Night driving.

I drove to Vermont tonight, finally. It takes five hours.

Time in the car always sets the wheels in my head a-turning. It's worse after dark of course. I'm lost. I start thinking about the things I always wanted and never got. I start thinking about the men I might have ended up with, if I hadn't frozen them out for ridiculous reasons, and the men I longed for, dreamed of, even when I knew it was impossible, or in one case, never even really wanted to be with, just wanted to watch him the way other people watch sports.

I thought of all the letters I've never answered, and the letters I've never written, and the letters I've never sent. And the letters I have written that received no response.

I thought about my sweet dog Casey, who really really is gone, not lost, not downstairs in the basement looking for a frog like that one time I couldn't find her for hours, or the time she ran away in Queens. For a minute, I felt her, like she was there in the car. And I had to steel myself to not look in the rear view mirror to see if she was there in the back seat, her chin resting on the the back of the seat while she looked out the rear window. The way she used to sit. But I didn't look in the rear view mirror because I knew she wasn't there. And I hated that she wasn't, and that she never will be again.

And it made me think of the piece of her fur I found today when I was sweeping out under the dresser.

I thought of all the loss, and of the day I turned 20 in Rome, when I wore a white dress and walked on the white benches lining Via Delle Conciliazione singing Oh to live on Sugar Mountain--and how I wish I could go back to that day, like that episode of "Lost In Space" where the girl finds her younger self and tells her what to do, and what not to do.

And then finally I got here, to my house on the mountain. There's nobody for miles. I built a fire in my woodstove, and I wished for -- for -- for something. To have the kind of life where I don't drive five hours in the dark by myself to come to an empty house by myself. Where I don't carry in the groceries and to know that for the next several days I will be eating bacon and eggs because I won't see any reason to cook anything else for myself. I imagined a life where, when I opened the fridge to put away the bacon and eggs, I'd see the bottle of Chardonnay that a guest left for me and I'd actually have someone to turn to saying, "Hey, shall we open a bottle of wine?"

This is what's so, though. The solitude. And if I didn't want solitude, why did I buy a house on a mountain so far from anyone else? And why did I put a six foot fence around it? And why do I work mostly by myself, and not return phone calls, and freeze out men who like me?

I really should just start driving up during the day. That would make all the difference. I really should just make sure I get home before dark.