[Janet Kenny]

Well I can top the lot of you. I got my licence just about two years ago. I had had a kicence in 1970 but let it lapse because I had a company car of my husband's and was terrified that I'd dent it--so I did--dent it--and I have always loved walking and looking and listening.

I rode a bicycle all my New Zealand childhood and adolescence. Bicycles are wonderful because you can smell the flowers and hear the birds.

I caught buses and the underground in London. I remember waiting, mini-skirted, in the snow for buses which never came. Often I had an appointment for an audition. As a polite New Zealander I would stand aside for the elderly and the lame and inevitably the entire queue would push past me and the full bus would drive away, leaving me standing at the bus stop.

I bought a second-hand yellow bicycle while working in Lewes and back in London I rode it from Putney, where I lived, to Knightsbridge where I loved to lean it against Harrods.

In Sydney I walked everywhere. That's how I got to know the birds and to understand the challengingly different structure of the plants.

My husband was ill a couple of years ago and finally I was forced to learn to drive. I had forgotten how. I got my licence and now drive and am enjoying it. I enjoy not being exhausted all the time. But I agree--it is not the way to feel the earth move. It is a lesser way to experience life. It has its good points but I feel I am less alive as I fail to hear birds and must miss light effects in order to concentrate on driving.

Beethoven believed that walking and creativity were inextricably linked and in my experience that is true. It has something to do with breathing and blood circulation and heightened senses.
Janet

PS: I just read Gregory's advice to live in Venice. Walking in Venice in early winter when most of the tourists have gone, is walking sublimely. I remember hearing so many great musicians rehearsing and canaries on windowsills starting to sing as their daily ray of sun caught them. I remember the constantly changing angles and light and glimpses of water up narrow lanes (calle--what is the plural?). The scents of cooking and the faces of other pedestrians. Walking is the human way to travel.

If not, take a boat.

---
Any nasty cracks about my poetry will be remembered and repaid in triplicate



[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited October 03, 2005).]

[Chris Childers]

What about poets who can't ride a bike? Have they made their way into conventional wisdom yet?

[Janet Kenny]

Chris,
All poets aspire to owning a bike.

Surely?
Janet

[Terese Coe]

Wendy, You and I should definitely take a car trip together one day. You're my kind of driver.

I confess I can barely remember any male freaking out while I was driving. (Except for the cops, that is, but they weren't inside the car.) Oh yes, the two French guys who drove cross-country with me in '69--they freaked out considerably. But they didn't really understand that once we got over the state line, everything would be copacetic and they wouldn't have to worry about the state police arresting all of us. It was just a speed trap.

And I have to admit, despite my customary supportiveness of other women who struggle against trivial convention, that it is the gentle sex who have been more likely to freak about my driving. Men can't bring themselves to show fear that way. Women may shoot me a dirty look when I back out of a driveway too quickly (they just didn't see me look in the rear view), or whatever. [Honestly, the truth is my radar or luck, whichever it was, held out for so long that I don't want to stress it any more. I've survived so many close calls I can hardly believe it myself. I'd prefer a horse for the city. The mounted police have them; why can't I?]

I defer to you as a horsewoman, dear wendy. Probably as a bicyclist too. I can't quite give in on the cars till I see you behind the wheel.

[Michael Cantor]

Bragging time. I have run with the lights on First Avenue (New York's Pamplona) from below 14th Street to the high Nineties - mid-afternoon - without catching one; I have made as many as fourteen (well, twelve greens, one yellow, and a sort-of-red) zipping downtown on Park Avenue late at night; I have lived and driven like a native in Mexico City and Sao Paulo. I'm good. If you want an entrant for a Seniors urban demolition derby, I'm your man.

On the other hand, I still don't have a book to my name. So maybe this proves the theory in reverse, and raises an interesting question. If I obey the speed limits, and stop changing lanes, will I get published?

Semi-related suggestion: possibly poets would be better drivers if they were to only drive vehicles with "poetical" names. Stay away things whose names are all numbers and initials, or tetosterone parades. None of this RSX300ES/GT, Dodge Magnum, Ford Eradicator or GMC Supra Dreadnought Mark II stuff. I can't find a perfect name for a poet's car, but Avalon and Esprit have possibilities. And I remember that, years back, Datsun (now Nissan) introduced something to the Japanese market called the Sunny Excellent. Left-hand drive, Hugh, so if one is still available, you can handle it in Scotland. And the name itself doubles as the first line of a haiku:

Sunny Excellent
scene on the Tokaido road
Hiroshige rocks

Michael Cantor

[David Anthony]

Wendy's right, of course.
Most women drivers around where I live will confirm that the main purpose of the rear view mirror is mascara application.
I'm seriously considering buying an Austin Seven Ruby Saloon, by the way. They were made between 1934 and 1939. You can get one in mint condition for about £6,500. Top speed's about 45mph, but they make a real statement:

http://www.austinsevenownersclub.com/

[David Anthony]

But Michael, you do have a book, a very excellent chapbook, and I have a copy.

[Mark Granier]

Avalon and Esprit have possibilities.

Ah yes, I can picture the kind of rarefied, shrink-proof violet who would go in for those kind of cultural advertisments, a true artiste-poète, one with a calling.

[Janet Kenny]

My brother once owned two 1930 something Belgian Minervas and a Stutz Bearcat. He can't write poetry.

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited October 03, 2005).]

[Terese Coe]

Michael, your post is a delight!

Do you mind, though, if I ask what system of numerology you're using? Is it Japanese?

Here are your numbers: say 98th Street ("high Nineties") to Tenth Street: 88 blocks? Out of 88 lights, making 14 "green" leaves, let's see, David? Are you there? Is that 74 red lights? Errr--hopefully you see my point. That would have taken an awfully long time! Not that I'm questioning your veritas, of course. It must have been some kind of Japanese typo.

(I didn't mean green leaves, of course, but green stoplights, oxymoronical as that may sound.)