The Journal of A Perimeter Man Vol. II, Motor Zen

Driving a taxi, at least in San Francisco, is an ongoing experiment in self discovery. It is an eccentric job that offers very wide parameters. It gives the driver lots of leeway. It gives him the freedom to re-invent, re-imagine (or destroy!) himself every day. He spends perhaps sixty seconds with an authority figure receiving the waybill and small metal taxi medallion like some sort of unholy communion wafer, and then he is out on the streets, on his own--FREE! No boss, no supervisor, no one to tell him what to do. If he doesn't want to work, he doesn't have to. But remember that this also means that no one cares what he does. It is a two edged sword. He can end up drunk every day, (many do), behind in his rent, and suffering terribly from the lack of ego-stroking that goes on in most normal lines of employment. In order to survive and thrive in this sort of work environment, one has to have a very well-defined sense of "who" they are. For self-originating sorts of individuals who have more need of freedom than money and position, the art of Vehicular Tai Chi as practiced by driving a taxi can be very worthwhile.

The whirring of the tires on the late night asphalt, the blur of pedestrian faces through the glass often induced in me a blissful vacancy of mind that has no real equivalent in civilian life. For me, driving cab was part martial arts, part meditative practice, and part graduate school; sort of a graduate school of mind. It satisfied my voyeuristic impulses, fed my reclusive nature and inspired me to look deeply into the "why" of all things.

During my years of focused concentration behind the wheel I became a practitioner of what I call Motor Zen. Taxi driving very closely approximates the formal practice of Zazen. The driver has his seat cushion, his formal sitting position and in place of the white meditation screen he has the white city backdrop and instead of a Zen koan he has the mindless chatter from the rear seat and the endless circuits around and around the city...for ten hours at a time, looking for meaning. "Why am I doing this?".