on leaving one state for another and being closer, closer to it

Okay, okay. I'm guessing the differences in quality aren't socially constructed–that Diet Pepsi cola has more cola taste in realistic difference than Diet Coca Cola. That is a safe guess, and it mirrors what I have been told by the television.

When you get your teeth surgically removed–the doctor, being overly curt, introduces himself while administering an anesthetic as "Dr. Sleepy-time" and then you disappear into a dreamless world of Novocaine and anesthesia (but there are clouds, big ones like pillows, and you bound from pillow to pillow and turn the clouds into horses and turtles so little kids will look up at your handiwork and go, "A turtle!")–when they knock you out and pull what was yours out of your own mouth, you tend to watch a lot of television. A lot of ESPN, in my case, a lot of Law and Order, some subtitled Kurosawa films (the subtitles are a mistake, you can't read in this state, at least you can't sustain it).

I've been watching for long enough, and I doubt that Diet Pepsi is different from Diet Coke, take your national taste test and find someone more interested.

So, I am leaving. Going to the East Coast, to find the Atlantic–you see it needs me. It can't lap against the rocks jutting out from the sharp corner of Route 1-A, just north of Rye Beach, without me listening. It can't reflect the moon on a cloudless night without me, and it certainly can't separate me from Africa if I'm in Ohio.

So I will go and find the Atlantic. I'll leave a post-it note on the door and ride until the whole thing spreads out in front of me, blue in its own reflection of the sky.