sarah vowell covets space and time. this is the tile he was shot on. this is the same bumpy road his wagon descended on that fateful night. this is a piece of the bullet that took his life. this is the program he was holding which, if you look close, you can see a drop of his blood. and, in case you can't see the blood, there's a chunk of his skull in this glass display.

i get this. totally. a similar proclivity explains why i can't live in the town i grew up in. i can barely visit the place. at every intersection, every converted building, every twenty year old eatery my mind projects a frenetic slide show of sound and imagery flooding my brain's narrow neural avenues. fortunately, vowell's subject matter actually rates discussion in that she addresses moments of national and social consequence where my thoughts focus on the globally insignificant.

in our days we race, dash, and bounce off one another spending our minutes in mostly meaningless events en route to other, different, meaningless events without stopping to reflect on significant things that are and have happened around us, like there is no value in it, no point. i guess for many this is the case, but for those who treat now and then more spiritually, vowell's product of obsession reads as a passionate homage to that which is there, but simply overlooked and under-noticed.