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26 Geography Matters Taking car service from Delray to Miami International— 60 plus miles, Route 95 past palm trees, junkers, swingsets ‘gators giddy with humidity—and I have a driver who likes to talk. Fingers too chubby for a ring, his massive back dents the leather, eyeglasses from the ’70s. His accent familiar, maybe Russian, he points things out, headlines each statement: let me make you an example. Turns out he’s from Yugoslavia, where he says people are better looking, they look better when they come from Eastern Europe or from the Islands, because it’s when people mix that makes them more beautiful. Let me make you an example, back home I taught Geography, was well respected, didn’t drive a car all day, though don’t give me wrong, I like the people they sometimes become friends, they like to listen back home Geography matters here no one cares. “I care,” I tell him, lying, trying to change the conversation. I tell him I wonder why it takes an hour less to fly from L.A. to Miami than from Miami to L.A., but that only excites him, makes him make another example, he tells me it’s quicker going east because of the earth’s rotation, it’s Geography, that’s why I know, that’s why I could make you that example, that’s why I can tell you why the clouds move faster in the Florida sky, why I can’t work at the rent-a-car because I need to be outside even driving all day, and he takes out a pad colored markers, blocks, wood, pipe cleaners, match sticks, makes me many examples: a mockingbird wandering the roof, an orange blossom 27 floating down a creek, a sketch of himself wading through a swamp, hands me a map of Croatia, grains of white sand slipping into the creases of the seats. ...

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