Perigee: Publication for the Arts (Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Photograhy, Art)

It is a melancholy object to those of us who drive through this great and lovely county to observe the disquietude and disequilibrium of the faces of those who sit, or crawl, next to us on our marvelous freeway systems here in San Diego, to observe the disregard and dislike with application to our being of those in cars in close proximity to us on these highways, a dislike that is, in fact, no fault of their own. But my intention, as I shall reveal it to you, is not to suggest that we leave the freeways, the highways or the county altogether (as some suggest), or wait countless hours for a bus that takes us where it will, not where we will. My intention is to glorify not moving, to embrace stasis, to have no speed limits because we will not be moving by choice and with great delight.

To wit: The other day, as I was sitting in the usual gridlock on Interstate 5—something we are all sadly used to—it occurred to me that Cal Trans has it all wrong. We are told, by those of little brain, that we need to think outside the box on this one. I, on the other hand, propose that we stay in the box, a long and narrow one, and simply get it organized. We don’t need an additional eight lanes of freeway outside my bedroom, as CalTrans proposes. We need another approach, one that does not involve trains, buses, vans, those multi-person vehicles that no southern Californian—much less any San Diegan—would deign to ride in. We do know who we are: citizens who used to live in Paradise. And citizens who used to live in Paradise do not ride buses.

Just how do I propose to recreate Paradise on the freeways? Have you noticed the number of big rigs, those 18-wheel behemoths that move our life-blood of things and junk into and out of San Diego? Where were you a couple of years ago when the S-curve in the Del Mar area was under reconstruction and a big rig turned over, closing the freeway down all morning because its load—cans of mushroom soup—spilled across all of the lanes? And did you notice a few months later that another big rig, this time full of chickens, overturned on I-15 and dispersed chicken parts across the freeway, closing it down? Recently in Los Angeles, it was a big rig full of baby shoes. Another full of tires. Another full of construction materials. Sleeping bags recently closed down the numbers one and two lanes of 805. But the linchpin, the information that brought my thoughts together, came in the midst of all the reporting during the blackout on the east coast in August of 2003. Apparently the interstate system in Canada had, outside of Toronto, a series of barbecues along the freeway in case of an emergency, one assumes to keep people from freezing or starving. Is it not possible, then, to let there be food? To let there be everything we need for body and soul? Not just food but cooked, gourmet barbecue meals so one can if one is stuck because of gridlock or terrorist attacks or bombs or biological warfare—or simply needs to have an excuse to not reach an undesired destination.

I couple the above facts with a fight that we—my neighbors and I—have been having with Cal Trans for the past three years. It seems that Cal Trans, in its greater boxed, encased wisdom, wants to expand—and not just expand but double—I-5. The problem is that we live on I-5 and we do not relish the thought of big rigs rumbling through our bedrooms. Cal Trans, as you may imagine, is not receptive to innovative thought. To my mind and soon to yours, this proposed expansion is not thinking outside of the box. This is making the box obese: larded and blubbered, with the attendant elevated cholesterol levels and bad livers. Let us suggest, instead, long and lean boxes. Mean boxes. Boxes ready to evolve, ready for action.

Dear Readers: Listen up. I have a proposal, for which many advantages may be detailed, listed, enumerated. Embrace gridlock. Don’t fight the inevitable. Give in. Dance to the rhythm. Get down and lean. Be joyful. We will turn our freeways into avenues of joys and riches beyond compare.

To practical matters, mere details: The Marines will need to commandeer big rigs with barbecues, hibachis, charcoal, Weber grills, starter fluid, old pallets to be broken up. Any kind of fuel and some place to burn it. All controlled. The next item would be food: any trucks with food. We are all chefs of some sort, so the actual preparation of meals will become communal. We could have competitions, cookoffs. In addition, we will need to consider shelter. Get trucks from A-16 and REI and unload them. For entertainment? Look to the many musicians in the county who play infinite varieties of music. Actors will abound, giving us scenes from Shakespeare to Pinter to Beavis and Butthead. All free of charge because we will all be stuck on I-5 with nowhere to go. And think of the artists, all of the artists: visual artists, performance artists, canvasses, sculptures, Neptune on the Freeway. We will enroll artists to color our new environs in a way much more to our liking than the odd paintball splat (although the paintball splat is certainly more pleasant than miles of unremitting asphalt). The lanes will become canvasses, installation galleries, and we will assist the artists with their colors, with their dreams, bringing their visions into our reality. We will cover the lanes, ourselves, our cars, the shoulders, the billboards with color. Being stuck will no longer matter.