Here in my Car
Three scenes from my Sunday driving:
I.
Pulling into the typically crowded Trader Joe's parking lot, I noticed the air seemed unusually hazy. Then I noticed the car on fire, at about time the fire truck pulled up. No visible flames, but oily brownish-gray smoke seeping from under the hood, through the doors, and any other seams between the body panels. Lots of people were standing about on the sidewalk staring, watching the firemen go swiftly about their business (they had their masks on and everything, pulled out the hose on the truck, etc. Exactly what you'd expect, but you don't see it in action very often). It strikes me as funny how people just stand and watch that sort of thing; it reminded me of seeing a hawk kill and pluck a pigeon once on the Cut in the middle of Carnegie Mellon's campus, which bystanders also paused to watch with a perverse sort of fascination. A silver lining: Despite the Sunday afternoon crush of TJ's shoppers, parking in the immediate vicinity of the burning car was relatively ample.
II.
There's a ligament of highway that connects the eastbound Dulles Toll Road with I-66. On the left shoulder close to the merge point there's a roadkilled mammal of indeterminate species that's been sitting there for several weeks. When it was fresh I thought it looked a lot like a possum, though it's looked progressively less like a possum ever since, at this point reduced to a greasy black packet of skin with one lurid white streak of exposed bone (I think the jaw, but who knows). Since my afternoon commute follows this route I see it most days. Sometimes it strikes me as a baroque detail artfully added to my drive home from work to remind me of my own mortality, like the flies hanging around the fruit bowl in old Dutch masters' still life paintings. Sometimes I just wish the county would clean up the roadkilled animals more quickly, rather than leaving them to decay.
III.
On I-66 I saw a woman, probably in her mid-sixties, driving a sedan with the vanity license plate MY2PAPS. I cannot interpret this in a way I'm entirely comfortable with.
I.
Pulling into the typically crowded Trader Joe's parking lot, I noticed the air seemed unusually hazy. Then I noticed the car on fire, at about time the fire truck pulled up. No visible flames, but oily brownish-gray smoke seeping from under the hood, through the doors, and any other seams between the body panels. Lots of people were standing about on the sidewalk staring, watching the firemen go swiftly about their business (they had their masks on and everything, pulled out the hose on the truck, etc. Exactly what you'd expect, but you don't see it in action very often). It strikes me as funny how people just stand and watch that sort of thing; it reminded me of seeing a hawk kill and pluck a pigeon once on the Cut in the middle of Carnegie Mellon's campus, which bystanders also paused to watch with a perverse sort of fascination. A silver lining: Despite the Sunday afternoon crush of TJ's shoppers, parking in the immediate vicinity of the burning car was relatively ample.
II.
There's a ligament of highway that connects the eastbound Dulles Toll Road with I-66. On the left shoulder close to the merge point there's a roadkilled mammal of indeterminate species that's been sitting there for several weeks. When it was fresh I thought it looked a lot like a possum, though it's looked progressively less like a possum ever since, at this point reduced to a greasy black packet of skin with one lurid white streak of exposed bone (I think the jaw, but who knows). Since my afternoon commute follows this route I see it most days. Sometimes it strikes me as a baroque detail artfully added to my drive home from work to remind me of my own mortality, like the flies hanging around the fruit bowl in old Dutch masters' still life paintings. Sometimes I just wish the county would clean up the roadkilled animals more quickly, rather than leaving them to decay.
III.
On I-66 I saw a woman, probably in her mid-sixties, driving a sedan with the vanity license plate MY2PAPS. I cannot interpret this in a way I'm entirely comfortable with.
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