On Not Getting One's Hopes Up

is this too good to be true?

keep your wits about you

and see what you can do

An Unlikely Teacher

Forty-two miles into a fifty mile ride, feeling great. Stopped at a traffic light in the left turn lane. Heard a car approaching from behind. Above the rumble of the engine, an angry voice, "What're ya doin'! You're not a car!" Turned around for a quick glimpse. Blonde handlebar mustache approaching fifty behind the wheel of a soft top Geo Tracker. "Git that thing outta here or I'll run you right the f—k over!" So angry, so unprovoked, so wrong! Lost a little confidence, despite being right and proper and clearly more mature. Maybe was just a little bit sad for that man. The left arrow turned green. Casually clipped in to make the turn as he sped by. More incomprehensible expletives.

Finished the ride and relaxed on the porch, happy to be sitting on something a little less intrusive than a bike seat. Ate a couple PB&J sandwiches that had been for somewhere along the way. Two bees immediately zeroed in on the sweet blackberry jelly. Landed on the sandwich, shaken off, landed right back on the sandwich. Persistent. Upon instinct, with another expulsive flick of the wrist: "Get the f—k outta here!"

I stuffed the rest of the sandwich in my mouth and sat there for a little second. Maybe I don't know all the rules just yet.

Morrison's "Self-Interview"

I think the interview is the new art form. I think the self-interview is the essence of creativity. Asking yourself questions and trying to find answers. The writer is just answering a series of unuttered questions.

It's similar to answering questions on a witness stand. It's a strange area where you try and pin down something that happened in the past and try honestly to remember what you were trying to do. It's a crucial mental exercise. An interview will often give you a chance to confront your mind with questions, which to me is what art is all about. An interview also gives you the chance to try and eliminate all of those space fillers...you should try to be explicit, accurate, to the point...no bullshit. The interview for has antecedents in the confession box, debating and cross-examination. Once you say something, you can't really retract it. It's too late. It's a very existential moment.

I'm kind of hooked to the game of art and literature; my heros are artists and writers.

I always wanted to write, but I always figured it'd be no good unless somehow the hand just took the pen and started moving without me really having to do it. Like automatic writing. But it just never happened.

I wrote a few poems, of course. I think around the fifth or sixth grade I wrote a poem called "The Pony Express." That was the first I can remember. It was one of those ballad-type poems. I never could get it together though.

"Horse Latitudes" I wrote when I was in high school. I kept a lot of notebooks through high school and college, and then when I left school, for some dumb reason—maybe it was wise—I threw them all away...I wrote in those books night after night. But maybe if I'd never thrown them away, I'd never have written anything original—because they were just mainly accumulations of things that I'd read or heard, like quotes from books. I think if I'd never gotten rid of them I'd never been free.

Listen, real poetry doesn't say anything, it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through any one that suits you.

...and that's why poetry appeals to me so much—because it's so eternal. As long as there are people, they can remember words and combinations of words. Nothing else can survive a holocaust but poetry and songs. No one can remember an entire novel. No one can describe a film, a piece of sculpture, a painting, but so long as there are human beings, songs and poetry can continue.

If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.

Jim Morrison's prologue to Wilderness: The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison, Volume 1

"In the United States, we have enough car seats on the road for every man, woman and child - with enough seats available to hold the entire population of continental Europe." - Paul Cherington, former Assisstant Secretary of Transportation

To make this quote all the more depressing, I found it published in The Innerspace Project by Jeff Berner in 1972!
As of 2004:

Another old statistic that has probably gotten worse rather than become irrelevant:

According to a traffic study made here [in New York City] in 1907, horse-drawn vehicles moved at an average speed of 11.5 miles an hour. (In 1966, during the daytime, automobiles crawled through Manhattan's central business district at an average speed of 8.5 miles an hour.)
from The Epic of New York City: A Narrative History by Edward Robb Ellis

199 Million Drivers in America
237 Million Motor Vehicles
Motor vehicles does include motorcycles and scooters, which, if Hummers are the alternative, I will whole-heartedly support.

Won't You Please Come to Chicago

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