Parking Protocol

Chalk it up to lack of consideration. When I park at the bottom of the hill, I always park in the same spot, I back in, and nose up to a little earth berm that may or may not be natural. My emergency break doesn't work. Walked down the hill, this morning. Light rain, a clean earthy smell welling from the hollow, and when I get below the curve I see that a car is parked behind me. This has never happened before, a car tight behind me, I assume someone visiting B for the night. When I get to the vehicles I see that the car is tight to my rear bumper. I mutter the word 'moron' with several expletives, consider walking back up the hill and rousting whoever it is, dismiss it as a bad idea. I put the truck in 4-wheel drive and climb the berm as far as I can and gain maybe 18 inches, then do a 25 point turn and manage to worm myself free. Pass a State Trooper on Route 52, my way into town, and think nothing of it. I never speed, ask anyone who's ever been in the car with me, I'm a careful driver. The cop does a U-turn and follows me for a mile before he turns on his flashers and pulls me over. I know I haven't done anything, but maybe I have a taillight out or something. The speed limit is 55 on 52 with one small section where it drops to 45, I actually have a marker, a house on the left, where I take my foot of the gas to slow for the slower zone; usually have to stop for the light at the West Side schools, then the speed limit is again 55. The cop stops me a half-mile after that, flags me for going 57 in a 45 zone. He clearly doesn't know that the speed limit increases after the school. I point this out to him and he thinks I'm being a smartass, so he writes me a ticket. Fucking assholes, I swear. $100 that I really can't spare, and I don't want to spar with a State Patrol officer in a funny hat. D is amused by my morning so far, when we go for coffee. A food event at the museum, a good jazz group, last night, so we put away some tables and chairs, and I spend some time in the kitchen, mostly gathering trash and hauling it away. The janitor's lot. After lunch D and I discuss logistics, the shows upcoming and what needs to move where. Rules of engagement. Someone with bumper-stickers stops in the middle of the road, they can't make up their mind which way to go, I consider my horn, but have never used it and see no reason to start now; so I stop the truck, walk up and ask if there's a problem. They're at the wrong lake, I give them directions. Chaos is a fact of life, things break down, you look for meaning, it's never there. That should tell you something. All the leaves are curled against the wind, that tells me that the wind is blowing. I'm a rocket scientist, in one of those previous lives. Was Dyson or Benjamin the best mind of my generation? I don't know, torn, actually, because I want to understand myself, and how someone else responded might not be germane; confusion becomes a tool; I didn't see at the time, the way you could manipulate what we thought we saw. I've always been suspect of what I thought I saw, now I'm down-right leery.