Where the Seat Reclines

The great unadvertised feature of every Niva, including this borrowed green one, is that the front seat folds almost flat, which turns the car into a one-room apartment with a view that changes daily. Yesterday the view was a meadow somewhere off the main road, and the nap was twenty minutes that repaired six hours of washboard gravel.

I photographed myself before sleeping, glasses pushed into my hair, because the archive includes its keeper or it lies. There is no vanity in the picture. There is a woman using a borrowed Soviet vehicle as furniture, which is a legitimate historical continuity, ask anyone who ever drove one to a dacha.

I woke to a cow examining the rear window with the seriousness of a customs officer. We concluded our business without documents and I drove on.