The Building on the Freeway, True Story http://www.alansondheim.org/thetrees3.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/thetrees2.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/thetrees1.jpg Do you ever feel you've outworn your welcome on this planet? That your time has come and gone? The trees do and the trees did. They were speaking to me and that's what they said. Not about the trees, about the rest of us. We were returning yesterday from Amherst, visiting Adam Tobin and his bookstore. It was around 12:30 in the afternoon. We were on Interstate 90, crossing Massachusetts. What occurred was only a state or configuration - two escort cars, one before and one behind, lights flashing; four police cruisers, lights flashing; and a large truck pulling a trailer with a fairly large 1 1/2 story building on it. Moving buildings isn't all that unusual - what is unusual, is moving them, along with the escort cars and cruisers, in the fast lane, in heavy traffic, at 82 clocked miles per hour, the house heading fairly often into the median strip where the trailer kicked up what seemed at times a tsunami of dust and garbage into the other lines. What's unusual about this? Most house moving occurs in the off hours; most isn't done at 82 mph; most occurs in the slow lane; most doesn't have four police cruisers surrounding it. Why the hurry? Why the fast lane? The rest of us followed in the middle lane; at times we were next to the house. It got more interesting when we had to pass another truck - this time moving a huge piece of machinery, fairly slowly - in the right-hand lane where the house should have been. There was chaos of course. What was fascinating as well was the steady-state of this high-speed configuration; we were in this situation for about a half-hour (having of course passed the slow-moving machinery); nothing changed - the careening building, the escort vehicles, the four cruisers, the rest of the traffic confused and trying to con/figure out what was going on and how to pass (we never did; eventually we turned south at the Worcester exit). And we never took photos or video - too worried about the drive east. Instead we were left with questions: Why move this building in the daytime around 12-1 p.m.? Why move it in the fast lane? Why the large escort? Why move it around 82 miles an hour? Why was it constantly careening into the median strip? Why was this legal in any way? What was in the building (it was wrapped in white plastic)? Why endanger everyone on Interstate 90? Where was it from (like the rest of us)? Where was it going (like the rest of us)? By the time we returned to our place in Providence, we were in a state of bizarre exhaustion and nervousness. And the question still haunts us, and will haunt us for the rest of our lives: Why 82 miles an hour? Was the house fleeing, along with the troopers and the escort? If so, what was it feeling? What? (As far as the trees? We were in a motel the night before; I was using an older Sony camera that was giving out; the trees made it shudder; the camera made the trees shudder; together they seemed to warn us: Beware of the house on the move on the morrow: Beware!) +++ _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
