Words are inadequate

Friday evening I'd intended to meet Emily for dinner at the only source of gator in Vancouver and then catch a music performance. On the way to the restaurant we passed a theatre advertising that this was the last weekend they were showing Angels in America Part 1, and figured we'd go to that instead.

Only, I'd started feeling a little chilled after I left work, and noticed myself drinking a lot of water at dinner and generally feeling kind of ... not really lightheaded, not really spacey, not really achey, but ... feverish. So instead we went home, and Emily finished her sign for the Vancouver Science March ("Be part of the SOLUTION not part of the PRECIPITATE") and I took an hour and a half hot bath.

---

I woke up the next morning feeling pretty much okay, and saw Emily off into the damp while I waited for Erin. We'd been kicking around the idea of going down to the States this weekend with some other folks, but I think we'd settled on just having a calm couple of days at home.

On the way there I got to experience my first moving vehicle accident. Not very fast moving, but still. Erin had just pulled out to turn left when someone who'd looked like they were turning right didn't.

I've been in several other accidents, from the time when I managed to come to a stop but the person three cars behind me didn't to the time when a concrete pillar at a gas station scooted into the passenger-side of my rental car at five in the morning. There's something different-- more visceral-- about being fully in motion at the time, and also about not being the one driving. Couple days later I'm still occasionally flashing back to the moment of impact, because I happened to be looking in that direction. It's not horrific or frightening, it's more "i can't believe this is actually about to happen."

Erin's car was rendered undriveable: body crunched up, tyre shredded, likely a snapped axle, possibly some engine damage. Probably totaled, since those things will cost more than two grand to fix.

We retreated to the safety of my place, and eventually made our way to Erin's, and the day turned from "quiet relaxing" to "recovery" and then "buying a car." Erin's out of pocket all this week for a school thing, and had been planning on driving her car, with a bunch of her stuff, up north the middle of next week. Which meant that she needed a car, pronto.

So Saturday was spent looking for cars, and on Sunday I rented a car (I'd been planning to anyhow) and we drove up to Squamish to test-drive one, and she ended up buying it. But that still took up much of the day, and much of the rest involved her frantically packing for a week away on a school trip, and then heading out past Maple Ridge for that. Not precisely the restful weekend I'd been hoping for.

---

Enterprise put me in a Hyundai compact that reminded me a lot of Straylight, my last car. Straylight was a low-riding Saturn coupe that I bought after my previous car caught fire on I-81. It was no hi-performance sports car but it was still fun to drive, and I enjoyed the existence of the trick third door as well. For city-driving or traffic-driving I would have preferred a somewhat more maneuverable Smart; for highways or just point-to-point, Straylight was wonderful.

(When I moved north to the land of carlessness, I sold Straylight to my friend Stephen. I believe it had an unfortunate encounter with a tractor trailer in the Affle House parking lot a few years ago. Sic transit gloria transita.)

By the time I left DC I hated driving, partly because I had to drive to get anywhere but mostly because driving in DC means traffic. Looks like five years was about enough time for that to fade. I genuinely enjoyed driving up and down the Sea-to-Sky. Even the backroads of the camp I left Erin at were kinda fun, though also stressful, due to rain and hunger and uncertainty as to exactly where I was going.

I miss road trips. I miss the freedom of getting anywhere without concern for transit schedules and flaky buses. I miss Straylight. I never thought I'd say that.

---

At least there was yoga this morning. I feel much better for that.

There's something bubbling under the surface about yoga and about things that make me feel more like me, and how that's changed, but it's not ready yet.

FEMINIST HULK SMASH EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH MS.!: "HULK LOVE POLYSYLLABIC WORDS. HULK NUZZLE BIG GREEN FACE INTO RICHLY WRITTEN FEMINIST TEXTS. ALSO, THIS JUST HOW HULK TALK."

So Much Space: "For me, 3 miles is a a rather generous estimate of the radius of my every day life. For many, 3 miles is the minimum distance to anything." I have a strong desire to be in the former situation rather than the latter.

Straylight required a new battery and an adjustment to the charging cycle so that it wouldn't kill the battery again. I have no idea what went wrong and I didn't ask; I was running later for my dentist appointment. At which she successfully numbed me up and, um, canaled my root, which was far less pornographic than it sounds. (She also recognised, or claimed to recognise, the Gywneth Jones book I was reading, and was surprised to hear that I'm not a professor.) It's odd to not have any more cold sensitivity in the teeth on that side.

Last night I dreamed that work had moved into DC. I broke three eggs into paper cups to bring them from the work kitchen to the office, and then I had to go out to an office supply store to buy printer paper. I couldn't see one from where I was, so I asked Sara B-- from high school, who was running around upset that she'd lost something. Snow was falling when I came back, so I stayed out in the snow for awhile. Not only do I sleep better when I don't dream (excuse me, "don't remember my dreams, or in fact remember that i dreamed at all"), I wake up feeling a lot less baffled by my brain.

(It's not Blake but it's more urgent, because I can feel it getting away from me with every minute I spend in this room.)

Out the door and into Straylight, and away. Click a button and down go the windows, click a button and up goes the sunroof. Turn up "Kind of Blue" a little louder, get Miles and Coltrane and the rest flowing right through my skin to whisper across my bones.

Glide down the ramp onto four-sixty, see the fog filling gaps between the streetlights. Gas to sixty and cruise. The wind runs his fingers through my hair, the hazy brown-yellow mist more inviting than anything I've seen in weeks. I feel . . . not more alive, but less. The worries remain but they're not so important, just small voices at the back of my brain.

Times like this, I want to just go. Pick a patch of fog and head off into it, never to be heard from again. There's no Blake in the mist, no Incompletes or apartments or jobs. The mist doesn't care, and after awhile neither will I.

Step out the front door like a ghost
into the fog where no one notices
the contrast of white on white
--Adam Duritz