December 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18 20 21 22 23 27 28 29 30 31

December 1

A couple snows have fallen now, the latest snow fell just last night. When winter falls here it sets in for business, and the snows piles up like the memory of the months. Many bicyclists continue to ride their bicycles all winter long, but I tend to quit for a few months. In the last couple weeks I have made my subtle shift from bicyclist to bus rider, and I am already fairly comfortable in my new role, my new identity.

It is not a difficult shift for me to make because I love mass transit, and I ride it all year long. But now I ride it every day, for my commute to work and for every other purpose. I do not spice it in, do not mix it in with a bike ride every day, for this time of year I am a transit rider and true.

This year the shift was helped even more by my month of October, which was a month of transit riding from coast to coast. Many transit systems I rode were more flexible or more interesting or easier to use than the one that we have here, but that does not matter so much when transit is your day to day. You bend yourself to fit in with its confines, you change your life a little to work around the local transit.

I ride the bumpy buses, I make my sometimes transfers, I check the schedule and wait at bus stops. Sometimes I risk the last minute, I gamble that the bus is not on time and see if I make it. So far, this early in the season, I have been a successful gambler, but sometimes I will lose, and that is all in the game.

Last night my class got out a little early, and I could gamble for the earlier bus. The buses run every half hour, the bus that takes me home does, so if I did miss it I would have quite a wait. When I got to the bus stop, I was there three minutes later than the bus's scheduled arrival time, but I turned around and there it was, four minutes later because of the newly fallen snow.

I put my pass in the fare box and settle into my seat with the book that I am reading. I fall into that crowd of riders and crowd of people in my book. I sit with them all in the theatre seats of the bus ride, all facing forward, in that inside light in the darkness of night, in the walk at either end of my ride. It is a kind of life, it is a kind of great community.

I share so much with all those people. I do not know them but we do have a real intimacy. That is nice, that is one of the reasons that I enjoy transit so much. I have a church of like riders down the street, and that gets you more than somewhere.

December 2

I am thinking about the two pedestrian streets I visited on my travels in October and how profound they were to experience. 99.999999% of all streets in North America belong to cars. I do not really know this percentage for a fact, but almost all streets in the U.S. belong to cars. The Avenue Prince Arthur in Montreal and the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder are two of the few where cars are not permitted.

The Pearl Street Mall is four blocks of the heart of Boulder. There are no cars, no trucks, no buses, just people. People are walking, are talking, are playing and hanging out, are making music and meeting and shopping. It is probably the closest thing to heaven as there is on earth.

All the other streets, where every six minutes in the U.S. a pedestrian is hurt or killed by a car, all those other streets, are the closest place to hell we have on earth. There is a whole lot of hell these days and very few blocks of pedestrian heaven.

I think about these streets because I am cutting the video of my trip. As I cut I think about how film schools are run by such masochists. They tell you to cut the things you love. They tell you that you might love an image, but nobody else will, so you must cut it out, so you must hack it to pieces. That is why I have tried to stay away from that. That is why I consider myself a home movie maker. If I want to show what I saw, and show it long, I will. If I want to make a fool of myself to the audience of cars and critics in cars, that is what I will do.

December 3

We have given so much of our world to cars. The streets and parking and driveways and curb cuts. We have given so much of our minds to cars. A friend has been trying to see how he can do without a car and has been walking or busing around town. He once fought a guy for possession of a car and the people at his job think that he is crazier to try to do without a car than he was to fight the guy for possession of a car.

Giving so much mind and landscape to the car leaves precious little left for us. We are floating in lost, we are losing our minds and bodies to the carnage, to the carscape. American doctors have had to invent a superneedle to get thru the extra padding of so many American butts these days, butts that do not sway so side by side any more by walking, and thus grow to an advanced degree. Depression and mental illness are climbing the charts perhaps because people have entombed themselves at such an early age inside metal graves on speedway cemeteries. And all for the universal bad. And all for burning and blowing the whole planet. It stinks.

December 4

It snowed nearly all day. It was a fluffy empty snow that piled up fast, but was mostly nonexistent. It still made cars slide around, but I took the bus to a movie in the afternoon. I walked across the University campus in the gobs of snow. I could have been shooting thru star trek outer space, passing the stars as if they were dots.

After the movie I rode the bus to the co-op and did some shopping. Because of the snow, the buses were so off-schedule that I just felt like walking home. The walk is probably a couple miles, but there is no direct bus connection, and a transfer might just be for a long time today.

I plowed thru the snow pretty easily in my snow boots, and kept to the main streets just to make my pedestrian point. For I was almost the only walker I saw. There were a few people waiting for the bus on Central Avenue, but beyond that, I was a human walking alone thru desert city with lots of cars.

On the last few blocks of walking I was starting to lose contact with the ends of my fingers in my gloves. They were doing the hard work of holding onto my grocery sacks, so I had to change the shopping bags back and forth and try to curl them around the cup of my hands so that my fingers would not just fall off, or curl the wrong way. But they are back in working order and helping me write the words.

December 5

Yesterday was very cold. I took the bus with a transfer to see a film shot in warmer times and places. I had two ten plus minute waits for transfers. I had to wait outside for the bus that would finish my trip, and it seemed too cold to me to risk a walk. For the second transfer, the one taking me back home, I did walk several blocks so I could stand in a bus shelter rather than on the open sidewalk. That made a big difference, for the slight wind was biting, and it was dark outside, and felt even colder for all the black sky.

We do not have the heat up super warm in our house, so the bus feels very warm indeed when I get on it to ride. It is a hot steaming place, and the companionship I share with other riders even makes it seem warmer. I read a book and that is wise and there is sand in my book and there is snow out the window.

December 6

These last few days have been very cold. The cold of these days is like the cold of the days when I began writing this diary at the beginning of the year. I go between home and work on the bus. I stand outside in the cold waiting fo the bus, but when I get on the bus and pay my fare and find a seat it is warm, and a nice ride.

I use my pedestrian rights and continue to walk past the sidewalk and into the street. I stay in the crosswalk even tho you cannot read its paint because of the snow and slop and rime of salt on the street. I continue to walk across even when a car is pulling up to the line for the stop sign. I have even more of a right to keep walking, to keep crossing, when it is as cold as this, far colder that ice. So why do I feel guilty making a car wait for my walking crossing? I do not feel that guilt in other places, in places where cars are not so much in charge, but I feel that guilt, that heavy car weight, in a place where cars are in charge and this town is such a place. Someday I would like to cross a Minneapolis intersection and not feel guilty about it. That will be the day when the scales have shifted and the power of cars has diminished enough here so that they no longer rule the roost, but are just one of the transportation players in a bigger picture than wheels and two ton steel.

December 7

We are deep in a cold snap, and then it lifts. I am riding the bus day by day, because that is the warmest way to go. In the morning I work at home on editing together my travel video, then I take the bus to work for the afternoon and evening. I take the 10 p.m. bus home and walk three blocks and come inside my house for the warmth for an hour or so before bed.

There are cars with their lights on down on the street this morning. People have started their cars up to let them warm up. I think they warm them not for the sake of the cars, but for the sake of the driver. They warm up the car so the driver does not have to sit in the cold, so they are comfortable for the person inside. I wonder about the heat seeping out of our house, but cars must really leak heat with their single pane glass and hardly any insulation whatever.

I rode all kinds of exotic transit systems in October, but now I ride the bus day by day. It works, tho it is not the most comfortable or efficient mode of transit. Perhaps someday I will be able to take some kind of remarkable form of transit for my daily commute, rather than one that was really designed to try to get people off the transit happened, at which it was remarkably successful.

December 8

I got in an extra pair of bus rides yesterday for a bike committee meeting. I rode the bus to work initially, but the meeting I had to go to was in between work hours, at kind of a dinner break for me, so I rode the bus to a coffee shop near my house for the meeting. I had to leave the meeting a little early to catch a bus to get back to work to teach my class that evening. Then, of course, after the class, I took the bus back home when all was said and done.

In order to do this extra bus trip, I had to plan it all out well in advance with my bus schedules, and I had to leave the meeting early to make sure I would catch the bus to take me back to work in time. It took some extra work to make that trip happen, but I made it happen. It also took a run across a park covered with snow, and that was beautiful and got my heart going fast and my shoes up and down.

With all my planning, tho, I somehow got the hours a little mixed up. I planned but planned a little wrong, and I ended up taking a bus to the meeting an hour earlier than I should have, so I had an extra hour before the meeting at the coffee shop to read and relax and sip a hot beverage. I was having a mad rush car day, more typical for car drivers than for me. I cannot really have mad rush days with the transit system we have here. But even with my mad rush day, I made a mistake that gave me a whole hour to just sit and read and relax.

December 9

What eyes we mixed up, driving metal warmed up. Storms fall and tires slip and jets crash into cars and cars crash into the other cars and people and die. What morning isn't there where the streets are not safe from that plague, the King Kong carried away cars that think they own the public realm, that eat it up with their weight and hog and noise and fast.

What day is there where it is really safe to just be a skin and bones when the crushing steel machine grunts and groans and really goes. Where there is so much addiction to that way of normal, to that slippery wheel, to the rubber road, the collar and the giving with groin and the sit down and the press your foot and go nowhere by going and the magic of two tons to smash down all the silence with their noise.

I am just a tiny, I am just a smashed thing, I am just an indicator of the horror, of the wrong-headedness. If I have eyes and can see it, why do so many fail to look and see it too. How can they risk it when it is so heavy and brutal. How can their eyes fail to rescue them from the real all-day war, the wars we have made of driveway and street and sidewalk and life.

December 10

What is the best way to get around? Maybe the best way to get around, the number one at the top of the list way to get around, is to stay in one spot. To stay in one position and not get around is pretty good, and then if you really need to get around , if you have to move or mountains, then comes walking. Even walking can press down flowers, can kill small insects, can make a stain on the universe, while staying in one place, or within a small set of boundaries, makes a little more sense, makes a little less footprint.

This back and forth is killing us. This having to move so much to keep in one place is destroying us and everything else with it. You would think we would get a little better at seeing it, at opening our own eyes to the cradle we are rocking, to the branches we are breaking, to the baby we are falling. You would think that we would be better, but we are so much worse.

December 11

Swirling morning, elevens and twelves and then the cats say hut one hut two hut three. Bleed a little liquid into you worst and able musculature, to the hill at the top where the eyes have a little last yellow to do. Upteenth time without a hail or high water, without the snowman's daughter, within the boundaries of picket reuse. Turn over the newspapers to see who loves her and who hates her and then see if it stinks to the ceiling to the floor, or if it is just one more, or if it is just one more.

Groggy eyes, cold guys, sound of flies and surprise. Tattle a tale of a humpbacked whale, of a sea full of turds, full of oil and full of well. Eat that stinking chemical crud with our mouth and your whiskers and your big fat thumb. Eat it all up till you are smart or you are dumb and when you want a little more, you will find it oh for sure.

Like a handy little bell, you will ring it for the hell, you will sound it in alarm even tho there is no harm, even tho there is distress, you will only just suggest.

December 12

I have been working on the last half hour video of my trip around the country. Last night I was again traveling by video and editing over the Canadian Rockies. I was going over the mountains with the music of Prokofiev and all the memories of my friends on the train. The colors were dimmer than my memories knew, and soon those pictures will completely supplant my own brain recollections.

It was all such a good time, my trip across the country on transit. It was so remarkable, the mountains and the prairies and the time it took to crawl them, inch by inch by railroad track. There were so many things that I did not see, but so many things I did as well.

Last night riding the bus home from a movie we changed our minds because our transfer bus was just behind us. Sometimes we can be spontaneous while riding the bus in this town, but it takes a little risk.

December 13

Last night I walked to my neighborhood meeting on the streets that are nice for walking but have few walkers on them. So many times I was passed by albatross action vehicles, these absurdly huge out of scale monsters with which I must share the public space, these things that dominate the public space, that eat up the public space and leave so little left for me.

In the dark evening, in the city, in the parking requirements, in everything is put all the emphasis on the motor vehicle, is put all emphasis on the tank for transportation. I was walking just a few blocks to go to something that I had to go to, and most everyone else was walking just to their car, and to rev it up, and to roll over the earth and stones and people and life itself.

There is no sense of safety in a land of car dinosaurs, there is nothing but danger with all these steel sides and fast tires. There is no sense of peace in the constant war of car street and highway, there is no calm in the storm of car disaster, the life that we have built for crazy, the life that we have lost to gears.

December 14

This morning we have a real snowstorm. When I was waiting for the bus to go home from work last night, the snow had just started falling. It was small white dots that fell vertically until about a foot or two from the ground. At that point, a passing low breeze blew the snow almost completely horizontal, like the wind was not about to let it fall all the way to 0 centimeter earth. I had a short talk about the curving snow sight with a couple women at the bus shelter. It was a real bus stop social moment.

The snow did not quite reach the ground at that hour, but by this morning it has made it. You can see it out the window. How white it all is. Even the usually so obnoxious cars look pressed in it helpless. Cars are most likely going to be sliding and crashing all over the place this morning, for we are supposed to get quite a few inches of snow before it stops. I will spend some more time inside the house this morning, then I will shovel the sidewalks, then I will walk three blocks to catch my bus. The bus might be a little late, but it certainly will come and I will get to work. You might not be able to say that about all of the car commandos this morning. Some will make it, but some will crash, or get their cars stuck, or just give up, or even die. There may be a couple of those. It happens almost every snowstorm, when people use cars against the viscous snow.

December 15

Cars bring out all the big guns of complaint. People say they need cars, that they want them, they desire them, but it is a desire that has been completely programmed into them, it is robot desire. For when push comes to shove, when cars come to reality, people who love cars seem to be able to do nothing but complain about them.

The snow has fallen to make a nice soft anti-car mush. People complain about the snow and their cars, about getting towed so that the streets can be plowed and made passable. People complain that their cars will not start, or that their car gets stuck, or that it is not safe to drive. When the snow is heavy, car drivers keep on doing the impossible because they are so blind dazzled by all those car commercials that they truly believe the propaganda, they have completely lost their own ability to see and to think logically. They think that the car makes them free when they are really nothing but its slave in the dark acts of pollution and control and smashing and breaking and complaining about it on top of it all.

The complaints and the grumbling and the mumbling and the distress show that people really secretly hate cars but they will not let it out because their brains are so car-centric. They will not let the car-base topple, for that would earthquake the whole tissue of lies on which their lives are formed.

December 16

The Mayor of Duluth had quite a few drinks and then got in his car to drive to a conference in Chicago. Not far into his journey, he smashed his car into a guard rail, and yesterday he said he would never drink again.

Drinking alcohol is not unusual. It is not unnatural. It is something that people have been doing for as long as they have been people. The drinking of alcohol has almost forever had a holy element, it has helped people see things differently, it has provided them nutrients and liquid for a long time when water was never safe.

What is unnatural is driving. People have only been driving motor vehicles for a little over a hundred years, and in that time they have caused countless deaths and injuries. Cars have made our cities and our roads into slaughterhouses, have made our air unsafe with their pollution, are destroying our earth with global warming and sucking up all our nonrenewable fossil fuels. The Mayor of Duluth would be doing the world far better by continuing to moderately drink now and then but giving up driving. Using a two ton tank to move a human body around town and country is so much more unnatural and destructive than drinking fermented beverages.

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