Meter

Yesterday at lunchtime, I made a mad-dash to Busboys & Poets. Alas, I had no time to stay for a bite to eat or a cup of tea. I went there to pick-up a copy of Peter Barnes’ most recent book, of which, B&P still had signed copies.
As I passed the tragically ugly orange and brown gates at the U Street Metro Station, I justified the addition of the expense of the Metro ride as the cost of getting the autographed copy. It was also part of the consumer decision to favor a socially responsible business within my own community, rather than buying from Amazon, or Borders, or B&N.
It occurred to me as I walked at out-of-breath pace from the station, that the good people of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority had done me a favor by telling me how much my trip had cost me. They quantified the exact cost to me of each leg of my quick little trip. This is not a fact that is so conveniently delivered to me by my car.
With a car, it’s not merely the gasoline that drives the cost of the trip. That’s calculated easily enough, based upon the givens of gas mileage, trip distance, and fuel cost per gallon. The cost of car payments, muddied by depreciation, plus insurance makes for a messier (though still solvable) equation. Wheels started turning over the per-mile cost of my tax dollars in both highway subsidies and public transportation funds; over the cost of the tread on my tires versus tread on my shoes; on driving and later going to the gym, versus walking to and from the train station and taking care of transportation and exercise together. I put the snowballing apples-to-apples dollar-comparison of rail versus car on hold.
Instead, Al Gore’s disembodied voice asked me to consider this problem in light of carbon. I began to wonder if I should have the right to know how much carbon my car introduces into the air per mile, and how much my daily train ride or my periodic plane trip. Obviously, I’d be willing to pay something for that information.
The USDA makes recommendations about diet, and mandates that food producers let the consumer know what exactly is in each serving. Vendors baulked when USDA began working toward this program, and anyone who buys food in the US pays a little bit for it. Perhaps the DOE or EPA could make similar recommendations with respect to carbon emissions, and require vehicle manufacturers and providers of transportation services to make their carbon emissions conveniently publicly available. Informed consumers could then better drive the market toward sustainable business.

Mnemonic

Friday afternoon saw me returning to the office from a conference in Dupont Circle. This was before the wind and the rain that washed-away the oppressive heat. The humidity gave the avenues between the hotel and the metro a claustrophobic character and veiled the sky in a diffusive sand-colored glow. As the escalator took me over that rollercoaster angle at the top, a place other than the one right in front of me came into view. Lamp posts became impossibly green trees; brownstones, temples. The algae-covered concrete tube that conveys riders from the brightly-lit circle above to the dim underworld of trains and tunnels below was a cenote. It was, in fact, a particular cenote I had stood above a month before.
The cenotes are, in the most profane geological sense, the result of the action of moving water on the soluble limestone landscape of the Yucatan Peninsula. Ultimately, the water will leave behind an orotund shaft that reaches down to the groundwater level and far beyond. Convoluted networks of underground channels link one cenote to another, and some of these networks even open into the ocean. I've read that some cenotes, miles inland, contain water that tastes of sea salt.
The cenote I recalled at the station, the one within Chichen Itza, is a primitive thing indeed. A circular chasm two hundred feet across, you’d fall six stories from its rim before you got wet. Birds dive into it, but not as far as the opaque green water, while lizards hunt its vertical walls. It is one of those places where the fortress wall that separates the here and now from a harsh old metaphysics fades into a beaded curtain just out of reach. On the one side are sad domesticated men wearing brown knee-socks with sneakers and carrying camera bags, and on the other side, watching, is that primal thing that made building pyramids and cutting a person's still-beating heart from their chest a good idea.
That gaping maw descends not only into the intimate places of the Earth but well past the thin shell of my mind into an unlit vault within. I can only infer what resides there, the thinking layer of words and analysis buffered from it by the ascetic layer of dreams, and impressions, and memories half-remembered.
I thought about posting one of the pictures my wife or I took of the cenote, but that seems totally antithetical to what it is. Even writing about it is not quite right, the thing being described so far removed from the rational part of oneself that arranges letters into words. To understand the cenote I peered into, recall that evacuated state that you may have only experienced a few times, surrounding rage, lust, victory or defeat, or profound loss.
Places like this one connect the visitor to ideas and experiences that are otherwise outside the network of modern consciousness. The computer on the table in the coffee shop or on the desk in the office deny the observer important pieces of the experience.
Once connected by one’s own experience, these memories become entwined into the network in one’s head. From there, they flow unseen beneath the surface into otherwise inane activities, like walking to the train station.