Houston, Again.

Castanets on my ipod: we could have taken any of these roads, but nobody knows about this one we chose, and who knows friend how far it goes.

I remember lying in bed in our hotel room in NYC a few months ago, feeling the immensity of the USA. Roads, waterways, tracks all snaking around our hotel and out of the city, across rivers and mountains and plains, like a living, pulsing vascular system. Lost highways through dark trees, modern ovepasses around skyscrapers and bypassing ancient downtowns below, suburban interstates strectching for miles and miles before giving way to plains, little capillaries reaching into the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic. We could have gotten into a car and taken any of these roads out of the city. We could have driven through mountains and fields and over river bridges, and we could have been in New Orleans or Little Rock the very next day, in the Texas dessert twilight or the LA airport to Oz in two. An overnight road down south leads straight to my parents, my childhood, my past. It was just one of many roads, right outside our hotel room.

It could start here, I remember thinking. We could get in a car and go down any of these roads. They're all connected. All okay. Everything pulsing like blood and in harmony. Everything connected.

Here at the airport in Houston it's raining and steam is rising off the runways in the dusk and the 100F air, and all the roads I see lead to the sky and then disappear. Even a phone call feels like a stretch like now. I can't make things fit together.