02.19.2002 - 5:28 p.m.

Those online test things are lots more entertaining than they ought to be.

I've been thinking about starting a story diary, or something. Because this diary is the only thing that's ever kept me writing on a regular basis, but I'm tired of always writing the same kind of thing. I always get all floaty and philosophical, not grounded at all. And how can you start a revolution with your art unless you spread it around a little?

Something is missing. I wish I were in the Matrix, or a character in one of those stories where they have a dream that reveals everything. I want someone to tell me, you're right, this life as we know it isn't what's really going on. There's more to it, and here's what it is...

M and I spent a good hour on Saturday night leafing through my atlas, planning imaginary road trips. Perhaps there's more in Chicago, Maine, Toronto. There's something in atlases, in any case. You can feel the possibilities on each new page, practically see the adventures waiting in every oddly-named nowhere town. I flew over Atlanta once- I remember looking out that porthole of a window at those tiny skyscrapers, a cluster of neat edges and burnished sides. I remember tracing the highways with my eyes as if following a car, over bridges and through cloverleaf intersections. Past all the little squares of wood and subdivision.

Maps lay everything out that way, color-coded, clean lines between discreet points labeled in typeface porportional to population. Is that what it is? That it's all simpler that way?

How disappointing.

-stonebridge

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