Noir or Au Revoir?

I lit out of town, fleeing the ubiquitous quatrefoil (see Quattrefoil 1/10/2009 and Blind Windows 1/20/2009), bedizenment du jour, past churches, filling stations, cantilevers, walls of glass, stray dogs, lawns, barbed wire, grown-ups in suits, beauty supply stores, and a housing development which rose along a hillside in a continuous row, each roof rising above the next like gymnasium bleachers.

I needed to put distance between me and the rampant deployment of this irrelevant ornament. Was I in search of pure form like some post jugendstil dodo, playing real estate hooky, or just plain desperate for blog material?

Either way, I pulled off Interstate 5 well after dark, to Harris Ranch Inn & Restaurant in Coalinga. A glowing fountain, like some Celtic effigy, a four leaf clover turned poison ivy, barred my entry. "Curse you quatrefoil," I blared.

Carne Asada would have to wait, sustenance would come in a different form, in a shingled form.