In my days of commuting, the proscenium of the windshield was my daily theatre. You see a lot if you do it long enough. And it helps if the route you take is the same day after day. And it helps a lot if the landscape you travel through is one that people pay good money to see—the Robin Williams Tunnel, the view of the SF skyline, the GG Bridge…The monotony of a familiar scene allows the drift of the mind— and, when something out of the ordinary swings into view you take special notice. Like the time I swung past the Palace of Fine Arts on Doyle Drive during the destruction and rebuilding of the new road and saw a giant Lincoln Navigator (red) leap up onto the concrete traffic barricade like a bull in rut. It had hit the sloping abutment, leaped up to mount the barrier balanced and swaying. It was mythic—something about Zeus and his shenanigans with the naiads, all the while overseen by the friezes carved into the extravaganza of the remnant of the Columbian Exposition c. 1915. Wow! is right.

There were other moments: the shirtless, other-wise sharp dressed man; pressed slacks, shined shoes, built like a middle-weight in good shape, drops his suit coat in a rumpled heap. The light changes on Gough St.

Or the simplicity of a raven swinging into traffic to retrieve some morsel of road kill, pirouetting in a skillful 9.6 rated acrobatic act of animal deftness. I kept these moments in a notebook. I could write a book…Well, I did, and won an arts’ council grant for my trouble.

Lesson Six is simply keeping a window notebook. Anything will do (but I like Moleskine 5×9 plain paper in red for ease of finding in the piles). Keep it in the car, by the living room window, anywhere you find yourself gazing like ole’ Juan Gris. Some music playing is good. This is the handbook for lesson #698 in life the forthcoming essay collection: The Rumors of The Artist’s Mind.