I wrote a short something or other last night. Turns out, it's not necessarily garbage, but
it was very much writing because I demanded it of myself. There’s really no point in editing such a
scattered train wreck – that’s something I learned two weeks ago. If a piece can’t be saved, don’t. Rewriting it will take less time than piecing
it together in any way that would make it coherent, let alone, suck less. As such, that post is getting scrapped.
My intention was to just let matters lie. I would go home, pack some more, make dinner,
pack more, then write before going to bed, leaving the editing for the following
morning if I was particularly tired. However,
after nearly causing a car accident on my way to work, I thought a supplemental
might be in order once more.
Most folks – me included – are horrible drivers. Even if you think you’re great, you’re
horrible. Know why? – Because we all
like driving our way. We go along, tap our fingers on the wheel,
doing what we want; we are safe in our happy bubble. As it is, driving a car has become a very
personalized ritual. From the way you
hold the wheel, to the bumper stickers you apply; it is less “a vehicle” and
more “my vehicle.” They are a living
space, complete with libraries, telephones, internet, and commodes – all this,
before you even consider people who live
inside of their cars. The empowerment
of the driver is not inherently a bad thing - until you have several hundred
people navigating their castles like the kings and queens they believe to be,
while driving at least one short ton of aluminum bonded to steel, and at speeds
in excess of sixty-five miles an hour.
To hell with a single terrorist on a single plane – look at a highway.
Alright, fine, that may be
a little extreme, but the notion is the same - mass chaos all stemming from a
single-minded goal: superiority. Every
driver feels they are the ones doing
it right; everyone else needs to bend to their whims and get the hell out of
the way.
There’s always this fine rhythm to it. I noticed this today as I simply tapped my
hand to a comfortable rhythm – about 100 beats per minute. I had news on the AM frequency, and as a new
segment began, another car – no turn signal – flipped me the bird because I had
cut him off. I was in a right lane
turning right; he was in opposing traffic, turning left down the same
road. I’m not a mind reader, and I have
no desires to let this mary rustle my feathers.
I keep driving while he’s behind me, and on every other beat he was
slamming his finger forward into the windshield. His mouth moved in a syncopated pattern, and
the radio cut from interview to interview.
It was a visual symphony.
Once in our lovely parking lot, the symphony grew. In his desire to look me in the eye while
flipping me off, Ahab ran his runty little Honda full boar into a brilliant
white Escalade. The brief overture moved
into a sonorous rumbling of car horns and doors; slams and swearing, finger
shoving and death threats. Yet, the pacing remained the same throughout all of
it.
Seasons are a natural pacing in which the world flows from order
into chaos and entropy, and back again. This
is a mass chaos not built out of a singular superiority, but of a global
necessity. There is evenness to it - a
flow that keeps those moving along beside it, from falling out of sync with
it. Maybe, it is only as natural to
bloom tall as a tree, as it is for the tree to crash like a force of wooden
lightning upon a home, destroying its walls and roof, just to be utilized in
rebuilding that same home. Maybe, a
little chaos and destruction is good for creating a better order.
Kind of makes you wonder how much good a lot of chaos and
destruction could do.
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