It took me a few years to understand the driving wasn’t just a way of getting around here, but a ritual deeply embedded in the culture. I think it happened when I noticed how many traffic-related metaphors I was hearing — there were several, but the one I remember most came from my acupuncturist, who compared the releasing of energy blockages to CHP towing a wreck out of a lane on the interstate.
So the other day we had what the news was calling a 30-year rain storm. I love how 18 hours of gentle rain qualifies as a storm. But of course, people don’t know how to drive in the rain, or they willfully forget, and then they go and kill themselves and others. Apparently there were 186 crashes on Wednesday morning, where on that day in the previous week there’d been 19. And this is all before 6 AM.
This is what the Pasadena Freeway looks like, at 5 m.p.h., two hours into your commute home from Venice (23 miles). Fun fact for a not fun night: this is the oldest freeway in the state of California, ca. 1940.
Tonight, on my drive down to REDCAT, I turned off at Stadium Way — not too far from the above picture, but in the opposite direction — to avoid the back up into downtown. There was some kind of police activity (I love this term; makes me think of coloring books and papier-mâché), and as I turned left at the end of the ramp I saw a tall man in a plaid shirt getting cuffed. All I can think of is: great. Just great. Even if the case is dismissed, they will miss work days which might get them fired, assuming they have a job, or even worse, if they are about to get one, that’s over, too. And besides, with a conviction, most people will be pretty stuck for the rest of their lives — often in a pattern of parole violations. Which then makes me think about California’s untenable prison situation.
Maybe mine is a cheap, fatalistic observation. Fine. I can’t help thinking that in most cases, it’s a true one. Sure, sure; who knows what this person’s story is. Maybe it’s the 20th time they’re getting arrested; they’re a deadbeat drug dealer rapist murderer. And yet I so often pass this kind of roadside theater and neglect to think twice.
What I do think about a lot these days is the kids I see at my job as an educator at a museum. We get an hour with up to ten of them, several times a week, and they come from all over the city. They are boys and girls, anywhere from first to 12th grade. Especially with the little ones, and the ones who come from lower income and recent immigrant families, I wonder about what the future has in store for them in this town. Even in the limited time we have with them, we come to understand something of their personalities, their perceptions of the world and their own curiosity. Children grow like plants. You wonder what is in the water.