dr_lizardo

I seem to be one of the very few people in the world who's not in a big fuckin hurry all the fuckin time. People who are in a big hurry all the time have this annoying habit of passing me on the right, and no doubt they hate me for only going 5, 10, or 15 mph over the speed limit in the left lane. Couple evenings ago a guy passed me on the right in a no passing zone in a school zone where the limit is 25 and I was doing thirty because i myself once got pulled over right there. He even had his trunk crunched from someone who was apparently in even bigger a hurry than him one time. So today I'm heading back up to mass after visiting NETTTS and I'm putt putting through an intersection at the same speed as the rest of traffic and a woman in an SUV blows by me on my right at maybe 40-45 and cuts in front of me. But a cop saw
her do it and immediately cranked up his siren and nailed that bitch's ass. Yeah, it's nice to see a cop nailing someone for what they did to me.

Thing about bikes is that even though they're a lot faster than cars, they're not about being in a big fuckin hurry the way cars are. There about enjoying the journey, they're about having passion beyond a passion for getting to work on time. Internal combustions engines were a huge cultural mistake in a certain sense, in that they made it possible, and eventually necessary, to be in a hurry all the time, where before things had a more manageable speed with the limitations of how fast horses could move or how often the train came through.

One time I was listening to Car Talk on the way in to work, and they were talking about how someone had observed that over in Italy they drive like maniacs, but noone gets road rage, and had asked why that was. Someone had subsequently posted on their website that the Italians are obsessed with speed, but Americans are obsessed with time. The Italians don't give a crap about being on time for anything; they just like going fast. Clocks, internal combustion engines, and a Protestant work ethic make for a fuckin stressed-out, in a hurry culture that insists on passing me on the right.

That photograph I posted above looks really great full size on a monitor; it has an open, still feel to it. Tonight on the news they were talking about a murder that just occurred on the bike path I was riding on that runs along the right river bank in this photograph(the pic was taken from a bridge) about a quarter mile from where I took it. Peace and beauty and poverty and crime and danger stand shoulder to shoulder in a lot of places in Springfield. Maybe all there really is to say is that the world is what you decide to see, a vision and opinion of things that you inflict upon yourself. Or I could say that being in a hurry and stressed out or poor and murderous are vexing distractions from the stillness and openness and light that are available to us if we will grant ourselves a moment to notice them. Don't know if that thought leads anywhere. I love the world, but hate work, time, cars, bills. I like certain people but overall I hate people. Nothing for it I guess. IF you never learn to make your own decisions, you can find yourself caught between worrying about whether the bigger mistake is in not taking time to appreciate how beautiful the world is, or in taking that time because you need to be working or looking for work and combating your financial anxieties. I think if humans, or maybe just me, had an inherent capacity to be sane and rational, we could find balance, but I think that what I am is an organizm with clashing structures of agenda within my mind that are incompatible with one another and not amenable to being brought into balance by any mechanism of psychological adjustment and reason. So Instead of being adjusted and living, I am anxious and listless, never able to feel right about what I decide to do. This is some kinda random ramble ain't it. The underlying pic is me pretending to do what someone well adjusted might do.