DRIVING TO A STATE OF BLISS: My new job comes with a new feature: serious commuting.

In all my previous professional incarnations I've done the simple neighborhood-to-Loop commute, utiliziing the full range of available means of transport: El train, CTA bus, taxicab, and private car. For the most part this meant anywhere from twelve to thirty minutes spent in transit each way. It also meant I paid no mind to pesky traffic reports, and I regarded city-to-suburb commuters as minor idiots. (What did I think of suburb-to-city commuters? Poseurs. Wussies. Preppyfaces. Etc. That I myself am now mulling over the thought of a suburb-to-suburb super wuss-out boggles my mind, even as it lowers my blood pressure.)

Now, with my new gig in Northbrook, I find myself faced with a standard sixty-minute commute every morning and night. I find myself tuning in to traffic reports, finally comprehending what the heck "Lake Cook to the junction" means. And I find my general demeanor impacted in at least some small way by the traffic manners of those around me. I am an active commuter now, fully engaged in the daily schlep to and from my other life; whereas in the past I was a literal and figurative passenger on the rails and roadways, because even when I was driving it was such a short and prescribed path that it bore few of the wrinkles and requirements of my new macro-commuting lifestyle.

This new commuting life comes with its own challenges, to be sure. But more and more I'm experiencing small breakthroughs...like this one from earlier today:

I'm sitting at a stoplight off the highway, poised to make a right-on-red turn. Meanwhile traffic from the left-turn-lane to my left is slowly executing their turns, arcing into the inside lane of traffic on the road I'm intending to enter. Sensing a small seam in the turning traffic, I execute my right turn just as a left-turner initiates a broad, sweeping turn that nearly propels him into my path. (In other words he veers across the inside lane and into my outside lane, as if the centrifugal force of his five-mile-an-hour turn is more than he can control.)

I make a sign to him, a mild wave of the hand as if to say, "It's okay, not to worry old chap." I perform a skillful evasive maneuver in my larger car, a slight jog curbward that keeps me and my vehicle out of harm's way. He slows down then, pulling his passenger window alongside my driver's window, and I look over expecting to see an acknowledgement of wrongdoing and/or remorse, perhaps even a gently mouthed "sorry" or "thanks." Alas, the words he forms are not nearly so benign. He bites down hard on his top lip and expectorates a fully felt "Fuck you."

"Fuck me?" I simmer. "Fuck me?"

I stifle an urgent, obvious "No, fuck you," and I simply stare back at him, like a blissed out yogi too high on my mantra to care. I purse my lips into a small smile, the sort of miniature facial greeting one might offer a stranger from across an elevator.

I sense his fury accelerating, even as his vehicle holds steady just inches from mine. Both his arms leap wildly off the steering wheel in a grand upswing. I can hear him, even through three panes of auto glass (his own measly single pane juxtaposed limply alongside my luxurious double-dose of imported, crystalline protection):

"WHAT THE FUCK?!!!"

I let my face go Botox blank. I give him nothing. Instead of mirroring his anger I absorb it, like a river receiving rain. My car seems to drive itself. I neither accelerate nor decelerate, neither smile nor frown, neither inhale nor exhale. I am suspended in a state of exhilarated nothingness, of totally engaged detachment.

Either I am getting good at commuting, or I have suffered a major stroke.