Respect Nothing.

The sky, the atmosphere, had taken on a hazier look. The wall of yellow had a sponge-painted look to it, not as grainy as it usually looked but somewhat viscous. It was humid, it might well rain later.

Up 87, through Whiteclay, three or four people on the mission steps. Into Pine Ridge and east on U.S. 18, The road is inadequate, at least on the approach to town. One good thing to say about Nebraska is that it maintains its rural highways quite well. the reservation roads are something out of Connell. Anyone who tries to drive them drunk simply doesn't care if they live or not, simply,

RESPECTS NOTHING.

This was the command from one of the shacks along the Wounded Knee road. RESPECT NOTHING painted in block letters along the top of the wall near the roof. It's a common myth that nihilists are incapable of feeling passion. Actually they are often highly motivated by the naive belief of others. These people had put a huge amount of time and effort into covering their house with RESPECT NOTHING, and they knew preciously what they were doing. These people live on the road to one of the most infamous spots in North America. The sign is aimed directly at tourists boiling in white guilt and stealing themselves for an earth-shattering experience. the sign was made for us, just the four of us. It was made just to mock me, just to punish me for name-dropping Nieztsche like a junior-college dropout. You think you're bad boy? You can never bring yourself to respect nothing you closet incense-burning twit.

Sure, religion can inspire that kind of motivation every now and then, but it seems kind of lame by comparison. A three-hundred-foot statue, a cathedral that takes a hundred years to build... It's just too authoritarian, too communal. It doesn't have the same force, the same, yes magnificence, as building your own personal rejection of whatever passerby may believe.

There were a few clouds and the sky took on a sort of bruised color. We passed over a steep hill foretold by a sign that said HILL and we were in the village.