Sudden De-railment:

You know how I think Sam Beam is like if Love were to take human form and make an album about it? Does it then follow that, say, if there was someone who I felt I'd never be able to love, giving them a 10 minute long Iron & Wine song would serve as a surrogate form of emotion towards them? 'Cause I care, I really do, but maybe not as much as I should, and I had this moment where I thought that if I made him a mix cd with that song and some others on it then he could feel something good in regards to me, instead of some sort of negative unrequited affection. It's like the emotion that I can't feel, in a form where he can experience it as much as he wants, pressing play again and again to get his fix of it just like everyone else does.

Tell My Mother Not To Worry

I pull out of the driveway with a crunch of gravel as my wheels turn on the empty country road, and when I point my headlights down the steep hill and look up I can see the mountain silhouetted on the night sky with the first stars coming out flicker by flicker. In the rearview mirror I can still catch the small moving bodies of my parents' dogs darting back and forth black against the glow of the big house windows, jumping up and crossing in front of each other in their eagerness to slather the glass with puppy noses. As I turn left and closer to home Sam Beam is telling me to Fuck the Man with a catch in his breath and he brings to mind occasions past and present which are neither here nor there and I think that if I wanted, on this full moon night, I could flick off my lights and coast silently down these back roads, letting only the sky's ethereal dark guide me. I've done it before, but it's too early tonight, too many people still making their way home, which leaves me wistful at the lost opportunity. In summer it's sheer beauty being ingested, with the windows down and the heavy scent of warm air filling your nostrils like what cocaine should be as you duck up and over hills with the flat of open farmlands stretching away on both sides in wide bands of silver moonlight and golden windows dotting the shadows of houses. The dashboard is dark, the gauges all obscured by night and refusing to light up because of Volvos' notoriously negligent wiring systems. Even if I wanted to know how fast I was going I couldn't tell. Luckily, there's something in this vehicle that makes it too heavy to speed, something that holds it back from accelerating too much for its own good. The only things that show up on the instrument panel are two bright green arrows that point opposite directions, the only options in front of me contradicting each other even though they remain, essentially, exactly the same damn thing. I push the button on the console that lets me hear this song once more, that allows me to pretend the last nine minutes are happening all over again and that none of the decisions I'm making at the wheel are new. The music lulls me as I steer the car, fixing my eyes on the curves ahead of me that I know too well, the gentle slopes of road I can take at 45 miles an hour; a beast of metal in freefall down to where the suburbs crouch waiting to lap with yellow tractor tongues these thick forests and valleys smelling of cold dirt and slowly rotting wood. Fifteen miles later, I merge onto the highway a changed driver, alert once more with the curving of the onramp that serious things are upon me. Navigating evening traffic, I'm a small silver fish maneuvering between the hulking semis that loom above me on all sides, great white whales making their ponderous way north, red brake lights flaring at intervals as they edge too close on one flank or the other. There's a wreck in the lane heading south, and the cars stretch like Christmas lights pulled across the four lanes of the freeway causing slowing in the northbound lanes, as they say, so I cut across to the next exit and make my way northwest through the city blocks one stoplight at a time, stop-and-go through the used car lots and neon signs, through the streetlamps and bicyclists pedaling madly in my periphery. I'm only a few blocks from home when an ambulance turns the corner and heads my way, multi-colored lights strobing, followed closely by a fire truck that blazes blue and red down the city street. I don't realize until they grow close that they've turned off their sirens, choosing instead to plummet soundlessly to their destination, and I thank them for letting me stay in this soft envelope of sound, swaddled in the blackness of my car's interior at the side of the road. I stay pulled over a few more moments then I have to, engine idling and the same track still playing through the two-bit speakers with a short in them, so I only hear one side of the song.