May 29, 2020Heading west on US Highway 56 across Kansas in June. People complain about boredom while slogging across Kansas in June, or any other month for that matter. But they’re all slogging on Interstate 70, where mile markers drip across the landscape and all you think about is the next mile marker and when are we going to get there and why is it so flat, as if hills would shorten the trip, as if short is inherently good.
Out here on Highway 56, though, nobody complains, partly because nobody’s out here, and partly because the dome of your head replicates the dome of the prairie sky, and you don’t think about when are we going to get there because you’re already here. And since you’re already here you can wonder about, well, anything, and your eyes land on degrees Fahrenheit, posted on the dashboard. It’s 82˚, and you’re cruising at 88 m.p.h. – nobody’s out here, so nobody cares – and you ease up to 82.
Matching temperature to speed. A new harmonic convergence. You hold steady at 82 and while motoring down the straightaway, in honor of how utterly amazing is this convergence, you snap a photo of the dashboard: 82˚@ 82 m.p.h. Cool. And by the way, don’t try this at home. But of course, you can’t.
An entire collection of speed/temperature harmonic convergence photographs, now that is collection worth collecting. A speed/temperature sequence from zero to one hundred, with a snapshot of each. All across North America, which includes El Salvador by the way.
It’s supposed to get up to ninety this afternoon. Up next: 83˚. Gonna pay attention and collect harmonic convergence images 83˚, 88˚, 89˚, 90˚. Maybe the in between numbers will collect in Nebraska. Or Colorado. Who wouldn’t want to collect convergences in Colorado?
“Pay attention.” Now there’s a turn of phrase. Pay? Like it costs? Hah! Attention pays you. And what does it cost? The question is actually how much does it cost to not pay attention?
It’s still eighty-two degrees.
You look around. You pay some attention, so to speak, to the land and the sky and the motion and the bituminous blur right below your window. Where is attention when it’s not paying you and you’re not paying it? Where does attention come from anyway?
You look around some more. That’s a good question about where does attention come from.
Perched on a comfortable chair with lumbar support in a solid cabin with conditioned air while a continent reels by at, whoa, ninety-one miles an hour! Ninety-one miles an hour on a throne, chillin’ in the heat. No stage coach rider in the past million years of this human race has enjoyed such a miracle until one geologic moment ago.
You look at the sky again. The dome of the sky. The dome of your head. That’s where attention comes from. One or the other. Dome or dome, your call. Seriously, though, where does attention come from?
Proven fact: drivers burn more calories than passengers. Theoretical corollary: attention consumes energy, and energy wants to burn. Burn like gasoline, transmogrifying con mucho gusto at a rate of 2,100 explosions a minute and propelling your cushy capsule at ninety miles an hour across the prairie. Internal combustion yields external locomotion.
All that gasoline, all that petroleum. Cubic miles of potential energy, so lavish as to manufacture a lavish two ton vehicle and propel this joy ride across a continent at high speed. Thanks, petroleum!
These vast reserves of underground energy have borne miracles we pay for and complain about, like flying across oceans in half a day. And then we have the unintended consequences of sucking raw energy out of the ground and flying around on it like it’s the magic carpet of medieval fantasy. But jeez, we never meant to ruin the air and the planet and crap like that. We were just having fun zooming all over the place and either spending money or making it and wishing we had more.
Is attention separate from the universe? Is petroleum separate from the universe? No, petroleum is part of the universe. If you were the universe, what would you do with all that raw energy underground?
You look at the dashboard. Wait! Hold the phone! Look what’s happening!
On impulse, you let the windows down. Wind churns through your capsule like a neurotic weather system. The wind roars and merges with the roar of the tires scrubbing the rugged country macadam. All that rampant aural energy merely echoes the mighty conversion of raw material into raw speed.
Raw energy of the universe through the sluice of human invention, wow, that’s what’s getting you where you’re going even though you’re already here.
You seek a quieter, slower, cooler harmonic convergence at which to ponder how these threads of attention and energy and locomotion fit together. On impulse – again – you turn right on U.S. Highway 83 and head north, imagining that the Sand Hills of Nebraska might provide some answers.
