thunder-trunk

Supposedly the speed limit on the Florda interstate is 70, and a person should pass on the left. But really now, 80 is soooo slow and the fishes pass wherever they feel like it, especially around Daytona Beach where a little BMW like me is navigating all manner of vehicles and pods of bikers. Stately old Goldwings and bedazzling Harleys are interspersed with the occasional lucky man with a little lady “2-up” behind him. And then at 130 mph come the rocket-propelled waspy ones threading tight spaces between the moving cars. One of them just about kissed my nose as he passed-

I'm in my Mam's old car for this trip. My brother borrowed in when he went to college and made some modifications. Like a blacklight. And apparently he was dissatisfied with the speakers so he replaced them. I open up the trunk to discover this:

so I'm flipping through the radio for good hip hop. Nhhh.. bla. Great salsa!... I revert to my favorite brazilians and bounce my way up north... the long-lost low end shuddering up from behind me like a good thunderstorm. You can imagine how hard it was to keep a lid on the speedometer as I turned onto the blue ridge parkway and plugged in the ragga jungle. There I was, remembering the same curves I had turned for a few summers ago, but now instead of a 4x4 pickup beast, I was at the helm of an ultimate driving machine. I slipped into zen mode: slow, controlled turns of the wheel, focussed anticipation of brake and gas, the rythmn of the road like that of a great ski run- sun through the bare trees like a bar code before me. Register. Contact. This is real.

It's good to get out and interact with the machine of Amerika every once in a while. The part that produces 8 0z bottles of water for Delta Airlines that doesn't recycle. The Amerika that doesn't give good health care to our returning vets, but does supply them with stuffed animals of disney characters. They should make prozac pez dispensers with stupid mickey mouse. Even when a person is paying attention to the world, one can never have too vivid of an illustration. It is written in the ads for gospel emblasoned on the side of a huge red Hummer, and the blood diamonds (“for your loved one”) for sale on the hip hop station.

Now I am sitting in Silvie Granatelli's new kitchen. Pots on display everywhere. Ferguson in one corner and Ron Meyers opposite (the rape of europa). She and her friend are having a conversation that moves like the waspy bikes. She sits on the counter and kicks her foot, her friend has three olives in her martini. I am “with my people”. Soon I will be at Penland and I hope that among all the millions of things to do, that I can keep up with this journal... I am very excited. I've been sleeping up for this time period.

On this blog, my dear readers, you will find ramblings about the intersection of claylife values with plasticlife values. I intend to be informative to my peeps who want technical info about our upcoming experiments and my ongoing firings in Portland. But I also travel a lot, I enjoy writing, and I wind up in some good adventures, so I'll share those fit for public consumption. I'll probably get on small tirades about things like bottled water but I won't be writing essays. I'd love to read your comments! If you have questions or ideas for my class, please write them up- we're going to have a fry oil rodeo and I think anything goes.

Much love to all! Careen