Friday Night Breaklight Violations
On this day in 1953, my grandparents met at a country ball. We know the date because my grandmother wrote it in her journal:
“11/4/53 Met Hunter Johnston at the ball… Mabel Eames wore the most frightening green velvet… my feet are sore from dancing… it was simply too awful to hear about Anne Smith’s cousin… autumn makes maples turn their leaves like coquettes playing with fans… Hunter Johnston dances very well, though I find him rather too forward… I am considering a perm… it certainly would be nice to sit at my window and be serenaded by a gentleman with a guitar, so that I may drop rose petals and other tokens of my gratitude but not affection upon his head… Father sneezed at supper, and headbutted the mashed potato. It was simply too merry-making!… I really should take dancing lessons, as Mother suggested so often in the spring… I am so glad I am not Mary Welsh… I certainly am looking forward to next weekend, looking forward to it already. A week can seem so interminably long… in Zaragoza the men use olive oil for brilliantine…" etc.
My grandfather also registered the onrush of fate, but he registered it in a more boyish way: he raced his best friend home from the ball in their cars down a dirt road in reverse. He felt the shapes of the future leaping about in his belly, and he found no more rational way to express his joy than by speeding backwards through the moonlight. The night entered the folklore of several families, and generations have descended from those two bright dancers.
Of course today it would all be illegal. My grandfather would receive nine fines for driving offences, and certainly lose his licence. No doubt his tail-light was out. He would be reported anonymously to the Gender Board for being too forward with his dancing, and I imagine he lit a cigarette or two inside the hall. The cakes and pastries would offend the standards of the Health and Safety Police, the ball would end at 11pm due to lock-out laws and noise complaints, the police would come to hurry along the loitering youngsters on the street. My grandparents would pass each other like ships in the night on Tinder, swipe left due to too many freckles or a misplaced curl, and I would never have been born.
On Friday the sun came out in North Queensland, and I went for a bicycle ride to the shops. My girlfriend was coming home that day from giving a long meditation retreat, and I was going to surprise her with our cat, whom a friend had returned to us after taking care of her last year when we were overseas. The sun was out, the air was full of green and plenty. There was light in my eyes and breeze in my hair. I had neglected to wear a helmet. Lights flashed behind me.
At last count, 10% of the population of Mission Beach works for either the traffic police, the OH&S Executors, the Gestapo, or the Constabulary. We have one roving speed camera for every day of the week. In the last decade, there have been six reported crimes in our town, all of which remain unsolved. If you ask the police to help you with a broken car window or a missing length of garden hose, they will refer you to the Transit Authority in Brisbane. They are an indolent, obese bunch who refuse to do anything that requires them to leave the air-conditioning. Their days follow a simple routine: arrive at work 10am, harvest traffic fines from the speedtraps laid overnight; coffee break 11am, administer parking fines; lunch 12pm, nap; 2pm-3pm paperwork; 3pm afternoon drive, looking for broken tail-lights, etc; coffee break 3:30pm, try to catch someone smoking indoors; leave work 4pm, drive the patrol car along the beach searching for illicit picnicking; 5pm lurk outside the pub with a speed gun and breathaliser.
Fool that I am, I let my jaunt to Woolworths coincide with the 11am police coffee run. I was summarily swept to the side of the road. My name was demanded, my surname, my address, my age and gender. The officer in the passenger’s seat gave me a brief but extremely patronising lecture about how he takes a bike ride each morning wearing a helmet and sunscreen, does not eat carbohydrates at dinner, restricts his screen time after 9pm, flosses, etc. He then recited the State statutes about bareheaded riding. He farted briefly, excused himself to his colleague, took a sip of chocolate milk, and proceeded to tell me how a man my age really ought to know better, terribly irresponsible, starving children in Africa, etc, etc. By this time he was quite hot and flustered from having his window down for so long and ventilating at such length about his moral accomplishments; in addition, he was peckish. He could not be bothered to write me a ticket, and besides it was time for his muffin, so I was let off with a formal warning and a haughty glower. The patrol car drove off briskly towards Gloria Jeans; through the window I was admonished to “stay safe.” My heart beat-skipped-thumped, I felt my fists fisting, I could have slapped the sausage roll across his blotchy face. I heard my guru’s voice telling me to absorb it all in the heart, and that was my saving grace. “Stay safe,” he said! What a soggy twit!
It is a terribly unsafe thing to be human. We exist in a state of perpetual risk. To live at all is to chance everything; we offer our whole lives up with every breath we take. Seen in its proper perspective, human life is a miracle shooting through heaven on a cool blue rock. But we are all too myopic to see anything in perspective. We look at the world from too close-up, and life seems terrifying . Charlie Chaplin said that “life is a tragedy in close-up, a comedy in long-shot.” The tighter we cling to our lives, the more miserable they are. If we let go, we fall, and we are free.
I do not encourage anyone to ride their bicycle without a helmet. By any measure, it is an unwise choice. But I insist that it is a choice, and each person should be allowed to make it. I remember speaking to an older person once about my generation’s relationship to the police. She said she found it shocking how antipathetic we all were to them. I told her that the police today was perhaps quite different to the police she grew up with. The police of the past concerned itself with laws: thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not hurt another without cause, thou shalt not deny another liberty, etc. The police of the past came from within a society, and upheld the laws of that society. But at some point a switch flicked, and the police of today impose alien rules onto society from above. Policing ceased to be about protecting certain fundamental rights, and became a process of restricting unsafe or unsavoury freedoms.
Almost all of my generation has fallen foul of the police. We are mostly good people, but we have all, at some point, been treated like criminals. I have one friend who almost went to jail for supplying a house party with LSD. Studies show that taking one hit of LSD reduces long-term anxiety and depression, increases physical and emotional health, increases creativity and vocational productivity, helps overcome addictions and obsessive thinking, induces a sense of connection and well-being, gives meaning and spiritual understanding. Science says that LSD, if not extremely beneficial, is at least not dangerous. A person who consciously and willingly takes LSD is certainly no menace to society.
The police disagreed. My friend was subjected to long and terrifying legal proceedings. People who refused to wear masks during COVID, or who ventured outdoors during curfew, were subjected to similar intimidation and brutality. A bunch of truckers had their bank accounts frozen for having the gall to disagree with the government. It is all starting to feel rather tight.
I recently heard an interesting analysis of Bill Gates’ philanthropic activities. Of course, Mr Gates has had some tremendous philanthropic successes, but he’s enjoyed some abysmal failures, too. For example, his Green Revolution in Africa has led to mass starvation and migration, and the Gates Foundation’s third-world roll-out of a Diptheria-Tetanus-Pertussis vaccine banned in all developed nations for being too dangerous continues until today. The one constant among the successes and failures is that Bill Gates always makes a profit: in the case of the Green Revolution, the profit came through his $23 billion stake in poison giant Monsanto; in the case of the DTP vaccine roll-out, it came through his stake in various pharmaceutical companies. If you want to understand someone’s real motivations, it is better to ignore their occasional failure and success, and instead look at what their actions always produce.
The same logic can be applied to the police. Who can tell if it is right or wrong for people to ride bikes without helmets? Who can say if life is better with or without lockout laws? Who can know if someone should try LSD? Who can judge if the world is improved by restrictions on bonfires on beaches? The one thing we can see clearly is that, with every new rule that restricts the freedom of the individual, the police gain a little power. They have more say in how people run their lives. They can stomp about and exert more authority . That seems to be the constant. Probably, then, it is the motivation.
Country Road
Lucía Verdejo
Lucía Verdejo Studio