Thursday, July 10, 2008

champaign-urbana tastes like a hot dog wrapped in tin foil.

my father started the song by lyle lovett over again. "god, that's such a great line. honey, put down that fly swatter, get me a glass of ice water. i have no idea what the rest of the song is about, but it just puts you somewhere. it is hot and there are bugs." every word in the last sentence is pronounced, like seven tiny ball bearings.

we were just south of rockford, and the rain was coming down like nobody's business. i put my bare feet up on the dash of the rental car and its just me and my dad and mr. lovett and sometimes mick jagger or dvorak's dumky again, which is kicking my ass. dad is reading the new translation of don quixote and i'm reading the fountainhead. we're looking at grad schools. per usual, a portion of me wants to pop out like the seed from an avocado and move to iceland where i'll set trails for the rest of my life, or something equally non-scholastic.

this entry comes to you from madison, wisconsin. to a girl who has lived most of her life in california, the taste of the word is a strange one. "wisconsin? you're in wisconsin?" said my best friend today, when i called her, sitting on a long grassy rise in the middle of campus. "what's in wisconsin?" as if, "what is that child eating?" the word itself is a statement of disbelief. a long, dubious chewing of cud.

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