Itinerary

"And I love to drive west to the saintly plains of Nebraska night, and the car shooting past on a long straight run, the grassy wind singing in the vents...As if there were no way without a map and no pleasure without a plan..."

-- Garrison Keillor, "Jack Jack Kerouac Kerouac," A Life in Comedy

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My rough itinerary:

WEDNESDAY Sept 1: Wheels rolling, dinner w/ Bugay @ 6PM, Mansfield, OH, Hillsdale, MI

THURSDAY Sept 2: Hillsdale, MI

FRIDAY Sept 3: Grand Blanc, MI

Along the way: Ann Arbor/Detroit, MI

SATURDAY Sept 4: Stratford, ON?, Grand Blanc, MI

SUNDAY Sept 5: Lansing, MI

MONDAY Sept 6: Chicago, IL

TUESDAY Sept 7: Chicago

WEDNESDAY Sept 8: Madison, WI, Effingham, IL

Along the way: Tour Univ. Wisconsin-Madison, @ 2PM, Milwaukee?

THURSDAY Sept 9: Effingham, IL

FRIDAY Sept 10: (originally planned to spend days in St. Louis and Kansas City, but...) Bellevue, NE

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Got a long list of things to do before leaving: dinner at a Chinese place downtown, a gourmet breakfast at the Waffle House, lunch with a celebrity, lots of planning and lots of packing, one more full day of work (photoshoot included), cleaning (mostly the wiping down of surfaces and the uncovering of corners), and so on. A cubicle to be raided, files to be copied. Items to be returned to folks. A book to finish and return to the library. I foresee a lot of caffeine in my future.

Been asked a lot if I miss things, places, feelings and, of course, people. Yes, to all. Not so much the stuff, especially the secondhand furniture that will probably wind up on the curb come Wednesday, but everything else, I will miss. Perhaps I miss it already. Glad I'll be back in a few months, but still. The awareness of having seen people maybe for the last time is always unsettling: a social cliffhanger.

Sometimes I feel like I should feel like something, but I don't. If anything, right now, at this moment, I just feel tired.

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And, as always, it's a time of beginnings as well as endings. The tour started its rehearsals today. Got behind the steering wheel of the tour van that I drove for the first time almost exactly two years ago, and it was familiar and I remembered how I loved to hate that vehicle. The feel of being pushed up from the seat, the awkward way my elbows shoot sideways when I hold the wheel properly, the heat from the dash and the glare from the windshield, the feeling big on the road, small in the van--a management of contradictions, all at the crank of a key. Remembered what I did and thought when retrospect was impossible, when wisdom was unknown (always is, right?) and its lack unrecognizable, when I thought this job was either going to continue forever or end soon. I pulled the van up beside the building and jumped out.

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When you enter my apartment, there's a wall of boxes and cases blocking the window and the sunlight. Instant claustrophobia, and my things seem strange. I just packed it all and I don't recognize these piles and rows: a regiment of new soldiers. Unpacked and spread out, these things feel like home, cozy, well-intentioned and placed; but all together like this they are unnaturally mixed, a full-length mirror leaning beside pots and pans, clothes packed around lampshades and shoes stuffed with pencils. The occasional stray object--a phone book, a small can of pineapple juice, a dark basket of false plastic ivy--strikes me as absurd and problematic. I bite my nails wondering where I can fit it, whether I should just throw it away, why it exists. I remove it from the floor, put it on a shelf, and think the problem is solved.

But so much of packing is not solution; rather, it is delay. Constant reorganization, the making and unmaking of stacks, the grouping of things according to size or probability of being broken. You think to pack things only if you will use them again soon. You pick something up and ask yourself, Will I need this at some point, or can this go at the bottom? You feel waves of contrasting desires--I want to throw everything out--I want to keep everything here. It seems agonizing and impossible.

The only way to win is by attrition, small tasks, small victories. It's like acting. Pursue the major objective and conquer what you must along the way. Get lost in the details, get reminded of the big picture. Take breaks, drink water. And keep going.