I don't want to talk about the geography of driving but the anatomy of it.

The muscles and tendons and bones. What happens when the seatbelt

crosses your heartspace, hugs your pelvis, the sound of its click vibrating

your cochlea. I'm saying from the outer ear through the ear canal to the drum.

Eardrum vibration to malleus, incus, stapes who amplify. And the cochlea—

upper and lower divided by the basilar membrane—making waves now for

hair cells, which depending on their location and the excitations of their

microscopic stereocilia, open and bend to different sounds and open

themselves to chemicals speeding in. How they open to electricity. So hearing

is electricity and learning to drive is sitting while moving through space with

your hips hugged and your heart crossed and your legs bent and your arms

holding a steering wheel in the car with your mom in the high-school parking

lot. But not jock lot in case someone sees you and if your mom gives up

maybe you should drive to church with your father or even join the slow

ribbon of us on the highway with the teacher. How long it takes to change

lanes correctly. How terribly improbable but entirely possible it will be to

nail parallel parking on the first go with the police officer looking stunned in

the seat next to you, the cotton of your Hawaiian-print Jams shorts stretched

over the still lengthening curve of your thigh.
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