journal features

a day for car crashes

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Toronto, 1999.10.25

I witnessed a car crash on Yonge Street today. A Pontiac shitbox rear-ended a Contour. The former seemed to notice the stopped cars in front of it only three meters away. I happened to be looking in that direction while I was averting my eyes from the gaze of a passing street crazy.

On the way back from Richmond Hills, where Sara traded in Alice for a New Beetle (we're calling her Miranda), we noticed a car wrapped around a tree on an island in the Queensway. There were two cop cars on site, and two pedestrians leaving the site heading north on Parkside. The male half thereof checking back over his shoulder, looking pissed off. The cops were closing in on the pedestrians as we lost sight of the affair. On the way up Parkside, we saw several cop cars and two ambulances. Then we saw two tow trucks racing down Parkside. As we waited at the light, the tow truck that was second in line coming the other way pulled out into our lane, and passed the first truck - through a red light.

rand()m quote

Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.

—T.S. Eliot