at some point in the recent past i was able to make peace with my love of driving. something about velocity and music hits me in just the right way and always has: ágætis byrjun in ninety degree streaming wind through all of the open windows late night/early morning on the empty loop connector as i got sasha up as fast as she would go. one of my fondest memories. never squared with the guilt i always felt about the act, which dovetails with another fond memory, though this one more bittersweet, of driving christine home after syriana and wondering how many people over how many anywheres died for each drop of fuel we were using. paralysis is what it was. in the final analysis, maybe i realise now, there's nothing to be done about it, living in a society with infrastructure done this way; and there's even less to do about the inhuman mechanisms by which it is all made possible. hope for the bad end we deserve.

one of the last times i got to see catherine i went with her to some crazy store in beverly she remembered from her youth so she could look for jewelry, a sort it turned out they no longer carried. she drove (now that i think about it, i've never driven her anywhere) in what was then her new car and gushed about the peace of mind her new acquisition was relaying to her. she used to drive her mother's grand cherokee when she had to drive us places back in the day, and i suspect that she had the same aversion to the act of driving i did, preferring her bike. infinitely.

she changed a lot in the interim, and i remember the nameless horror i felt on that day when she talked about driving around and around to clear her mind, no clear destination in mind, and filling up whenever she wanted to, because at the moment she could afford gas prices wherever they were-- and the nameless horror of another day, before that, where she talked about working for exxon as a petroleum geologist, trying to find the last of it, in all seriousness. it was a deathly, dead-butterflies-in-a-whirlwind, deep stomach horror that comes along nameless and unbidden, which some associate with the identification of a moral wrong. but where was the wrong, when nothing can be changed? there's an answer to that, and my stomach had it at the moment, but the point today is that i can't name it anymore.

and if i could, the recognition would be wasted because i am just as culpable. as soon as i was legally allowed to, i started driving to school, a route which was easily walkable and also a detour of minor minutes to my father on his morning drive out of town to work. he used to drop me off after i stopped taking the bus. but i drove there and home every day, sometimes making myself useful by providing rides to megan, who lived far from the school. a lot of the time instead of driving home alone i drove to other places of not much use alone: to the highway (almost) and back alone, for the road and the trees; to new hampshire, alone, for borders, the complete stories of franz kafka, and awkward, dreamlike conversation with the clerk about 'the hunter gracchus'; and alone to wherever else i used to go to think the long, long thoughts longfellow famously ascribed to youth.

in all that thinking i never came to the moral quandary that was haunting me as i belted out the dresden dolls on a thunderstormy evening drive to whole foods just a couple of weeks ago (26 days in july it rained, they said at the office), even though the answer, though not always the questions, terms, or conditions, would have been right in front of me if i had taken the clerk at borders up on her suggestion to read kafka's 'gracchus' closely, as i did just as i reached over to the small library i keep closest to my desk to check my spelling of his name:

'"i think not," said the hunter with a smile, and, to excuse himself, he laid his hand on the burgomaster's knee. "i am here, more than that i do not know, further than that i cannot go. my ship has no rudder, and it is driven by the wind that blows in the undermost regions of death."'

we all ascribe mythical status to the remembered statements of the shades of people from our past but, genuinely, that woman was a motherfucking prophet.

me: 'i'm becoming such a nihilist, have you noticed?"

laura: 'meh, whatever.'

'maybe god is in the universe the way salt is in the ocean, giving it a taste.'

-- john updike, rabbit is rich


'"finitude," he wrote, "is the contradiction of the infinite, or anything which is subject to the laws of entropy, decay, and extinction. and for us, for human beings, i would include in the definition a consciousness of the perishing of each moment of existence. or, more simply: the demand made upon us, as a species, at every moment, to choose one thing instead of another. we might imagine that we are on a boat, and that the prow of the boat penetrating the water is the choice made, or the present thing, and that the wake following the boat is what is not chosen, the absent thing: tiny wave upon wave, a body growing wider and wider, finally dissolving into the universe in ways we cannot fully perceive. what is present is finite; what is absent is infinite." he crossed it out.'

-- haven kimmel, the solace of leaving early


put your hand over the side of the boat
and what do you feel?

-- kate bush, 'a coral room'

laura bought a fuzzy buddha.

'there are so few people given us to love. i want to tell my daughters this, that each time you fall in love it is important, even at nineteen. especially at nineteen. and if you can, at nineteen, count the people you love on one hand, you will not, at forty, have run out of fingers on the other. there are so few people given us to love and they all stick.'

-- anne enright, the gathering

recently i went back to dracut (i need to stop the annoying habit of calling it 'home,' as i now live in a leased apartment which i rarely leave) to finish clearing up my old room, and a need to calm down after what proved to be a rather unsettling experience and an obsessive desire to make a list resulted in this:

a complete list of items salvaged from various quarters of the bedroom of my youth and teenage years, examined, kept, and placed into two small white copy paper boxes to live on the top of my old closet

- phantasy star online soundtrack cd.

- christmas ultimate parody 16, a collection of parody christmas songs and comedy sketches, compiled and burned by matt when we were in 8th grade, named after dragonball z: ultimate battle 22 for playstation, which i'd recently acquired a working import version of.

- polaroid joycam photos of the last day of 7th grade (loose), including george walking an invisible dog, george hanging from a light fixture, kyle and krystal screaming at each other in front of a stereo in the music room, and the entire music class re-enacting the 'bohemian rhapsody' scene from wayne's world with classroom desks in car formation.

- polariod joycam photos (in box) of the last day of 9th grade, when kyle, megan, matt, orso, justin, kaleigh and myself went to the brettcave, otherwise known as brett's basement room. jedi outcast ozma, and vanilla coke ensued.

- weezer ticket-- 21 july 2002 in mansfield: went with kyle, kaleigh, alli.

- white t-shirt written on in multicoloured marker (never washed, never worn) from the last days of 9th grade spanish, part of an assignment in which we made spanish-themed t-shirts (which went awry)-- i wrote 'crimex: el reloj mafia' (crimex: the clock mafia, spanish) in large letters, and heather wrote 'vivi, la heather' and 's'agapo [heart] heather' (i love you, love heather, greek).

- official new york-penn league baseball-- game ball from a lowell spinners game.

- who were the pharaohs?: a history of their names with a list of cartouches by stephen quirke.

- soul calibur promo poster.

- final fantasy anthology: official strategy guide.

- 'the fan': an ink drawing of kyle, wearing a tal bachman shirt, with his characteristic expression, circa grade seven. folded notebook paper, signed by the artist, matt.

- r.e.m. holiday single from 2000 (33 1/3):
1. christmas time (is here again)
2. hastings and main
3. take seven

- computer printout of a picture of sasha bell from the original promo material for the finishing school, her first solo album.

- mst3k fan club welcome pack (white folder).

- a list entitled 'fox's next fall lineup' by myself and matt, listing alternate names of popular shows for comedic effect, including 'family die: the tragic two-parter.' circa 7th grade.

- faux-stained glass window hanging of a guardian angel with two children on a bridge.

- environmental school journal - 'may 11-15, 1998'

- westboro baptist church flyer: 'englesby school is a homo-fascist regime.' printed out to show around school to gather interest for the counter-protest, which massively outnumbered said religious crazyfolk.

- graduation hat/tassels.

- notebook (blue) with only three pages written on. titles are:
1. 'what is important' (3 july 2003)
2. 'people that (who?) matter' (undated)
3. 'what is important to me' (23 august 2003)

- the phantom tollbooth

- the little webster dictionary, bought from courtney for three dollars, grade 4.

- small icelandic tabloid magazine.

- salem state college orientation button (my name in red).

- small green camouflage pouch (empty).

- silver mini-maglite (broken).

- extra key to blue trunk.

- illin' mathematicians '04 sticker.

- mrs. mccabe's card, with her e-mail address written on it.

- derrick thomas football card, from phil.

- democratic socialists of america membership card (expired december 2005). card arrived initially with the '5' handwritten over a 4, since they evidently had cards left over from the previous year.

- small yellow umbrella, as for cocktails. this has something to do with monica.

- high school student identification cards (4). kaleigh was collecting everyone's old ones and i guess i never got around to giving her mine.

- photograph dated 30 january 2002, taken by rosette. her brother's wild squirrel on top of her refrigerator.

- amnesty international sticker.

- galaxie 500 copenhagen cd insert, 'come ride the fiery breeze of galaxie 500.'

- lipton green tea with citrus bottle from quebec-- 'thé vert aux agrumes.'

- ms-07 gouf sd action figure.

- weezer bboard name tags (laminated) from aforementioned show, with my forum name (enjoy jojo), used by virtual users to identify each other at the concert. we ran into a small group and had an awkward conversation. kaleigh thought she saw one other person (recognised her from her picture) a few rows up from us during the show.

- homer simpson church key.

- greek bracelet from an elementary school era birthday party at cassie's.

- seating tag from the prom i attended (25 may 2006).

- hush records sticker.

- fake love letter from me to bethany by katie, with bethany's name spelled incorrectly.

- invitation to nickie's 16th birthday party, 23 june 2003.

- women who rock magazine, september/october 2003-- meg white on cover.

- 'vote alli for class of 2005 vice president' stickers.

- imitation beanie baby frog.

- collection of 'super dog' comics (a hot dog who battles other, more criminal foods) i drew in 2nd grade in a folder with a hot rod on the cover ($1.00, school store).

- elementary school yearbooks. each year there was a theme:
1994 - golden apple
1995 - fish for knowledge
1996 - fly into memories
1997 - through the doors
1998 - going out in style
1999 - unlock the mystery of "99"

- plastic musket pistol (black).

- 'maple the bear' beanie baby (complete with canadian flag).

- great illustrated classics: the prince and the pauper and the time machine.

- 8th grade class picture in small poster tube.

- english leather wallet (brown).

- yoda action figure.

- the telegraph company distribution sampler number 1 cd.

- junior high yearbook: there had been a page of pictures missing, so they were handed out on the other side of the building on the last day. next, the building was locked and we were left outside to gather signatures, wait for the bus to come, or run away.

- final fantasy vii original soundtrack.

- thesaurus musicarum: the pitchfork year in music, 2003.

- 'ace bandit records' bumper sticker concept design.

- high school yearbook with separate autograph insert including messages like 'stay deep, brother' (kaleigh) and many others, some now illegible. i started reading monica's, cried, and stopped. i know why i saved this for last.

'if it wasn't statistics we got, it was advice. RAF officers coaxed journalists on how to don their gas masks. they advised us to use the "buddy-buddy" system, whereby you helped your fellow scribe to fit the filter onto his mask but ensured your own was fitted first -- while your colleague presumably suffocated to death. the whole wretched business involved "hunkering down" -- a phrase a suspect the military got from the press -- while gallons of saddam's vile cocktail clouded around us. a visit to the french foreign legion -- red wine in the desert seemed a lot more sensible than a british ration of lukewarm water -- convinced me that there were simpler methods of avoiding chemical extinction. a british member of the legion's second infantry regiment from the east end of london told me that his unit -- battle honours included the marne -- had its own unique operational instructions. "basically," he said, "when there's a red gas alert, someone blows a whistle and we all pile on our lorries and drive like fuck out of the area."'

-- robert fisk, the great war for civilisation

gone.

your eyes are burning holes through me
i'm gasoline
i'm burning clean

-- r.e.m., 'electrolite'

if life is a fire, the 'vital spark' i call my body heat in those inner dialogues with myself, then at our most conscious moments we should be a pure flame, burning clean. the 'vital spark' thing is something i started saying under my breath some years ago when i realised anytime between october and april i'd get cold even in a decently heated place if i sat still for too long, and i was rarely in a decently heated place. so i took a lot of hot showers to replenish the vital spark, or curled up under a thick blanket and shut myself off to the outside world so that i could be warm. it was one or the other. a lot of it was a function of being alone most of the time-- having someone else in close proximity certainly helps quite a bit. it got to the point where, and this is either sad or as fond a winter memory as one can craft when alone on a long, cold night, anytime i had to go out to shovel during a snowstorm i'd load up on vodka first so the snowflakes would be even more swirly dancey against the black sky and yellowy glare of streetlights.

'electrolite' as a song has a lot of good ideas. putting the twentieth century to sleep: who could disagree with that? put it in an upstairs bedroom to think about what it has done, dreaming the way i have recently of every regretful thing. the ceiling below the room would sag and run with blood, because something like the past century can't be contained, no matter what the optimism quotient. sleep is not a cure-all, because not all dreams are not nightmares. not that anything i've done compares, but the point is obliquely made.

so the ideal is out of reach, by definition. our flame is never clean, but the fire itself could be considered to have a purifying effect. by adding more to it, trying to leave something more for your memory instead of brooding so on what has already taken place, the flame of continuing life perhaps cleanses some of the past as you make new mistakes to sully your flame is you move into the future. but at least they're not the same old things, even if they are. differences in degree or specifics but not in kind-- still differences. more regrets, but not precisely the same regrets. that's about as clean as we get.

cooler temperatures and the yellow leaves i found on my windshield this morning could almost lull one into a false sense of autumn, counteracted by the thunderless flashes over the water that woke laura up last night. there's still some summer to go.

'what is life but a series of inspired follies? the difficulty is to find them to do. never lose a chance: it doesn't come everyday.'

-- george bernard shaw, pygmalion

'god knows. maybe he doesn't.'

-- sylvia plath, journals

keep going.

sunday. the living room is the last basically uncompleted room, and also the most complicated in terms of what we want to do with it. the plan is to set up a sort of office area behind japanese-style screens, with the tv out in the middle part of the room across from the sleeper love-seat my parents are bringing down next weekend. i arranged it roughly that way today, with certain obvious parts missing. i set my ibook up in the kitchen and dug out my computer speakers so that i could run them into the living room and listen to cbc podcasts of a 1998 special on educational theory. the bookcases are bare and one that we still should buy is missing, the screens have yet to be found, the love-seat is a week off, and i didn't want to populate the tv stand with dvds at this early date, in case things change. i await her response. (later: she likes it!)

i tracked thunderstorms on my pilfered internet connection today-- small bands of them passed through, causing momentary downpours and the intermittent booming in the distance that is my favourite aspect of the season. being right by the water as we are means we catch this kind of storm last, and someday when the band is wider and more severe i'll walk down to the beach and watch its progress out to sea. i mentioned as much to my father yesterday. he said he was jealous of us for living so close to the beach (even though it is only a 'beach' in the academic sense) for that very reason. he was looking at the power plant and saying he wanted to see something hit the electrical wires. as we walked down to the beach, laura was describing to my parents how this one spot between the crosswalk and the concrete path around the little bay is the best because for a few seconds at a regular pace, you can't see the power plant. you could stop right there and pretend it doesn't exist.

we finished decorating our 'old world' kitchen with seventeenth century cartographic prints, the framed renaissance nativity painting laura bought me, and a couple of complementary indie rock posters (secret shine and andrea maxand) that matched the colour scheme.

anna stopped in to visit. i count her the first official guest, since my family was helping with the move and can't really be considered to have been in the house in that capacity. next time. i have this idea, and laura told anna about this, as i told emmie, that this place is big enough and we're of the temperament that we could be the place that friends stay overnight at. i'm not thinking wild parties, because we don't do much with large groups anyway, but there's definitely some appeal in sometimes staying up late with friends and not having to part while it's still dark: there's a place for them to sleep and an inviting kitchen. i guess for me this goes back to the dorms and staying late in each other's rooms, which after knowing christine was further fuel for my love of late-night discourse, when the hours start to blur and you get drunk on tired. we'd watch movies in the strange room that will soon have both chinese propaganda posters and at least one of audrey hepburn. i love us.

go.

moving made great strides today, with almost all major furniture items (and everything that's mine) entering the house in the afternoon. no freaking out on my part. our new kitchen table is the one that sat in my parents' kitchen for most of my life, before they remodeled it, and the memories flow on. it also doesn't help that when i came by at 6:30 this morning to start moving things over, the salt air and musk of the empty place reminded me of our old cottage on the cape, since sold. my father thought so too, and he used to go there every summer.

it's typical, a 1950's family who got a little something in postwar america, thinking they owned the world, or at least the world owed them. so they grabbed up whatever luxuries they could. it's not that we don't do the same now, but placing the phenomenon so long ago with the dead makes categorisation and judgement all the easier. laura and i have our spot of comparative luxury, and the first thing we notice this night, aside from the charmingly slanted floors, is how much better this bedroom is than geneva street, or my old place before it: no noisy street, no abused dog barking next door, air conditioning. we put up the great wave off kanagawa over the bed, which i've always wanted in a bedroom, and laura says the colours match up fine.

i'm particularly fascinated by my small brookstone white noise machine. i originally found this thing in my grandmother's house after she died-- my father said i could keep it. i used it in high school, keeping it next to my bed on the stream setting and imagining i was on a boat on some bubbling river somewhere, soothed by the sounds of the water and liberated from adolescent cares. silly now, i know, but it can be relaxing. i like the look of its grey against the deep brown wood of the table, so i left it out there. it'll need new batteries.

there's an unsecured wireless network in the neighbourhood. we've become comfortable very quickly.

first of the month.

laura and i went down to pick up the keys and lease from janet this morning. we had time to check in on the place before work: the kitchen is smaller than we remember, the living room bigger. the bedroom's floor is slightly uneven, which may or may not cause problems. there is more closet space than we had expected, or at least than i had remembered. also available was the opportunity to sift through what the previous tenant left, which ranges from the incredibly useful (a bureau) to the expected (some final refrigerated items that probably weren't worth taking along when he left yesterday) to the downright unusual (a collection of wendy's barbecue sauce containers and an envelope of photographs from 2005).

i made a closer study of these items when i came back after work alone and post-grocery, throwing away all that was not useful and stocking the place with non-edible essentials. the cabinets are high, with many shelves that will likely not be utilised for kitchen purposes, and laura has given me permission to stock them with books when the time comes. it will probably be necessary. sifting through the dregs of this other life, i probably had some thoughts, but i can't remember them only a few hours later, and they probably aren't worth repeating if it were even possible. it's no good to over-sentimentalise this; that's one of the things that gets me in trouble. i mean, come on, i remember when we toured the place. dude used t-shirts for rugs.

see, my focus these few harrowing days is to prevent myself from utterly freaking out, as i did the last two times i moved. the first, from central to hathorne st. with liz, was mainly due to uncertainty and poorly-timed thunderstorms. the last, out of liz's, was primarily uncertainty as well. sprinkle a dash of excess heat-- make it several handfuls, actually -- and no good will come of it on my end. i say this time it will be easier, less of a mess, all of my things pre-packed and in storage. i owe it to laura. i'm strange and nervous, but i get too strange and nervous on those days, and it makes both of us worry. i focus on a few particular points in the near future, just as laura does: she can't wait to organise the kitchen, i can't wait to organise my books. i want another small black bookcase like the one in storage now. place them side to side: one fiction, the other my eclectic range of religious books, some generally recognised, others more my own personal scripture: the shaking quakers, english bibles, tolstoy, manseau and sharlet, jessamyn west, elaine pagels, the qur'an, joan of arc, thoreau. haven kimmel.

my drive over, by the longest and easiest route, was uncomfortable only because of the heat, but the drive back (by a more likely sequence of streets and turns) highlighted one of the greatest drawbacks of our choice to live deeper in downtown driving hell. i realised quickly that i had picked the worst hour (rush) and the only way things could possibly be worse would be if i were to turn on the radio and the worst music (also, incidentally, rush) was playing. i made it through after waiting for many lights, many pedestrians, and many people who clearly didn't know how the fuck to drive (even in comparison to myself). if i made it through that i'll probably do just fine in the future.

i'm still reading vollmann's the atlas, with what i have left of andrea dworkin's life and death on deck. i'm still waiting for robert fisk's the great war for civilisation in the mail, but i can't put away my sudden urge to pick up medieval people by eileen power again. listen to some helium, get some pictures of castles in your head, and you're right back there to the medievalism you thought that joan of arc paper beat out of you. maybe it's bodo, the simple life of a peasant, but 'simple' usually also means hard work. it's like that with the move as well. items go from place A to place B, which is simple enough, but the how and the when are the problem. i keep listening to 'there there' like it's autumn already. time needs to slow down, but the need to get it all done speeds things up.

we'll actually start sleeping there tomorrow night. a list of the new surroundings: salem common, collins cove, a russian orthodox church. a cannon. an apparent lack of CHILDREN. one of the maintenance guys listed on our lease is named FABIO. while i was there i made the place ours a little, put tiny pieces of paper with our names printed on them on the small locked mailbox for our unit. early to rise tomorrow, and no internet till comcast comes on wednesday. moving on.