1/26 Springfield, MO. Another 300 miles in the day, and then 300 in the dark. The pace with which the places recede into distance, both spatially and temporally, is deeply unsettling. This is nothing like walking, but also nothing like flying. When I was there it seemed like my most ordinary life, just like the place where I’m now. But it’s gone. So far gone and so precious I’ll spend years remembering it, not being able to get there.

I’ll be in X tomorrow. – Wrong. You’ll be in X today.

1/25 I spent half of this first travel day in the desert, and the other half in the dark. It was so pitch dark that I thought I must have been driving between tall standing, very dark trees of the densest forest, but looking to the side, outside of my light cone, I could see, or somehow discern, that I was driving through that same desert with its vast plains all around me. Also, as it got dark, the snow started, and also, all other cars disappeared. I was alone. The snow formed gentle veils across the asphalt at first, but soon covered all of it, and with the road markings gone, it was not entirely clear where the road even was. That was only for a few minutes though. And I was alone only in the sense that there was no car going in my direction, but every few minutes I saw a pair of oncoming lights approaching. Temperature dropped to 7F. Jeep doing alright. Except – and next time I know this when buying from a dealer in Arizona – the wiper fluid froze, since it was clearly not rated for this kind of temperature. Arrived at Tucumcari 10.15pm.

1/24 Tucumcari, NM, after the first 600 miles. Eerie journey through desert, dark, snow, and cold.

1/23 Tuscon. Stayed here to make sure that if there was anything wrong with the car, I would be near the dealer so they could look at it. Over the next days, I will not have that option any longer. More and more it becomes clear that, rather than choosing a route with the most interesting places to visit, I will need to find a route that is least affected by the winter storm that is developing across the country, with red areas on the weather map saying: avoid travel if you can.

1/22 Got up at four in New York and flew out to Tuscon where I picked up my Jeep at one. Much of my nervousness about the recent recall and software update is relieved, it behaves and drives just fine.

America is like a collection of rooms, or stages, and what’s stunning is the ease with which you can move between them, like switching scenes in a movie.

Tucson come across like a big smalltown. On my way from the airport we passed through vast stretches of flat, low-quality housing. Enclaves of elevated standards, carefully guarded. A stretch of gentrified bars and restaurants near the university. And yet, trying to find some easy calories I stumbled into the worst McDonald’s I have ever seen. A slum of a McDonald’s, one that reeked of piss inside and where teenage parents let their children play on the rubber-plastic-net cube structure that must be a world for these kids, innocent and wide open as ever, and everywhere.

1/21 J sick and sleeping way past noon, while I am trying to push through the workday after a night in which my mind did not take any of the sleep I offered it.

1/20 Just the multitude of worlds I passed through yesterday on my way around the earth should make one die, as we imagine someone from 200 years ago would, if transported into the present, or a drug courier when a satchet of merchandise tears open in their digestive tract.

1/19 Morning of ice crystals in Gothenburg, street lamps and stray car lights enough to make any of them light up bright, while tiny, like celestial objects. Sky only very reluctantly transitioning out of night as I drive the kids home to drop off their luggage, as I drive them to school and hug them good-bye. Inside a brightly lit corner window of one of the old city blocks the slender white metal beams of a dentist’s X-Ray apparatus, like some biologically inspired next-century piece of architecture, a miniscule detail in this morning I choose to remember for tonight when I get back into Manhattan. Likewise a swath of dark birds scattering across the sky and landing on wires like a painter’s gesture.

1/18 Played another terraforming game with just as much fascination, but now also serious competition because we understand so much more. All of us are unbelievably, even mysteriously tired in the evening. My son makes fun of me, and rightfully so, when he says “I’ll rest my eyes a little bit”, quoting me back to myself.

1/17 First time we actually understood the Terraforming Mars game which he’d gotten a year ago and we played it till well after midnight. The immediate, unexpected rush of joy when switching from computer games to a board game, and a well-designed one with lots of intricate parameters. We hugged each other in excitement many times.