A Girl, a Dog, a Bike and a Car

A girl, a dog, a bike and a car, together beneath a smoky gray sky in the town of Petaluma, California. Both the girl and the dog are looking off to their left, which is the northern sky, right where those darker gray clouds are forming. Something is happening. Something is coming. Paint is cracking and chrome is starting to blister. The earth itself seems to be tipping over and that brown brick building feels like its going to slip right outside the frame. The car is standing still but that sliver jet, or whatever it's supposed to be on the hood, is screaming off into to some future we've still not arrived at. Perhaps those Detroit designers believed they could just will it to happen. The future. Speed. As if all we had to do was visualize it. Just like if you wear the skin of a mountain lion you'll gain his power and his strength. No matter how far we advance in our mastery over metals and electronics we're still suckers for sympathetic magic and anything shiny. But this was a special time for us humans, so we should be forgiven our hubris and our crazy dreams. We just mastered the atom and were already bound for space. The weight of something no longer seemed to matter any more; the mass of it. As long as it was streamlined it could be big. We could wield fire now and had interesting fuels. Why even worry about cost or corrosion? There is only one reality and that is the now. Now a young woman is sitting on bench baring her taut skin. Now a storm is brewing. Now the paint is drying like mud. Now the silver phallus promises endless tomorrows. Now the camera takes it all in and holds there forever, the reflected light of a local start collected and coded in a sequence of 0's and 1's. Even this, this blog, this collection of tiny lines and curves is a code and a symbol. Can you imagine when this hood shined like a wet tooth in the showroom window back when Ike, the vanquisher of Nazis and architect of the Interstates, was presiding over us poor numbed-out traumatized fools? We had no idea what was coming. Duck and cover and light up a Lucky because Billy, you're going to space where nobody ever, ever dies. Oh what a wonderful bubble that was, the days of Fonzie, poodle skirts and hula-hoops. Happy, happy, happy. Let's all go to the lob-by, to get our-selves some treats! You can still see the flicker of the Drive-In screen. John Wayne and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The phantom malts are hanging from the window and that rocket ship is still headed for space. But where are you going young lady? Is that your dog? Is that your bike? Might this even be your car?

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