Just Like George Costanza

"Do you ever yearn?"
"Yearn? Do I yearn?
"I yearn."
"You yearn?"
"Oh yes, yes, I yearn. Often I, I sit and yearn. Have you yearned?"
"No, not recently.."

- Kramer & George, Seinfeld, The Keys.

"I don't want much, fuck I drove every car -
Some nice cooked food, some nice clean drawers"

-Jay Z, Heart of The City.

I don't want much either. Two things, really.
One is to go to America, and the other is to have my own place, with space for a horse. Some other animals, too. Goats. Maybe peacocks.

I feel like having a horse would ease some of my irregularities. I drive down a dirt road to get to work. There is a white horse that stands by a fence that has a 'Strawberries for Sale' sign nailed to it, gazing. Everyday; standing, gazing.

Last week I watched someone ride their horse into the Murray. The horse went way out deep until only its head showed above the water. Something went pop in the middle of my chest and I pulled my car over and welled up watching. Things like this lessen the psychic strain of being alive in these weird times.

Thimking about America seems to have the same effect.

The greatest thing about my job is that it occupies my hands but leaves my mind free to wander. This allows me to think about America a lot. Like a lot a lot.

One day might be taken up by ruminating on the unique relationship Americans seem to have with pie. Or wondering about Walmart, and whether it's as godawful as people who claim not to shop there say it is. I obsess over the state names; in my head they are the most magical words in the world. Ohio. Alabama. Arizona. Kansas. Utah. Tennessee. They make me want to take a knife and carve them into soft skin.

Most of all, though, I think about the South. Not the moonlight and magnolias and mint-julep myth, but real Southern culture. It makes my mind rise up like boiling milk about to spill from a saucepan. Henry James called Southern culture a "great melancholy void", and I think "my God, the things I don't know, the places I haven't been. My God."