Was I to write about the road?
How I'm Feeling Now + taking a brief break
There was one year where I drove thousands of miles on my own. Roughly 300 miles to Ithaca, 300 miles back. Miles to Philly, miles to Rochester, miles to New York. At the time, the drive felt therapeutic. Life in post-pandemic Ithaca was slow and lonely, life in my parents’ house prickled with growing pains. My car was a private zone between places to be. In my car I didn’t have to be, I guess. I just had to go.
That was when I last wrote about driving. I wrote about it because I was doing it so much. Like I said, thousands of miles, entirely on my own. Driving allowed me to be animal. I housed Zapp’s Voodoo chips, slippery gas station sodas, coffees that dried out my throat as they trickled down it. I listened to songs from Punisher on Pennsylvania highways to the point of sad caricature — I was 24 and a girl, screaming along to “I Know the End” as I passed Evangelical billboards. I did not pause to think about whether I was going to heaven or hell. I had no shame, no concern. Windows down, heater on. I just needed my eyes on the road and my hands on the steering wheel. Barely even that.
On my way to Princeton that year I drove through the eeriest fog I’ve ever seen and played the Phoebe Bridgers’s cover of “That Funny Feeling.”1 I tried capturing the view on my shaky phone while I drove. Not safe, and the photos sucked. I was on my way to see my cherished friend who would later put me in a wig and drag makeup and fan away the miserable haze.
I make the same drive these days, though more reluctantly. I am impatient and I want to arrive. I wish I was somewhere other than the road, like a real place! A solid, respectable point like A or B, rather than any of the other ones in-between. I have these big endpoints within view and I know the pleasures of staying in them, enveloped until I’m reminded of their infinitesimal smallness.
Sorry, but this is all I have this month. LOL. What started as a biweekly creative outlet has become something at once more and less serious. More serious because I have more ‘subscribers’ who I don’t know, some of whom I’d like to impress. Less serious because I no longer feel like my existence is meaningless if I don’t become a professional writer. (I already write professionally as a researcher, just in a far worse and more cumbersome way <3)
I’m busy these days with the life I’m living. Living la vida loca as I put it last month. Back when Jayne and I were writing these on alternating weeks for accountability purposes, I joked with her that she wasn’t writing as much because she was too busy enjoying her life. I think maybe I am going through the same. I have been ‘hoeing out’ (by my own standards, which is to say not at all), stressing out, queening (?) out. I spent the last few weeks in a state of euphoria and anxiety. Locally euphoric, globally anxious. For a whole week I woke up naturally/unnaturally every morning at 6 am with all my muscles flexed, as though I was going to burst out of my vacuum seal.
Who cares about all this?? I’m a bit sick of thinking about myself and reading about people like me. I am worried about my friends, my colleagues, my neighbors. I don’t know how worried I should be about certain things rather than others. How do you calibrate these things? And then at the same time I’m literally spending all morning tossing and turning in bed yearning and pining.
Anyway, I am taking a break from this newsletter for the month of April! I am going to the motherland for most of the month, then Miami for my beloved cherished friend’s bachelorette, then New York for another beloved cherished friend’s bachelorette. I will be busy doing all of these things, but mostly busy trying to convince Ruhee to go on an art deco architecture tour.
You should expect to hear from me again sometime mid-May. If you don’t, then I fully expect one of you to show up at my door with a gun and a quill/MacBook opened to a Google doc.
some things:
Really just one thing. I was moved by this article by Kaveh Akbar in The Nation about how we respond to the Trump admin disappearing migrants, immigrants, graduate students, anyone. I hope you read it and I hope it moves you as well!
See you in May,
PM
A lot of Phoebe Bridgers that year, please bear with me.
"Less serious because I no longer feel like my existence is meaningless if I don’t become a professional writer. (I already write professionally as a researcher, just in a far worse and more cumbersome way <3)"
WHY is this the REALEST thing I've read in weeks >_<. These posts give me life Pegah, thank u :)
Ugh, thank you for sharing that article. It was incredibly moving, and I will be sharing it with my community! I hope you enjoy your break and your travels.