For all that the sun hides behind the mountains fairly soon on in a Colorado afternoon, until it does it can be a blinding aggravation to drivers headed on the fastest freeways. Things get to be kind of black and white (whereas the lack of light can give things strange color. You ever notice that? Maybe it’s just me…) while you’re trying to anticipate shapes and unexpected movement as potential dangers since you lose the whole picture to the retina-violating sunshine.

Colorado has a ridiculous number of clear days per year, although we tend to forget it’s kind of a desert. Sunshades should be more of a requirement than the ubiquitous clear sodas and snowboards, but since I don’t wear glasses I often forget about them until moments like this, where I’m banging my steering wheel in aggravation because everyone ahead of me also has forgotten the presence of the giant semi-perpetual nuclear explosion just eight light-minutes away.

Sometimes my view of myth and science collide in strange ways. Aside from all of the details regarding the mystical power of the sun (usually related to “illumination” on a grander scale than an epiphany, but still a matter of suddenly whisking away the shadows from a truth, even should that truth simply be, “Dude, you’re supposed to be dead!”) and its role in myth (between Amaterasu and Ra and the rest, I don’t see it as gender confused – I think its avatars cloak themselves depending on the needs of the times) I think of all of the connections with our planet and our worldview. Will future generations have myths of Mars and the moon? Does the Beyond touch the planets we haven’t yet realized? Did Jupiter lose a band of colour because of a coup somewhere in a myth we do not have the processes to comprehend, let alone touch?

I have acquaintances who straddle these worlds, so to speak. Who can talk geology and yet how some mountains are made of sleeping giants at the same time, and yet, there’s a disconnect I feel. How can both things be true at once? The literal and the figurative circle each other like opponents in a boxing ring, each looking for a weakness in the other the one can use to press an advantage, and reason laughs just as madly as faith.

It’s like my saying that the world I live in is a small place. There’s a statistic my mom quoted me (often – and usually had more to do with teaching me to drive rather than the actuarial data) about how most accidents happen within ten miles of your home. Well, who goes out more than ten miles from their house on any kind of regular basis? I think it also brought home the idea of how small communities used to be. My world is a small place, but how would I have measured the world within, say Ivan? Or the world the President of the United States must live in? (And how strange the transition from the world in which he grew up?)

And how strange a world for Matana, for example? The world she grew up in, and then the worlds shown her by her parasite? You must grow into different worlds, and visit new ones in relationships. Who knows how many you ever travel, let alone live in at once? There’s my work worlds, and my little world inside this car, trying not to interact too closely with any other individual carworlds.

Sylvia talked about her world expanding. Does it get bigger or do you just change places? (I’ve played gaming scenarios that could argue either, but not even many of those systems would allow you tools for the measuring.) Mine has changed significantly, even if I could not (would not!) wander into some of the places I’ve visited again, I could suggest that every step into the future is one I walk into a new place.

Some people would have road rage by now. I, instead, have road philosophy. Which is probably closer to road rash, I think. At least the sun was a degree or two more hidden by the horizon. That only left the smell of the dog food factory as one of the reasons this is one of my least favourite parts of the route.

Well, that and realizing I’d missed my exit.

My phone rang. I hit the speakerphone button because I’m responsible like that, at least in a rental. (It still distracts you, but so does talking to the person in the other seat.)

“E here.”

“So,” Ed drew the word out a little. Lots of “o”s in that word.

“So?” I cut him off.

“You sure about that address?”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“I found where it should be.”

“And?”

“So, magic and mathematics have a common ancestor, right?”

“I don’t know that that’s true.”

“Remember that bit in Harry Potter where the house number was missing unless you spoke the secret word and then everything expanded? Or the bus bit in the movie.”

“Um, yeah, but I don’t remember what any of that was called. Something in a bad latinesque analogue.”

“Squeezus Like a Toothpaste Tubus. Yeah. I think something like that happened here. There’s something I can’t see wrong with it.”

“But it’s wrong, right?”

“Right, it’s wrong. And I’m sure if I were a math guy, mathmetician, this would have to do with radiuses and tesseracts and stuff.” Only he didn’t say “stuff.”

“It’s not a giant silver sphere.”

“Nope.”

“Good, I hate those.”

I travelled in silence for a moment.

“I can’t take a picture of what’s not there. Of nothing, you know? If nothing is something.” Ed was struggling.

“That’s not true – with pictures you can have a negative.”

“Ha. Ha. Very funny. I meant on this cellphone thingie. I totally forget about it because no one wants pictures of the spiders in their attic. They just want them to go away.”

“I’m at least forty minutes away, still.”

“I’ve tried hailing the house. All hailing frequencies, including honking my horn. You think they had a horn on the Enterprise?”

“Oh, I’m sure it comes standard. Look, if it’s that weird, go home. I’d hate to have you sucked in to some kind of dimensional pocket.”

“Sure that ain’t a euphemism for some Venusian bootie?”

“No, I think we settled on `flytraps’ for that. I’m on the turnpike.”

“‘Kay. I’ll hang around here a little bit longer, and I’ll call if I leave or something interesting happens.”

“Deal.” We did our little phone closure pieces, and I watched the line of red lights in front of me. At least the sun was out of my eyes, right?

“This is witch business,” said the fellow in the seat next to me, just as I settled back into the rhythm of driving.