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27 December, 1995 12:36:17 PM I just learned that my website is being "BLOCKED BY SURFWATCH," making it impossible for a group of my friends to see this page while they were in a Borders Bookstore in Northern Virginia. All I can think to say to Surfwatch is Fuck You, and I'll see you in the funny papers.
Been reading Ragtime. I like Doctorow. He writes good sentences.
Can't decide what to do today. May just sit here. Really need to go into midtown, much as I hate the crowds. Have to practice. My recital program for April is shaping up well.
Have decided to possibly forego another trip to San Francisco this year and opt instead for something less predictable. Not entirely certain about wherewhatwhyhow yet, but I think that travelling is best done before you get into domestic life and have young kids. I should maybe wait until "domestic life" is even a possibility before thinking like this. Whatever. I've never understood parents who wait until they have kids first before going on elaborate vacations to New York or the Grand Canyon. What the hell does a screaming 1-year-old care about these things? I always find it a lot more interesting to ask people not what they got for Christmas, but what they got for other people. Gift-giving is like passwords. Very revealing. I'm usually more happy or less happy about the things I gave others than about what I got.
What happened was we'd been on one side of a 2-lane highway for a very long time, and it had been really hard to pass anyone. In particular, I was directly behind this one car that seemed to be moving very slowly, and once we got behind it our cruising speed reached about 40 mph. So when we got near a city I made an effort to pass this car -- a rickety old stationwagon with an ass that sank to road under the weight of its passengers - the car was just packed with people, and for the 20 or so minutes in which we and a dozen other cars behind us paced ourselves behind the stationwagon nobody in there moved. I don't remember actually counting heads, but there would've been 7 or 8 people all together. Everyone in the car was black. I know there were 5 people in the back, and at least 2, but maybe 3 in the front. Anyway, none of this was too terribly unsettling. I mean you get stuck behind slow vehicles all the time, and how much of a difference does it ever really make in your traveltime? We got into a town (don't remember the name, but it was very tiny) where there was a 4-lane highway. When I changed lanes to try and pass the stationwagon, the driver suddenly stuck a red bandana out the window and flailed it wildly with his left arm. The driver kept looking straight ahead, and no one in that car moved or seemed to flinch in any way. I don't know if the flailing bandana was some kind of meaningful signal, but seeing it out there for some reason made me think that maybe I shouldn't pass right then. I hit the brakes and changed lanes again, falling back into line behind the stationwagon. At this, a large truck behind me changed lanes and prepared to pass the stationwagon, which was moving even more slowly than before. When the truck began passing the stationwagon, though, out came that bandana again, flailing just as madly as before. At this, the truckdriver hit the brakes, and over the next few minutes 3 or 4 other cars which had been behind me for such a long time tried also to pass the stationwagon, but all of them slowed when they saw the driver wave that stupid bandana out the window. Sometimes the car would jerk a little to one side while the driver was waving it around. If his signal had some kind of meaning, could any of the other drivers have understood it? I certainly don't know if the driver of the stationwagon was serious about something or not, or what I would have seen or what would have happened if I'd passed him -- and I've posted this story to over a dozen BBSes and told it to others several times more than that and no one seems to recognize his gesture as anything. Also, no one seems to think it's as weird as do I. I don't feel like I'm relating this very well, either. The stationwagon eventually turned and headed west, and I drove very speedily for several miles after that.
From my own experience, though, it's a lot like sitting in an airport in some strange city for hours and hours and just pouring out your entire life story to a complete stranger (who I think is using a fake name anyway). There's just no commitment, so there's no danger in telling someone like that absolutely everything. They're not going to put this information about you away in some part of their mind where they can remember to use it against you in a vulnerable moment.
Then they popped right back out.
What could I say to such important logic as that? I know I nodded furiously.
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