e-510 24mm 1/125 f/5 iso 100

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I drove down the streets under the trees in a domestic sedan self-conscious looking at the full moon.

What thoughts indeed, and a touch of déjà-vu.

This 2005 sedan is in every important way the same as the four door hard top of the same marque and model that eight years ago made my site of the time the number one search result for "Ford Taurus". And what you got all that time ago when you Googled just that was a photo essay, all 24 exposures from a single roll of Kodak TN 400 C-41 B&W film with a Canon Elan 2 and a forgettable Canon standard zoom between three and nine on a mid-December morning. At its peak, those photographs and their page remain one of my most successful in daily traffic volume. But that has nothing to do with why I have a 2005 Taurus.

This is the loaner from the un-denting/re-roofing shop, I absolutely love it. As one of the planet's least remarkable sedans, in a colour that's neither green nor blue nor grey nor anything at all really, rolling in the taur' is absolutely incognito. The seats are comfy, the radio sounds nice and it changes the compact discs for you at the right times, the steering is light and accurate and insulating and the brakes bring you to smooth, confident stops. The cabin is quiet, the engine peppy but refined and for a car of this calibre (make of that what you will) it goes quite far on each litre of gas. I am in love.

I am in love, but not with this particular Ford per se. I am instead in love with the class of car it represents, the modern, affordable sedan. Does this make me old? I would have in my youth probably have called myself at this juncture just such. But life is about where you choose to go, and while when getting there it's important to be comfortable and safe, if you're in it for any distance no one notices whether you're driving a 740il or a Taurus on the highway in the middle of Saskatchewan, and it's especially next-to-impossible these days to buy a bad car even if you try. umm, but don't buy a Chrysler.

Will we drive all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely. Will we drive dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?