the other side

Photo copyright 2000 Gazelle

Edisto River and wetlands, S. Carolina

"Disengaging the clutch, I lurch forward, one car's length closer to the border - one unit closer to a newer, less-monied world, where a different food chain carves its host landscape in alien ways I can scarcely comprehend. Once I cross that border, for example, automobile models will mysteriously end around the decidedly Texlahoman year of 1974, the year after which engine technologies became overcomplex and nontinkerable - uncannibalizable.
...I will find fences built of whalebones, chromed Toyota bumpers, and cactus spines woven into barbed wire. And down the town's deliriously white beaches there will be spare figures of street urchins, their faces obscured and overexposed by the brightness of the sun, hopelessly vending cakey ropes of false pearls and lobular chains of fool's gold."

Douglas Coupland, Generation X: Tales For An Accelerated Culture