in love with a girl who’s in love with the world

title: Keep It Loose, Keep It Tight – artist: Amos Lee

Looking at the stars used to make me feel insignificant, that I was such a tiny particle of the universe who couldn’t possibly matter to anyone. But now I look at the stars and I smile, because it makes me think that I must matter in this world.  The universe is so big, but from a distance, even the stars are hard to see.  Maybe there’s a big-ness in everybody that you just have to get close enough to be in a position to comprehend it.

– [Mlle. Amu] from her entry on 6/13/2005
 

There is a certain sort of perfect that you can experience driving on I-86 from Big Flats to Painted Post after midnight under an almost-full moon with Amos Lee’s Keep It Loose, Keep It Tight as a soundtrack.
 
There was fog on different bodies of water. And on the way back, I took the riverside drive into Corning, which is its own kind of perfect.
 
For some reason, it reminded me of the night we stayed in Jamestown when moving to New York in ’99.

As an aside, I wouldn’t have thought I’d ever say this, but the Motel 6 there, which I think happened to be the first place we came to, anyway, was very cool. It was downright adorable in a rustic-chic sort of way.

 Even though, in many respects, a lot is the same since then, much, much more has changed. I hadn’t really stopped to think about how much until tonight.
 
Tonight was one of those nights where you wish you were a passenger so you could ogle the sky and the silhouette of the mountains and where you drive under the speed limit, not just because there’s not much traffic out and you don’t want to be "speeding" for the sake of avoiding tickets, but because it feels better that way.

we all need a place where we can go
and feel over the rainbow

– from Keep It Loose, Keep It Tight