Notes From The Journey
I returned from Thanksgiving in golden afternoon, bright slabs of it between county-long rafts of cloud. Northbound from New York, I always have a sense of ascending, as though up on maps is literally up. Coming over a rise on I-684 just below Brewster, one of the sections with its original concrete lanes, cacophonous and jouncing, I had a brief, wide prospect of brown, stippled hills purpled with distance, marbled with white pine green.
Northbound, I exhale freely to a degree I always had to do consciously in the city (how deeply I’m breathing! How relaxed I am. So very relaxed). Fifteen years, and I could never entirely shake the sense of having to be ready—for an invitation to a secret party; a mugger; a talent scout with a contract in the back of his Town Car, already made out to my name.
Read on →