The world moves faster when there is no place to go.
That statement is not always true until you find yourself moving in slow traffic on a busy street when you have some place to be. Isn’t it funny how time never waits for us but we are always waiting for time? Every minute of the day we need to be some place or doing something. We neglect moments we will never have again just to kiss the hand of another hour. And on an average moment I found myself five minutes before 8AM stuck in traffic. The aggravation traveled from my mind down to the nervousness inside my chest because there would be no avoiding being late for work…again. Those are the times I wish time would slow down but it seemed every second I looked at the clock was another minute later. But instead of allowing time to play with my emotions, I decided to inhale every aspect of the honking horns and blaring energy from temper tantrums trying to get to where they needed to be but also stuck where they had to be. I saw a lady through my rearview mirror singing happily in her navy blue Lexus. I wondered about her voice and the lyrics of her life. Was her time alone in her car, for that moment, an escape? Or was she just the happiest woman in this world stuck in life’s traffic with nowhere to be in particular. She was on to the next song by the time I stopped wondering about the ink of her soul. Another minute passed.
Cars fought for position just to stand still again. Another anonymous face caught my attention. This time it was a man with a long beard driving a pickup truck next to me. The kind of man I would always assume I had nothing in common with. A man from a different world than me and generation as his salt & pepper favored hair blended in with the morning fog. He had a snarl in his eyes that refused to glance back at mine. That is usually the way I am when I am just focused on getting to that next place. I could tell he had no patience as he honked obscenities at a traffic light paused on red. It seemed like the more he honked, the more stubborn that light was. Another two minutes passed and I couldn’t tell if this guy annoyed me or fascinated me but he was definitely a story or more like one of those poems Bukowski would write. He was dressed in the right language, that’s for sure. My thoughts made the traffic start to flow a little more steadily. There were many faces driving in many different directions to get to those places they had to be; some of them probably even wondering about me. If there was no traffic at that moment, there wouldn’t have been the many collections of minds collaborating within a moment. The world definitely does move fast when we stand still; it only slows down when we think. Seven minutes passed and I was two minutes late for work but that was okay with me. I enjoyed the traffic and the lady behind me was still singing.
Traffic is the time zone of a moment.
© 2010
Tarringo T. Vaughan
Public Journal
