popped and stalled. He turned the ignition key. Nothing. The emergency brake screeched on.
Before anyone had even opened a door Lana was out and on her knees in the pebbly dirt. She flung herself underneath the car so her sandals stuck out with their dark red toenails. Her hand thrust out, holding a cap the size of a shot glass, which Harry took, dumped out, and swiped with his shirt. He handed it back to Lana’s open palm waiting.
When she slid out and stood, her backside was stamped with white. She rubbed her fingers on tufts of grass to clean off the oil and patted herself down. Now let’s give her some juice, she said, and hefted herself back into the truck. The engine started.
Farther down the road, the tire blew.
III
First Days
You are filled with a new intention. Something stretches beyond you, drawing you along, and as you move forward in a dark place you can barely make out shapes and your face feels invisible. No one sees you anymore. You don’t think it, but you have the odd feeling: Maybe this will lead me home
.
5 / The You File
Y OU TURN NEW in a new place. Where are you being taken?
You will go further and take the way you have not planned.
You wonder where you belong. It seemed you used to belong somewhere. Maybe you never did.
Different things matter.
Sometimes, in longing there is a homesick feeling. But when you picture yourself home, you look out of place, a cutout figure, not fitting in.
You think you have control, but there is no control. Again you are with strangers, in a foreign place, all far from home.
You wait. What else can you do? You wait, and not so patiently either, for moments when clarity and meaning visit you. You try to arrange for their coming, but those moments visit you regardless of—well—regardless of anything.
You are being taken, yet each step is made deliberately by you. Where are you taking yourself?
Your instinct seeks a right feeling.
In a new place you are surprised to find a feeling of home.
Things you thought lost forever come back. When you add one thing, another is dropped behind.
What will happen. Who knows it.
You hope to bring back something good. Will you ever be able to describe this? This must be described.
Who would have said such a world could exist?
You think, I can’t go on. I won’t make it. Then you do.
You pray, Help me not turn into a monster.
You sit in the back, watching the driver’s hair blow around.
Your family no longer knows you. They do not follow you into your life, but stay at the side of the road, off in their own lives, waiting sometimes, sometimes turning away.
The odd feeling comes which you know may not be right but which still inhabits you: I belong below people.
Most people when you get up close are not more in focus, but less.
We cannot avoid wounding another. We do it by being ourselves. Stay away from people and you avoid brutalizing each other.
Easier if you need no one.
In the freedom alone you have a beautiful feeling then think, I wish someone were here to feel it with me.
Without someone beside, what’s the point? You think,
Stay with me
.
You keep on. It doesn’t help to think of how they are treating you. It doesn’t help to think how others are being beaten.
What good does it do to think of it?
Someone hurt because of you may be the hardest thing to bear.
You think your life is your own, but we all belong to others.
Life is the same everywhere.
There is nowhere like this.
These things must be told. You wonder if the world knows of such things. They must not. Surely such things would stop if they knew.
You care, then you are drained of caring.
You missed the time of growing into a woman. You became one too quickly. You are still a girl.
You pretend you are not watching him. Dry grasses blur along a crumbling road.
You might have found yourself anywhere on the planet, but here is where you end up: with people, fighting.
You belong where you are. You are possible.
You think that if
Before anyone had even opened a door Lana was out and on her knees in the pebbly dirt. She flung herself underneath the car so her sandals stuck out with their dark red toenails. Her hand thrust out, holding a cap the size of a shot glass, which Harry took, dumped out, and swiped with his shirt. He handed it back to Lana’s open palm waiting.
When she slid out and stood, her backside was stamped with white. She rubbed her fingers on tufts of grass to clean off the oil and patted herself down. Now let’s give her some juice, she said, and hefted herself back into the truck. The engine started.
Farther down the road, the tire blew.
III
First Days
You are filled with a new intention. Something stretches beyond you, drawing you along, and as you move forward in a dark place you can barely make out shapes and your face feels invisible. No one sees you anymore. You don’t think it, but you have the odd feeling: Maybe this will lead me home
.
5 / The You File
Y OU TURN NEW in a new place. Where are you being taken?
You will go further and take the way you have not planned.
You wonder where you belong. It seemed you used to belong somewhere. Maybe you never did.
Different things matter.
Sometimes, in longing there is a homesick feeling. But when you picture yourself home, you look out of place, a cutout figure, not fitting in.
You think you have control, but there is no control. Again you are with strangers, in a foreign place, all far from home.
You wait. What else can you do? You wait, and not so patiently either, for moments when clarity and meaning visit you. You try to arrange for their coming, but those moments visit you regardless of—well—regardless of anything.
You are being taken, yet each step is made deliberately by you. Where are you taking yourself?
Your instinct seeks a right feeling.
In a new place you are surprised to find a feeling of home.
Things you thought lost forever come back. When you add one thing, another is dropped behind.
What will happen. Who knows it.
You hope to bring back something good. Will you ever be able to describe this? This must be described.
Who would have said such a world could exist?
You think, I can’t go on. I won’t make it. Then you do.
You pray, Help me not turn into a monster.
You sit in the back, watching the driver’s hair blow around.
Your family no longer knows you. They do not follow you into your life, but stay at the side of the road, off in their own lives, waiting sometimes, sometimes turning away.
The odd feeling comes which you know may not be right but which still inhabits you: I belong below people.
Most people when you get up close are not more in focus, but less.
We cannot avoid wounding another. We do it by being ourselves. Stay away from people and you avoid brutalizing each other.
Easier if you need no one.
In the freedom alone you have a beautiful feeling then think, I wish someone were here to feel it with me.
Without someone beside, what’s the point? You think,
Stay with me
.
You keep on. It doesn’t help to think of how they are treating you. It doesn’t help to think how others are being beaten.
What good does it do to think of it?
Someone hurt because of you may be the hardest thing to bear.
You think your life is your own, but we all belong to others.
Life is the same everywhere.
There is nowhere like this.
These things must be told. You wonder if the world knows of such things. They must not. Surely such things would stop if they knew.
You care, then you are drained of caring.
You missed the time of growing into a woman. You became one too quickly. You are still a girl.
You pretend you are not watching him. Dry grasses blur along a crumbling road.
You might have found yourself anywhere on the planet, but here is where you end up: with people, fighting.
You belong where you are. You are possible.
You think that if
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