the sadness of speed limits
Yesterday, I watched the “el” go by the window. I was instantly depressed. It lumbered on. I noticed the tracks were laid on concrete pilings. The other night I saw the ghost train. It crept up the track, all its lights out- rolled right through the stations. I recall the gravel trains from last summer that would clank across, pulling a generator barking on the flat tool car. I can’t stand riding the “el”. Every boarding renews the disappointment, you enter wearing its frown. It shakes from going so slow; it rattles itself to pieces in sluggish exasperation.
Clear the line. One train, 10 cars, what can it do- top it out; upgrade, let’s go! But no, it’s good enough, meets most needs of the community- humf. It’s depressing somehow to see it so; once I did see a fast one, but not since. It’s draining to have contact with things that run so far under their potential; and I am forced simply to appreciate that they work at all.
You wouldn’t think if you were at college and took the time to look up at an enormous mobile hanging through three floors of the Student Union building, that there of all places you would discover a sign of degrading potential. The mobile is large, as I said, hung over the academic crib; yet swing freely it can not. Its upper two arms can’t make a complete rotation. They nudge there against the painted drywall in little dark dents. And on the third floor they have wired it so it won’t swing onto the balcony where students study at tables (especially since the library fire). It’s a bound mobile, limp like a dead kite. You can tell how much thought went into that.
l a-ro
-Ojo del fantasma; right on, I started cooking up a response of sorts, but the words would not cooperate. It’s difficult to use relativity to take a swipe at reason's key feature- abstraction; that is, the ability to contemplate a model of reality; because in that moment we have entered the supernatural (which seeks an orientation to the myth of a universal), quite the opposite of reason’s goodwill spin; yet, the sensation is curiously grounding.
Clear the line. One train, 10 cars, what can it do- top it out; upgrade, let’s go! But no, it’s good enough, meets most needs of the community- humf. It’s depressing somehow to see it so; once I did see a fast one, but not since. It’s draining to have contact with things that run so far under their potential; and I am forced simply to appreciate that they work at all.
You wouldn’t think if you were at college and took the time to look up at an enormous mobile hanging through three floors of the Student Union building, that there of all places you would discover a sign of degrading potential. The mobile is large, as I said, hung over the academic crib; yet swing freely it can not. Its upper two arms can’t make a complete rotation. They nudge there against the painted drywall in little dark dents. And on the third floor they have wired it so it won’t swing onto the balcony where students study at tables (especially since the library fire). It’s a bound mobile, limp like a dead kite. You can tell how much thought went into that.
l a-ro
-Ojo del fantasma; right on, I started cooking up a response of sorts, but the words would not cooperate. It’s difficult to use relativity to take a swipe at reason's key feature- abstraction; that is, the ability to contemplate a model of reality; because in that moment we have entered the supernatural (which seeks an orientation to the myth of a universal), quite the opposite of reason’s goodwill spin; yet, the sensation is curiously grounding.
posted by friars | Thursday, December 15, 2005
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