Drive 95

Even though the trips are short these days, as Travel it still seems long.
There were a couple recent years when, in the name of Science & Discovery, I spent a lot of time driving alone between Long Island and Florida collecting ants in sandy holes of pine barrens. The trips were wearing in a way no book on tape was never really able solve (especially since my right car speaker is shot). So it felt like a big step to take a solitary drive further than just a couple hours over these holidays, from Durham to Boston.

I go 95. That’s to say interstate 95, though more than a few tractor trailers may try to run straight over your little Subaru at about that many miles per hour. The toll taker at the Delaware Bridge tried to thieve 3 bucks from my change. And the stop-and-go snail trails of cars between DC and Baltimore are hardly ever going to stop. Still, I felt vaguely, most vaguely, reminiscent for a moment on this drive north. Like some bird that had read the migration directions dackwarbs, I was going on vacation. to vacate.

The things you see may not be better than the things you don’t, but how would we ever know? Looking can bide the time nicely, and seeing even moreso, if you’re lucky.

Firstly, a stop through Our Nations Capital. The Capitol looked bright ( but as we now know, clearly tinier that of Texas, pardner).


D. says I never take pictures when I visit the District. but I do! Ahem. a certain D. might recognize this certain house flower? It turns out that flowers aren’t as shy to the camera as some congressional staffers that I happen to know...


I visited my all time favorite, the Freer Gallery of Asian Art. Not only is it a wonderful place, but it is almost always e m p t y. Me and this old Indian woman were like tumbleweeds in a ghost town, blowing quietly room to room.


New to the Mall is the new National Museum of the American Indian (?- Is it just me who didn't get the memo about “Indian” being a suitable term again?)

It is a beautiful space. Something between a desert, the inside surface of a seed, and a moon (the photo here converted to 'pencil,' you know, for that real "acrhitectural" effect..)


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As for space, the next stop, NYC, certainly takes up a lot of it while amazingly managing to hardly have any. Even still, there is enough that you can bowl. If you go 30th birthday bowling in East Village, the man of honor, C., might wear a pig mask while sizing up his shot. I wish I has something to say about this, but really, I'm drawing a blank.


They have TV floating widescreen above the pins at this place:

I can’t think of a more annoying concept. Perhaps pins that scream bloody murder when you knock them down? actually that might be funny... I don’t know. I’m sure someone working on this very problem.

And let's face it, TV has found is way to every other conceivable space. For example, say you want your whole body scanned by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) just to see if you have any weird thing growing in you, or, say possibly a forgotten surgical tool?

First, it is a Busy Life, so don't bother with sitting down.
As Seb and J. point out at this Park Slope establishment, you can just walk-in off the street, and keep standing...


While all the electron dipoles in your body are orienting you into a big human compass for the sake of seeing your insides, why not pass the time watching the Sox/Mariners game on the Flat Screen while you are at it.

There is always room for entertainment. I think medical term is Cathode Anesthesia.

Donna Haraway speaks of the cyborg life we increasing lead. Humans interfaced with technologies so fundmentally and seamlessly, our social and organic selves intertwined, wires to vessels, wristwatch to adrenaline high, information-now-identity. Why does "normal American life" feel more and more like something out of a Sharper Image catalog taken from the USS Enterprise?

Computer Scientist Steve Mann has been working hard at it for decades:


I sometimes feel like this, between my laptop, digital camera, and cellphone. Once considered a remarkable Luddite among friends and family alike, I am shocked to what a little cyborg I've become. Example enough is this very inter-net inter-face web log, open access to the things that would otherwise stay cradled inside the memory-bed in my head.

And of course peripatetic picturing taking is one of Professor Mann's specialities. New technology has made his 24-7 wearable computer habit a little less burdensome, but please, shoot me if I ever strap one of these things long-term to my head....

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As anesthetics go, art is my preferred opiate.
Please give me a massive chuck of stone any day over a flat-screen.
J. and I made it to the Isamu Noguchi museum.

It was black stone morphine, most perfect.


And they had nice skylights too. Peer too much and you start getting watery, but no worry in losing yourself, assuming at least you find your friend reflected in it, and upside down. Everything is a mirror.


But no, I mean it like for real, everything is a mirror. J. proved the point by sticking my camera down his coffee mug, and in his genius found an image that has been echoing in my head for weeks now...


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And then, you know, Massachewsetts.
It snowed, like it was supposed to. Winter-whiteness became state law a few years back after extensive pressure by Robert Frost poetry lobby.


But the cyborg in me can't help tinker. Sure, this looks as if the trees of Kendall Square are snow-thrown from a storm,

but this is actually a negative of the orignal picture, the trees lit from below in the dark (to see, copy this image out and flip the negative button in PhotoEditor ). There is no limit to the true blackness of a snowflake after all.

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Holidays mean presents, means hand-wrapped somethingness in a huge and funny game of mutual acknowledgement, and hopefully thankfulness.


Hands might also pass over dishes of food. Rob (left hand) cooked a south Indian feast for New Year's. The spices were intense and baroque, and had the odd effect of getting us all a little high somehow. Cath's hand (right) is busy blowtorching the creme brulee, the sugar providing a more predictable buzz.


And my father had the holiday lights up, wound around post outside the door. Slip on the ice when you are walking up, and it quickly turns into a firey waterfall. You might have a twisted ankle real bad, but you also just got to see God in the streak of color that turned your eyes to mush, so consider it a fair trade.


(And then one thousand other things happened)

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..This post is already too long. Like the road. Like 95 if you have a headache. Blessed with the luck of the Irish (or quarter Irish), your Ma will accompany you on the 13 hour drive back down. I'm turning her into a cyborg too. She has heard of email, and has on a couple special ocassions managed to retrieve a message from her answering machine. But stick a digicam in her hand, and she can find the rainbow in the interstate sky, dead center if you look close


Having arrived, you know you are back in the South when you pass by one place, and one place in particular. Not the Piggly Wiggly, nor the Waffle House.

Nay I say to anything but Chadsworth’s Column Store. That’s right, the place for all your home-column needs. Just call 1-800-COLUMNS. I reckon they’ll have something Corinthian that’ll suit you for this New Year, like the feel of some honeysuckle on an old oak fence...