This morning, at 5:09 San Francisco time, Little Baby Emma got a brand new baby sister. Nicola Grace weighed 5lb 12oz at birth, or so my brother told me her tentative name was, but I wouldn't be surprised if he were off his facts by a bit, so groggy and frantic and excited and exhausted he seemed over the phone. Congratulations, Linda and Emma and Peter!

And welcome, welcome, little Nicola.

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Lovely weekend, full of nothingness, full of quiet hugs and quieter smiles, full of whatever-you-want-to-dos and peppered with the little wistful sighs one is so prone to doing when perfect moments overcome sensibilities.

A weekend of gentle conversation, a weekend of communal cooking, a weekend of apple martinis.

Of dancing beside the fire, of singing in the rain, of tiny little hikes. Of Priscilla and midday naps, of iced tea and boardgames, of nursing hangovers over generous cups of coffee to the strains of James Taylor in the morning-after air.

At one point the four of us stood under the open night skies, hunting Cassiopeia in the constellations and nothing but a thousand-piece cricket orchestra playing in the Vermont wilderness.

Perfect silence.

A weekend of frolicking on the railingless deck, too afraid to move past a one-foot radius lest we fall off the face of the planet and into the nighttime void, fat warm summer raindrops splashing noisily against drunken bare chests and naked faces, voices singing and laughing into the valley sleeping below.

A weekend of being so very silly.

A weekend we all so very much needed. Good friends, good times.

A wonderful, lovely weekend indeed.

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I'm beginning to understand this love affair Americans have with their cars. The mysterious veneration of metal and glass and plastic on wheels, the inexplicable potency of the bond between auto and owner, all at once fascinating and unhealthy and bordering dangerously on indecent.

I drove up to Vermont and back this weekend, where I met up with Greg. Greg's been in the New England area on business over the past few days, and so I had the chance to drive solo, just me and my thoughts and two hundred miles of asphalt each way. It's strange the way the gentle hum of an engine can so soothe the mind, so put things into perspective. Nothing but me and my thoughts on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Zoom-zoom.

The trip back to New York on Sunday led me down roads and highways years familiar, unusual now only because I was driving it unpartnered. I left Vermont in the late afternoon, the sun hovering peaceful in the mid-August sky, the air unseasonably cool and crisp. A gentle shiver ran down my spine as I set the odometer and pulled onto I-91 South: two hundred miles to go and a whole lot of nothingness in between. I smiled.

It's truly fascinating the independence and sense of power one feels with one's own vehicle. All through the years, I never really understood that relationship, that connection. All the books I'd read, all the movies I'd seen, all the bits and pieces, the tiny fragments here and there that I tried again and again to arrange in my mind of how it'd be like, I never really truly understood what it all meant. Not until this weekend at least.

By the time I reached the Merritt, the landscape had begun to take on the golden hues of a dusk approaching, and I continued south, playing peek-a-boo with the sun as it raced along with me beyond the pines to the west. Around me, the traffic slowly began to build, weekenders returning to the city--all of us speeding home beneath the canopy of dusty summer green. Above me, the skies still a bright baby blue from the sinking sun, below me nothing but darkening roads and a quiet excitement that permeated the air.

It's this quiet excitement that's such a big part of the love affair I'm talking about. I'm sure some of you know what I mean when I talk about the paradoxical serene exhilaration of driving solo--machine and body one with the road, mind encapsulated in the assurance of solitary safety, the juxtaposition of vulnerability and invincibility of a car as you drive and drive and drive to the point where your mind detaches and you find yourself not driving but being driven. It's some of these things I'm only now beginning to understand.

Zoom-zoom.

I love the Merritt at summer's dusk. I love the flicker of the headlights as they come on one by one, the calm that befalls the road as the traffic snakes north and the traffic snakes south, the shelter of mature elms whose shadows grow longer and longer until they disappear altogether into the singular darkness of early night. It's difficult for me to describe the feeling of complete and utter emptiness I felt driving back home Sunday evening--a good, wholesome emptiness, but one so entirely devoid of any emotion save the bliss I knew resting at the periphery of my consciousness. It's that bliss I talk about, that vague and impalpable feeling so easily and effortlessly mistaken for loneliness. As the summer skies darkened into the deep blues of early night, I came as close to tears as I've allowed myself in many, many months.

Zoom-zoom.

Like I said, I'm finally beginning to understand this affair, this magnificent and, for me, singularly American affair, this wild and crazy and mad and incestuous and utterly inexplicable affair between a man and his car.

It's beautiful.

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There is a small plastic snow globe of the London Tower Bridge on my desk. A colleague brought it for me when he visited a few months back. In the foreground, a tiny red bus crosses the Thames, the word "London" sandwiched delicately between its double decks and splayed from end to end as the bus trundles east under a brilliant blue sky. I shake the globe vigorously and watch.

I had one of those days today. You know those days, the ones where you can't sit for a minute without the phone ringing or someone asking you a question or some project demanding your immediate and complete attention. Those days where you can't hear yourself think over the clamour of voices vying for you. Me, me, me. Now, now, now. Pay me attention now.

I shake the globe a little less vigorously and sit back. Below the base, the white price tag catches my eye and I flip the toy. A penny short of two pounds, made in China, the don't-you-dare-pull plastic plug. I never really noticed them before. Right side up, the glittery snow swirls angry and magical and suddenly I am a passenger on board the little red bus, a thousand flakes dancing a frenzied tango around me. Which shall I catch?

It's all too perfect a metaphor for my day today, this little snow globe. Each random eddy a new train of thought, each snowflake a different voice, each one laughing a catch-me-if-you-can laugh as I cross the narrow bridge from here to there, hands outstretched and laughing along in like maniacal fashion. How can I not? The tiny microcosm that is my office swirled a maddening maelstrom of demands today, and I feel as though I accomplished nothing, running about one wild goose chase after another. I am spent. It is almost nine o'clock now, and the last of my colleagues has just left for home. I shake the globe one last time, this time as gingerly as my trembling hand will allow, and I peer tired into the London of my imagination. The seconds tick by and as I watch mesmerized, I make myself a promise: as soon as the last snowflake touches the ground, as soon as all the swirling stops, as soon as London is back asleep on my desk, it will be time for me to pack my belongings and call it a day.

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