He had never driven through rust before, and there was nothing in his bag but a spoon with its head sawed off. Sometimes you have to drive west to get east, he realized, and sometimes you trick yourself into thinking you can walk on the waterline. The horizon is an idea, you know; you know you are, too. Why would someone have a sawed-off spoon, other than to show he could stir with anything? In a pinch. My father never showed up that night. They found the car. I dream of him eating well.

Ricochet Avec Soleil

after Chris Marker

You look into her eyes and see the reflection of yourself turning a corner, heading down a blind alley. Later, looking out a window at a window, you see the reflection of a plane briefly flicker past. You’re both headed in the same direction, you think. Indonesia. Unless you’re seeing things.

You’re seeing things. Has it ever made a difference? Why ask? Why not ask? Or why ask now?

DAVID LAZAR’s books include Occasional Desire (Nebraska), The Body of Brooklyn and Truth in Nonfiction (both Iowa), Powder Town (Pecan Grove), Michael Powell: Interviews and Conversations with M.F.K. Fisher (both Mississippi). Forthcoming are After Montaigne (Georgia), Who’s Afraid of Helen of Troy (Etruscan Press), and Essaying the Essay (Welcome Table). In 2014-15, he is curating a digital chapbook on nonfiction editing for The Conversant.org/Essay Press. He is the founding editor of the literary magazine Hotel Amerika, now in its thirteenth year. 

It’s hard to choose one favorite road, but the album The Charm of the Highway Strip, by the Magnetic Fields, remains a favorite of mine, full of ruminations of the road, and one of the songs I’m most in love with is “Two Characters in Search of a Country Song.”