The Juggernaut of the Apocalypse

Traffic is something I don't have to worry about on a daily basis anymore; not that it was ever that bad around here, anyway. I remember sitting on the beltway around D.C. for three hours one morning on the way to Monticello, and I inched along for an hour and a half on one stretch of road when we drove to South Carolina this summer, but I've certainly never experienced anything like the 11-day traffic jam they had in China last week.

The hours I spend behind the wheel have gone from onerous to almost non-existent this fall, with Walker no longer in "traveling soccer" and me no longer commuting two days a week. I think it's got to be better for my stress level, despite the drawbacks of underemployment, to not have to wear "the face of anyone stuck in traffic" as described in this poem by Jim Powell:

The Juggernaut of the Apocalypse

Rush hour backed up bumper to bumper in all directions
spewing carcinogenic petrochemical smog
the drivers and the driven
bent to the wheel, stalled in toxic buyproducts,
everyone hunched facing the same way:

when the juggernaut of the apocalypse
reaches the brink of the abyss and starts over
in our relentless progress
about to plummet to the final crash
eyes averted in the rearview mirror

the ecocidal maniac behind the wheel
wearing the face of anyone stuck in traffic, fuming,
wrinkles of resentment
from a lifetime of biting back sharp words
pinched down tight at the corners of the mouth

meaning to get ahead at any cost and not
let anyone in, protected by
a blank look like a mask
as if it were the car that drives itself
through the streets of a city already dead.

The image of the car that drives itself is not too far removed from how I look at other peoples' cars. When I first moved to this rural area, friends would say "I passed you on the road and waved, but you didn't wave back" and I would say "oh, I don't look INSIDE other cars." The truth is, I still don't; but now I know what kinds of cars my friends drive and have memorized their license plates for good measure.

You can take the ecocidal maniac off the road, I guess, but you can't change her habits entirely. As George Carlin has pointed out, a maniac is anyone who drives faster than you...or who would like to.