Driving the highway past my old hometown I remember the exits, the ramps, the secondary roads. But I’m not sure I remember which way to turn. And I wonder why we never stopped back then to discover the surroundings, to walk out into the rough grass that slowly turns to woods and get down on our knees and touch it, feel it; to really know where it is we live.

The artificial intelligence took us through unfamiliar streets, the types where bashed-up cars are parked and weeds grow through the sidewalks. “In one thousand feet, turn right,” she says, and we obey.

At a stop light I observed a used car lot. CROWN FORD PRE-OWNED, it said, and all the letters were immaculate blue and white, the logo we all know below. I marveled at the correctness of it all, the font, the kearning. The folks at headquarters must be hands-on. But then as I rolled away I noticed the entire block of text was off-center on the concrete facade. Not by much. Only by an inch or two. But enough.

On the Belt Parkway we watched as the planes came in. There’s always one that surprises you, that appears right out of the trees and blots out the sun.

At the party she didn’t speak to us except to say excuse me. But at least we stayed until after she left.

Houses glimpsed from the highway through the trees.

Drivers are worse and worse these days, weaving back and forth across the lines as they text or tap their apps or God knows what. When I see a car like that I hold my breath and pass it, to put the impending calamities behind us.

Feel tired and a little nauseous now, after three days of weird eating and drinking, of too much at once, then not enough for too long, then too much again. And all of it under this cloud of grief, this funeral that doesn’t end.

But there is always something to look forward to: the empty page, another day, and death.

A couple weeks ago I went to Baltimore with Chris and Jim, to see their old friend Jeff play. We drove in the pouring rain, Chris racing in the fast lane and peering over the dashboard to see below the fog on the windscreen.

Down this way the sniper was hunkered somewhere, thinking. Or maybe sleeping or maybe having something to eat. He'd shot eight people by then, or was it nine, and six had died, or was it seven.

We stopped at a rest stop just across the border into Maryland. It was overrun by teenagers who had evidently adopted it as their hangout. Friday night at the rest stop, hanging out in the food court, racing through the main hall, dodging drifters and old fat couples, twisting the knobs of gumball machines. Two boys were languidly wrestling each other, getting in people's way a little and not caring, fully preoccupied with each other but addressing each other only with arms and hands – their eyes looked elsewhere. Tittering girls at a table near us discussed the sniper.

"I heard he shot five people in a single day!" one girl gushed.

Right outside of Baltimore, October 2002.

On the way to work I saw a big plane, a passenger plane it seemed, arcing slowly, very close to the ground, in a place where there were no airports. I was fascinated of course and it occurred to me almost immediately that I wanted to see this plane go down. I mean, I wanted to see it loom spookily over the highway awhile, engines sputtering, rudders flapping nonsensically, and finally slam into the ground in a clearing in the woods. Why else would I be so excited, so unnerved when it disappeared from view? I tried to impose some measure of empathy on myself by imagining that my mother was aboard but it didn't quite work. Do we feel that witnessing atrocity is a privilege of living in these demented times? I saw myself as an awestruck bystander to catastrophe, maybe even narrowly escaping as the thing bellied stupidly onto the highway, gathering oncoming traffic in its useless wings. In a sense we can do no better than stare impassively at scenes of carnage, devastation. We are all beyond rescue. But I still tried to think of my mommy up there, not wanting to die, wanting to see her son again. And this is how I tried to feel about those doomed people in that big steel deathtrap, all the while craning my neck and nearly losing control of my car. Suddenly I would see it again, circling strangely, almost completely on its side. It had to be some kind of military plane. I thought of the horror movies when you think the monster's dead but he pops back up and grabs you by the neck.

But soon he was completely out of sight and I went on down the smooth, new highway to the funny-shaped building where I work.