Wednesday September 01, 2004

Decorating the past

Today was a slow driving day. Not that traffic was a problem - I was simply tired. Exhausted. No measurable sleep at all. It must be some type of automatic safety mechanism or something. That perhaps the distance traveled during the blinking of one's eye can be used as a measure of how much speed you are prepared to safely deal with. Your mind knows when you are in trouble.

Do you ever find yourself driving while tired, and your drive looks like a cartoon flipbook? The images start and stop in fits. Not very smooth in many places, where maybe several pages got stuck together. Not good! Pull over!

Even in my sleep-deprived stupor, I noticed something interesting today and started thinking. I had more time to think than usual, but I honestly don't think you will be able to tell by my writing of it here.

I was driving behind a car that had something hanging from its mirror. Now this is a really odd practice that I don't fully appreciate, I think. Given that I tend to think quite a lot about time, progress, and that I am opposed to going backwards if it can be helped, I am quite certain that I'm missing the entire point of these dangling artifacts around rearview mirrors.

Think about it. The mirror itself is for looking backward. Use it when going in reverse. Use it to observe a different angle of roadside trouble after you have passed it. Use it to verify that the car behind you is a police car and its lights are on. Or don't use it at all, in most cases I see.

The windshield is for looking forward. You simply have to do this for most of your driving activity, though it isn't always clear that this idea is being used to full extent by my road sharing companions. Use it to see trouble ahead and avoid that trouble. Watch the actions of other drivers. Plot a course to your destination safely in real time as you go. The windshield is very important.

The crap that people put around their mirrors - that is the thing I simply fail to understand. It is like a frame around the mirror. An attractive dressing for things past. Or perhaps an interesting decoration on the frame of your self portrait, should you have the mirror so adjusted.

At the same time these random items around the mirror celebrate things past - the things you past - the things behind you that likely offer no danger to you whatsoever, these decorations occlude the view of things you are traveling quickly towards. They block your view of things ahead of you, and decorate the things behind! Tell me we are not all going backwards! This sounds like exactly the opposite of what we need.

It gets more interesting when you consider the various things that people put on their mirrors.

What type of statement are we trying to convey with handcuffs attached to the mirror? Is that a veiled statement about public safety? Are there specific drivers that should feel compelled to offer such displays more than others? Is it perhaps a political statement of sorts? "I would vote, but I feel like my hands are tied"? Should I feel better when I see someone with handcuffs on their mirror? Perhaps something close to "glad to see you finally got those off - I was worried that they might affect your driving"? Honestly, this display really freaks me out.

Fuzzy dice are another item that people will adorn their mirrors with. As if to say if they arrive safely at their destination, they will feel lucky. That each manuever that they execute on the road is taking a chance. Good that they call attention to this in particular, because realize that they can't see in the forward direction as well as others. They really are lucky. Rabbit feet are another offering in this same category. To tell you the truth, I really feel unlucky driving around near these luck-hopeful people. That the chances they take are going to affect me in a most unlucky way. Mostly because they are depending on their luck and not their ability to actually see to make their driving decisions.

The mirror artifact that scares me the most, though, is the dreamcatcher.

Native Americans are said to believe that dreams are messages from the spirit world. The dreamcatcher is supposed to draw dreams to its webs. The good ones find their way through the hole in the center. The bad ones are caught and melted by the Sun. It's a filter. Apparently bad dreams are significantly larger than the good ones, and while that sounds like a bad thing, it does at least allow us to use a fairly simple contraption to weed them out. As much as I looked on the web, I couldn't find any cautions about enlarging the hole in the center or even lubricating the threads in your dreamcatcher such that the bad dreams could simply slip off without being melted. Those latent bad dreams could pile beneath where the dreamcatcher hangs, and eventually this might present a nasty tripping hazard at the very least.

But the scary part for me is that unfiltered dreams have apparently presented a problem for many of our fellow motorists. Such a problem were these dreams in fact, that these people were spurred into action, researched the problem, and found a technology that could help them, but only if the dreamcatcher is installed in close proximity to the place where they experience the bad dreams. Well, I certainly wouldn't want them to have a bad dream while driving near me. Maybe I'm selfish, but I don't really want them to have a good dream at that time either.

And given that the dreamcatcher is installed in the car, doesn't this sound backwards? If it really is a problem, wouldn't you want only the bad dreams to get through? When is the last time you woke up in a start with cold sweat all over you because you just had the best dream you have ever had? The bad dreams at least have a chance of waking you up!