returning to a little bit of form here, I stumbled into a little bit of defeatism in a conversation today with a friend. my friend has just started a new job in the city and commutes in from the far suburbs. the suburbs of another town, and if you were to look at a Gazateer, you'd see he's travelling from yellow grid to yellow grid. this commute royally sucks, I've done it. we're talking an hour, hour and a quarter, each way. I even did this commute in reverse for 8 weeks, and it sucked. commuting really sucks.
if you do this long enough, you begin to lift patterns from the contained chaos on the pavement. you know, if you're at this intersection at 7:15, you're fucked, but if you make it there by 7:13, you're golden. you learn the timing and sequencing of the lights. you even begin to look around while you are stopped, at a light, or waiting to merge onto the world's longest creeping parking lot. you might even recognize some of these same people, in these same cars, with these same uplifting bumper stickers, and perhaps the same balding head headed to work to pay for the college stuck on the rear window. and if you realize and recognize these patterns, and can identify the markers, you wind up sitting there, wondering about some things. if a single tap of the brakes six miles up the road can cause this backup, as has been shown in traffic study after traffic study, and you're on the road with these same folks day in and day out, stuck behind the same maroon rusting Honda Accord you've been seeing the past few months, only yesterday he was behind you, you have to wonder who is up the road six miles, with the itchy braking foot where the lanes merge, causing this mess? you have to wonder if they recognize their part in this everyday mess, and whether they realize that it is entirely their fault.
because it is.
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