There is something about driving around alone on a warm night, weaving on the roads of my county, listening to pop music from the 80s, that makes me incredibly happy and energized. I follow rows of pink gold globe streetlights, pass young families licking double-dip cones on the sidewalk outside the scoop shop, see television screens flicker on the porches of old farmhouses, smell the steak fat burning off the grills at the end of the Saturday night barbecues, watch children wave their hands out the windows of slow-rolling cars. With "Just Like Heaven" on the radio, I drive through town after town, windows down, passing rolling brooks and quiet bright gas stations, churchyards and playgrounds, people jogging into the market for last-minute holiday chips, thin tree branches dipping full in the wind, curved dark doors opening at local taverns. I forget what’s going on in the rest of the world and just drive, see familiar places, find stars between the leaves, feel like I’m part of something--something I own somehow by virtue of becoming me here. And when I reach home I park, sit with the window open, look to our porch and our amber windows, hear the laughter of the gang upstairs. I like arriving home, but there is something about the driving.

"Show me how you do it
And I promise you I promise that
I'll run away with you
I'll run away with you"