Notes from the Interstate
Wednesday, March 31st, 2004A Meditation on the Diaphanous Nature of Transit and Transition, in Five Parts
I.
When I was younger, maybe six or seven, any car trip over four hours in duration was preceded, on my part, by roughly the same amount of preparation as goes into waging a small-scale war. The back seat of the family station wagon became a veritable bomb shelter, stocked with several lunch’s worth of food, a pillow in case I needed to sleep, several Nancy Drew books, and enough candy to send an entire kindergarten class into an insulin coma. All that was missing were canned goods and a gas mask — though, given my then-ten-year-old brother’s predilection for loudly announcing his flatulence, perhaps the gas mask would have been a good idea. Now, a seasoned traveler, I put decidedly less effort into getting ready for one of my routine treks between Ithaca and New York City: I make a sandwich and get on the bus, where I proceed to sit and stare out the window for the next five to six hours, all my worldly possessions in a knapsack clutched between my knees.
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