The Thin White Line

Maybe some of you commute from your bed to your desk and from your desk to your bed. I do not. My commute is not bad, or long. I can make it home for lunch, which gives the dog a chance to air out. Four times a day + five days a week, for roughly forty-eight weeks of the year = 960 commutes a year. Such driving requires I find new and inventive ways of breaking the monotony of the same shops, gas stations and restaurants that I pass, again and again, day after day. One week I’ll notice the same newspaper in the same bag in the same median. Another week I’ll track a blue paint bucket as it drifts across the street and is pushed under the chassis by the occasional tire. Once at work, I’m hungry for news. I tune in. Recently, I was rewarded with a story about the Seine’s struggling bouquinistes. Sometimes I’ll thumb through the morning paper, learning of the youth’s love affair with Jane Austen. Eventually, I sign on to the machine. Some days I click through Saul Bellow’s letters. Other days I scroll down David Foster Wallace’s archives, including his undergraduate thesis. If I’m lucky, a momentary spectacle of media will pique my attention: Surely Umberto Eco’s opinion on the Wikileaks story deserves more than a glancing look. Finally, before I leave for my lunch commute, I’ll sit down with a full classic at my fingertips. Not too bad, but every once in a while I like my reading on paper.