i like taking road trips with my parents. i always feel the same age, sitting in the backseat in the dark in wisconsin. even after i learned to drive, they never asked me to on long car trips. i can eat snacks and read and look out the window, in my cocoon. my parents know all the rest stops and gas stations between minneapolis and chicago. we must have driven that stretch 5 times and back every year since i was born.
when we got to chicago they dropped me off at a bar where natalie's band was playing and we drove to her apartment with all the band stuff in a big white van. i spent friday and saturday sitting around her heavily decorated apartment, where every surface is caked with layers of multicolored paint, books, ornaments, and posters. the air is thick with signifiers. saturday we ventured out into the neighborhood to eat thai food, and talked about the cold. natalie likes the cold. i don't. i like being able to escape. you can't escape when it's too cold to walk more than a few blocks without your face going numb.
how to stop time: ask softly. a secret. then steal a minute in a bedroom when the guests aren't paying attention. it washes over you like a memory, leaves you speechless. the eternal moment before everything becomes real is stretched into a heavy warmth that is waiting, hanging, hovering: like a sound you heard in a dream, that you want so much it seems desire could pull it back. it comes without being asked. something in the air reminds me of the moment before falling.