounds like it's running better now, growing accustomed to the highway. Good, At least one of us is.

Don't worry about the future, kid, take care of this one strip of asphalt at a time. Where do you want to stop? Or were you intending to just keep driving? Driving like an idiot, moving faster and faster until you explode into one fleeting shaft of light. Warp speed at that point, old boy. What do you think? Tucumcari? It's only another 600 miles, you can make it on the two hours of sleep you had last night. Hell, you can do anything, can't you? That's what you're always telling yourself. So let's see it now overman, let's see show time.