on abandoning cars

Another Bucephalus has fallen victim to neglect, spendthrift, and procrastination. The car, a red Subaru Forester, the author's stout and loyal steed for the past 4 years, died in northern New Jersey on Saturday evening, something within it giving way with a sickening series of uncharacteristic crunching and groaning, screeching and banging. “At least $800 to repair what we think is wrong with it,” the woman at the repair shop told him once the mechanics had had a look at it on Monday morning. “But it could also be the water pump, or something else – we won't really know the total cost until we open it up and take a look inside.”

And so he consigned to the junk heap his faithful Sleipnir of night and fog, brave mount of a dark and fallen prince, choosing to wash his hands of it rather than invest more than the roughly $7000 already in. Bought out of necessity and a luxurious bauble stuck in the otherwise coarse and simple cloak of his life, his old friend will soon be torn apart, raided for parts, chopped, shopped, or simply put outside and left to rot. If he'd have had an extra $2000 lying around he might have had the recent ruptures repaired and a new serpentine belt installed; sacrifices must be made and expectations must be altered to reflect new realities, however, and, so, he'd signed the back of the car's title and put it in with the rest of Tuesday's mail. Requiescat in pacem, dear friend – you shall be missed.

His new mount, a gray and blue landshark-style bicycle that had sat under the front porch for nearly a decade, is once again working well: he has been riding it regularly for the past year. With new tires and brake pads fore and aft, fresh shifter cables, and rear spokes properly tuned, the velocipede allows him to go everywhere he needs to go around town and haul everything he might need to haul silently and without producing more exhaust than his own breath, more waste than that already gurgling in his guts. If he had but sold the car before it exploded, he might have recouped some of its value, but at least no one was injured when the automobile system failed, and he now has one less albatross dangling from his neck. At the end of the day, none can know what the Universe intends, and, so, the author accepts his new reality with a silent word of thanks to the shifting winds of Fortune for forcing him to make a difficult decision.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on the slave's chariot

Oh, how much we Americans suffer for our petty conveniences, and how terribly we abuse the Earth to maintain them. It is not entirely our fault, perhaps, that we lock ourselves in shiny metal boxes whose insides are constantly exploding – in part, our opinions have been shaped by a century of false intelligence that touts the benefits of the automobile and its socialist highway network while obfuscating the true cost of motor-vehicle ownership. Imagine someone today describing the car's negative effects – suburban sprawl, pollution, high maintenance costs, the alienation of the individual from society – and imagine your reaction. Would you jump for joy? Would you sign up at your local dealership in order to spend a year's salary on a combustion-driven steel battering-ram that is lined with miles of tiny wires and sensitive rubber hoses? Would you say, “Of course, Mr. Ford, Toyota-San, Herr Benz, of course I shall take on that second job so that I can drive to work, to school, to the store, to the post office, back to the store, to school a second time, perhaps to a publick-house, and then to my home?” If you are an clear-thinking and self-respecting American living today, your answer may not be the resounding Yes issued by previous generations.

One of the main reasons that we mere three hundred millions of Americans use more gasoline than billions of other people combined is that we have transformed our society into one that is wholly dependent on the automobile – we wantonly waste petroleum and wage war over oil because we choose to perpetuate self-enslavement to the notion that one's body can be moved around through space-time without expending much physical effort rather than to accommodate and promote the frugal and simple life of the bicyclist.

Compared to the slave-charioteer, the smog-rider knows how hard it is to move her body around, and that certain things take time, and that certain things take effort, and because she knows these things, she plans ahead and maintains time discipline while seeing to her own physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. By liberating herself from the artificial demands of a lumbering blunderbox filled with volatile chemicals, she keeps her soul free of sadness, discontent, and desire. By fixing her bicycle and keeping it road-worthy for an entire year for less cost than a single oil change, she spends her resources wisely. Her mouth, not a twisted metal pipe, is her exhaust port; her beating heart, not a cast-iron maze of tubes, is the motor that drags her across the phaltscape; her legs, not a row of oil-drenched, whirling plugs, are the pistons that turn the crank that sees her on her way.

The velocipedist, her heart buoyant and her soul aroused, lives the life of honest and healthy labor, while the car driver, that poor wretch sitting in his glass prison of perpetual payment, lives the life of one enslaved to the demands of a hardwood-accented beast. His mount of choice requires specialized and costly repairs, whereas the cyclist can pinpoint and fix problems easily and while on the go; his conveyance is the nation's problem, the bicycle, it's solution. Therefore, dear reader, please consider switching from a high-cost slave's chariot to a low-cost wire horse, and rejoice as your spirits, and your savings, rise.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit