which doctor
24th March 2009, 17:49
I was never really sure where I was going with this, so there's not much of a focus. I also didn't read over it too carefully, so there might be some grammatical/spelling errors.
Working title: First Few Amateurish Pages to a Loosely Auto-Biographical Epic About a Young Man Who Spends Too Much Time Thinking About His Emotions and Not Enough Time Acting On Them; Pretentious, I Know
Andrew was a white male, 18 years old. Lived in a small, old, prairie town among other old prairie towns, some a little bigger, some a little smaller. The kind of towns where the population reached its peak in the 1920's or '30's and ever since were slowly sinking back into the the corn fields and river valleys that once created these places. Some of these towns were already dead and their rotting skeletons stuck out all over the place against the flat landscape. If you drove around a little and got lost, you'd find these dead towns. Their graves are marked with rusted water towers. The streets are potholed and big oak and maple trees are slowly reclaiming the sidewalks. Each dead town has one big, brick building, a school, with boarded up windows and chain locked doors. Inside is nothing but dust, dust upon dust upon dust. On side streets sit old, and once grand, houses with fading paint and the trim falling off. Main street has a few storefronts, but no stores, and the plate glass windows are covered with yellowed newspapers, the date on the newspaper marks the death of the town.
Andrew didn't live in one of these dead towns, no one did, but he lived near a few of them and sometimes he stumbled upon one while on one of his drives. The drive is to the country what the stroll is to the city. Drives have destinations, but they are vague and by no means fixed. On the prairie the landscape is marked by consistency: endless rows of corn and soybeans, the occasional silhouette of a tree line, a sprinkling of grain silos and barns. If you walk the prairie, you're always in the same place. If you drive the prairie, you're still always in the same place, but there's the comforting notion of swift movement: cool summer air in your face, static rows of corn turn to flowing waves of corn, and rubber on road at 60 mph.
Drives were the only reason people ever found themselves in dead towns, otherwise, there was never any need to visit them. Kind of like old cemeteries, where no living people knew any of the deceased anymore, so the graves were only visited by curious passers-by. Sometimes Andrew would pass by another car in one of these dead towns and they'd look at each other suspiciously. Neither of them had any more of a reason to be there than the other, they were both just on a drive, but they'd still look at each other suspiciously. What are you doing in this town? Who do you know here? Neither of them was doing anything in the town, meditating maybe, there was nothing else to do. Neither of them knew anyone in the town, themselves maybe, there was no one else to know.
Drives are not an activity that inspire solidarity. Other cars on the road are viewed as a nuisance, not fellow drive enthusiasts. Communication between drivers is carefully mediated by a few spartan knobs and buttons on the dashboard. This is a good thing, though. Drives are not about communication between individuals, but about communication within an individual. Driving in the country is very meditative and comes highly recommended by Andrew.
Eyes fixed on the horizon. Right foot off the gas pedal (cruise control is on) and resting just above the brake in case of a red fox or white-tailed deer. Hands on the wheel keeping the car between the lines, not so hard a task with roads as straight as they are in farm country. For Andrew this coordination isn't second nature, it's first nature, like a beating heart or breathing, he doesn't even have to think about it. It is an activity that requires so little thought from Andrew, but it is also an activity that is defined by thought. The same road over and over again, no matter which direction you turn, is a release for Andrew and his mind. Freed from the worries and preoccupations of grounded life, rubber on road at 60 mph allows Andrew uninterrupted time for reflection and meditation, things people don't get enough of these days, Andrew thinks.
Andrew doesn't think, "I'm going for a drive to meditate and reflect on my life", he thinks, "I need to get outta here", and he does, takes one of the old roads that go out of Andrew's town in all directions.
In an exercise in meta-driving Andrew thought, "People who live in the suburbs and cities don't know what driving is all about. It's just a commute in rush hour traffic for them." Andrew thought driving should be a time for careful thought, for calm, for relaxation. He had driven in busy city traffic before and cringed every time he heard a car horn; it was not the kind of driving he was used to. "Why do so many people in the city use car horns so often?" Andrew thought. "They aren't that effective, and one beep's always bound to be followed by a barrage of others from nearby cars. People make their lives so miserable." Andrew was mature in this aspect, knew that the horn's effectiveness was made possible by discretion in its use. He had only used his twice, once when someone was about to merge into him and once when a car sat through a whole green light and was about to sit through another. Sometimes Andrew would press on his car horn if there wasn't anyone around him and he had forgotten what his horn sounded like, but these times didn't count. Even in really heavy traffic, Andrew didn't think many situations called for its use. "Manufacturers should make car horns sound really funny, like a clown car, so people would be embarrassed to use them as often as they do. Even if people did use them a lot, the hilarity of the situation would mitigate and negative effects from excessive horn usage."
Andrew got a lot of good ideas like this while driving, but he forgot most of them and the ones he remembered would never go over well with the public. "Are you telling me my car horn's gonna sound like a slide whistle? How the hell is that supposed to be funny?! It'll just drive us all crazy!" a very distraught man with a beer gut wearing a non-ironic work shirt would stand up and say at a town hall meeting debating the proposal. Andrew thought his ideas were sometimes a little too radical, and fancied himself a bit of an eccentric, but these were positive qualities for a person to have as far as Andrew was concerned.
"People take themselves so seriously," Andrew thought, "they shouldn't, I don't and neither should they, the world would be better because of it. Was this universal advice for everyone, that people shouldn't take themselves seriously, or just applicable in our post-modern age where truth was dead and meaning non-existent? It would be a bit sad if our society was so decadent and affluent, yet also meaningless, that the best reaction was to not take yourself seriously."
Working title: First Few Amateurish Pages to a Loosely Auto-Biographical Epic About a Young Man Who Spends Too Much Time Thinking About His Emotions and Not Enough Time Acting On Them; Pretentious, I Know
Andrew was a white male, 18 years old. Lived in a small, old, prairie town among other old prairie towns, some a little bigger, some a little smaller. The kind of towns where the population reached its peak in the 1920's or '30's and ever since were slowly sinking back into the the corn fields and river valleys that once created these places. Some of these towns were already dead and their rotting skeletons stuck out all over the place against the flat landscape. If you drove around a little and got lost, you'd find these dead towns. Their graves are marked with rusted water towers. The streets are potholed and big oak and maple trees are slowly reclaiming the sidewalks. Each dead town has one big, brick building, a school, with boarded up windows and chain locked doors. Inside is nothing but dust, dust upon dust upon dust. On side streets sit old, and once grand, houses with fading paint and the trim falling off. Main street has a few storefronts, but no stores, and the plate glass windows are covered with yellowed newspapers, the date on the newspaper marks the death of the town.
Andrew didn't live in one of these dead towns, no one did, but he lived near a few of them and sometimes he stumbled upon one while on one of his drives. The drive is to the country what the stroll is to the city. Drives have destinations, but they are vague and by no means fixed. On the prairie the landscape is marked by consistency: endless rows of corn and soybeans, the occasional silhouette of a tree line, a sprinkling of grain silos and barns. If you walk the prairie, you're always in the same place. If you drive the prairie, you're still always in the same place, but there's the comforting notion of swift movement: cool summer air in your face, static rows of corn turn to flowing waves of corn, and rubber on road at 60 mph.
Drives were the only reason people ever found themselves in dead towns, otherwise, there was never any need to visit them. Kind of like old cemeteries, where no living people knew any of the deceased anymore, so the graves were only visited by curious passers-by. Sometimes Andrew would pass by another car in one of these dead towns and they'd look at each other suspiciously. Neither of them had any more of a reason to be there than the other, they were both just on a drive, but they'd still look at each other suspiciously. What are you doing in this town? Who do you know here? Neither of them was doing anything in the town, meditating maybe, there was nothing else to do. Neither of them knew anyone in the town, themselves maybe, there was no one else to know.
Drives are not an activity that inspire solidarity. Other cars on the road are viewed as a nuisance, not fellow drive enthusiasts. Communication between drivers is carefully mediated by a few spartan knobs and buttons on the dashboard. This is a good thing, though. Drives are not about communication between individuals, but about communication within an individual. Driving in the country is very meditative and comes highly recommended by Andrew.
Eyes fixed on the horizon. Right foot off the gas pedal (cruise control is on) and resting just above the brake in case of a red fox or white-tailed deer. Hands on the wheel keeping the car between the lines, not so hard a task with roads as straight as they are in farm country. For Andrew this coordination isn't second nature, it's first nature, like a beating heart or breathing, he doesn't even have to think about it. It is an activity that requires so little thought from Andrew, but it is also an activity that is defined by thought. The same road over and over again, no matter which direction you turn, is a release for Andrew and his mind. Freed from the worries and preoccupations of grounded life, rubber on road at 60 mph allows Andrew uninterrupted time for reflection and meditation, things people don't get enough of these days, Andrew thinks.
Andrew doesn't think, "I'm going for a drive to meditate and reflect on my life", he thinks, "I need to get outta here", and he does, takes one of the old roads that go out of Andrew's town in all directions.
In an exercise in meta-driving Andrew thought, "People who live in the suburbs and cities don't know what driving is all about. It's just a commute in rush hour traffic for them." Andrew thought driving should be a time for careful thought, for calm, for relaxation. He had driven in busy city traffic before and cringed every time he heard a car horn; it was not the kind of driving he was used to. "Why do so many people in the city use car horns so often?" Andrew thought. "They aren't that effective, and one beep's always bound to be followed by a barrage of others from nearby cars. People make their lives so miserable." Andrew was mature in this aspect, knew that the horn's effectiveness was made possible by discretion in its use. He had only used his twice, once when someone was about to merge into him and once when a car sat through a whole green light and was about to sit through another. Sometimes Andrew would press on his car horn if there wasn't anyone around him and he had forgotten what his horn sounded like, but these times didn't count. Even in really heavy traffic, Andrew didn't think many situations called for its use. "Manufacturers should make car horns sound really funny, like a clown car, so people would be embarrassed to use them as often as they do. Even if people did use them a lot, the hilarity of the situation would mitigate and negative effects from excessive horn usage."
Andrew got a lot of good ideas like this while driving, but he forgot most of them and the ones he remembered would never go over well with the public. "Are you telling me my car horn's gonna sound like a slide whistle? How the hell is that supposed to be funny?! It'll just drive us all crazy!" a very distraught man with a beer gut wearing a non-ironic work shirt would stand up and say at a town hall meeting debating the proposal. Andrew thought his ideas were sometimes a little too radical, and fancied himself a bit of an eccentric, but these were positive qualities for a person to have as far as Andrew was concerned.
"People take themselves so seriously," Andrew thought, "they shouldn't, I don't and neither should they, the world would be better because of it. Was this universal advice for everyone, that people shouldn't take themselves seriously, or just applicable in our post-modern age where truth was dead and meaning non-existent? It would be a bit sad if our society was so decadent and affluent, yet also meaningless, that the best reaction was to not take yourself seriously."