I heard the dawn coming from a damaged field recording

After six months of reaccustoming myself to regular driving, I finally did something really dangerous while in the car: at an interminable red light in stop-and-go traffic that had been going at an average rate of trench warfare, I looked at the pulp novel lying out of my computer bag in the passenger seat with my hat and gloves and didn't notice when the light changed. Nothing happened. No one honked, revved, rear-ended me, I didn't spring forward into the crosswalk and hit a pedestrian or even have to catch up to the car in front of me. Either the change in lights subliminally registered with me or my paranoia was perfectly timed. But I have been since the age of literacy so easily absorbed into reading that I can not hear my own name spoken and it should never have crossed my mind that it was safe even to glance at a printed page while behind a wheel unless parked. I gather I have reached a level of comfort with driving where I can relax enough to do really stupid things, which feels less like an accomplishment than I suppose it should.

In other news, my doctor's appointment this afternoon yielded a pneumococcal vaccine and I am enjoying Crescent's By the Roads and the Fields (2003), which reminds me of ashlyme's writing. I am profoundly tired.