'man, those kids are going to be so fucked up.'

-- laura, after i mentioned that joyce carol oates has written books for children.

i left salem for dracut shortly after my re-reading of the bell jar reached the moment where plath contemplates the horror of a summer spent in the suburbs. now that i'm back here, even for just a weekend, i'm struck by how inexplicable it is that i was able to do this for so many years: drifting, no job; no love, at least not any that went anywhere; and directionless. driving across the state a couple of weeks ago to see laura, seeing places i've never seen that are actually only a couple of hours away, my drive today through a town that seems to have changed so much in only months, and the realisation that i haven't spent a night at home since march all coalesce into an inescapable sensation of fullness and maturity-- i finally made it out, in the mental sense. i no longer feel much of a pull towards this place.

it came to me driving by some of the long farm tracts on the way into town that a lot of people i used to know must live elsewhere now, and that such things fade; i knew it before, but now i can appreciate it a bit more, being more or less established as i am at a new non-school address. living 'away from home', that is, on campus, for a couple of years was only a practice run despite what independence i thought i had.

i stared at the keys to the house of my parents for a day or two before i left this morning, keeping them on my nightstand as a reminder of the short trip hometownward i had planned and of how i no longer carried or needed to carry them on my key ring at all times. i feel far more like a visitor, and i am, even though i have a room here.

'good luck.' apparently that's what they say to you in emergency rooms. i had my first experience with one last night when i had to bring laura in: it ended up not being too serious, just a precaution for something we were already pretty sure about, but the experience was extremely disconcerting.

that panic-stricken last night flows evenly into rain-soaked today and my last full week of work. after that two more days and an august of expectation (and unemployment).

from this distance it's almost like we're under attack-- the sounds of fireworks in the distance, like that venerable past of the american northeast and the battles fought here for a country that would go so wrong in so many ways. this holiday of cookouts and amateur rocketry tends to perplex me, even though i went to a display last year. i spent the first part of the day last summer moribund in the limited daylight of my room back in dracut, avoiding heat amid the droning summer sounds of the second self-titled red house painters album. by night: a car ride, a stop for ice cream, back roads and uncertain steps in darkness. the youthful spirit of home, the last gasp of it before the road trip we'd embark on a couple of days later and all that ended up meaning.

this year, nothing so artistic: a day off from work and more hours to pass until laura arrives on friday.

'indeed, conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. let me illustrate. patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. it is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.'

-- emma goldman, 'patriotism: a menace to liberty'