Truck Stop Coffee

West Texas prose should sound as flat and dry as an industrial equipment manual, and every sip should taste like a thirty-mile stretch of highway.

By stepping into an independent lane—by stripping away the noise, the labels, and the societal “order” we slap over everything—art gives us a direct line to what is actually there. It lets us sit with the mystery of being a brief flash of consciousness caught between two giant slices of nothing, and instead of feeling panic, we feel awe. We find a quiet, objective peace.

It turns the artist into a very specific kind of investigator — someone performing a forensic examination of the present moment, recording the evidence before it shifts again.