Traffic
Gridlock thoughts
I drive to work, sometimes, just as the first light appears. I drove home while I watch the sun sneak down into the elusive and unreachable horizon. The sun casts its golden light on the buildings and cars which surround me. I have a a front row seat, moving slowly, over bridges and across rivers, to witness and revere this daily light show of natural beauty. Yet, I never look at it directly, or see it mirrored in the rushing water. There is so much traffic. It is stop and go. I am always moving so slowly it feels like the car is…still.
The still I experience when I walk through the woods, somehow makes the answers I seek, move. Here, in traffic, I do not move, and my thoughts start to get restless. They ruminate in as if in a cesspool, like those murky puddles on the sides of the road. My musings somehow sustain themselves on fumes, cycling, not filtered, through the air, never exhausted.
I creep by the stretch of street, in front of the church, where I parked my car that one time, when I had a few minutes to spare. I sat in my car and felt my life split into two. There was a distinct eruption, a flurry of before and afters falling from the sky, and onto the hood of my car. The befores and afters alchemized around me to create….hope.
I still look at that spot, when I pass by each day, as the sun rises and falls on the stained glass windows of the church. A gleaming beam of light seems to reilluminate the magical place, where I felt the earth move. I will never get that moment back because the only sure thing in life is that nothing ever stays the same. I know this so I have not stopped there again, but I look at it wistfully, as I pass by each day.
It wasn’t so long ago, but I feel a million miles from the girl who sat there.
Now, I’m just the girl that does this commute day after day after day, knowing where I’m going, but not knowing….
Impermanence should make me feel better I sit in this line of cars, lifting and pressing on the brake pedal, to inch forward just a little more.
Maybe I won’t have to do this job or travel this commute too much longer? Maybe one day I will just say fuck it, I’m done sitting in this line of cars going to and from. I’m done with this job I hate. Honestly, I was over it ten years ago, but it pays the bills, and in actuality does help people, but makes me feel like I’m just a cog on a wheel, and so small, and play-acting all day long, wearing mask after mask, for no individual in particular, but for the machine of it all.
I think about this while human nature and traffic collapse into each other and people are losing their shit all around me. Horns honking, yells and fists out the window, people blocking the box, and middle fingers ablaze.
I see the thin red line on the GPS reminding me that this exact route, the path I need to travel, is nearly…gridlock.
The minutes add up, and the seasons pass, as I sit in traffic and think about the people I’ve loved and lost. I wonder if I could go back and make it right with them, knowing what I know now. I think about how, at times, with each of these people, there seemed to be such a thin line between adoration and hate, certainty and mystery, possession and freedom, consumption and abandonment.
But love is not as straight and narrow as this well-traveled road I’ve believed I needed to so dutifully travel, desperately trying not to get lost.
Love is in no way linear; it is not smooth, gravel-less, perfect blacktop. The road of love always looks a little different: it is wide and thin and bumpy and curved and narrow and blind and sometimes so difficult to navigate.
As I drive, I realize I do understand one thing about love: it cannot be lost because it is not contained in another person. It doesn’t come from an external source. It is already within me.
The most profound loves show you that you are the source, and you must simply uncover, reveal, and allow it to arise from your core. Then it can fill you, pour from you, and flow to everyone in your life and on and on….
Love is presence. It is an everlasting energy, and is always in motion.
Maybe all these thoughts in traffic aren’t exactly bad, they just have no where to go when I’m trapped inside this vehicle.
As these feelings well up in me, and the tears fall, I momentarily float off to some other place with hot air balloons, ferris wheels, and flying cars taking me up, up, and away from this congestion.
I am snapped from my reverie as I nearly rear-end another vehicle. My thoughts and I weave through the cars and the people inside them, entangling me forever with everyone in the sacred realm of rush-hour. I am not alone.
I look at the split-second reflections of people through the windows of all the cars surrounding me, and if the light is just right, I can see their eyes. Their eyes are portals to a multitude of bottled-up emotions.
Do I look like them? Am I staring so blankly? Do I have an exasperated, frustrated, exhausted, dead look in my eyes?
I try to decide if I have enough time on this forty-five minute commute to turn it all around — to get this dead look out of my eyes. Will anyone who looks at me be able to look into my eyes and know everything I’ve been thinking about on my journey home?
Home. That is where I’m heading and I should be happy to get there, but there is a ravenous pull that makes think maybe I should keep on driving.
I should keep going until I’m pretty sure my eyes are bright. Until I know I’m seeing the morning and evening light again.
Would I really get anywhere with all this traffic? When I’m spinning tires?
It seems people have a lot of trouble stopping, when they’re meant to be moving.
I’ll try to let the restless thoughts flutter away on my next commute.
Or, I’ll just hope, that somehow tomorrow, there is no traffic.
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You live in same state as I do. Of course Oregon anymore is definitely in a state of confusion. Good writing. I drive truck and I feel this way sometimes. Thanks for thoughts onto pen.
I've come to instantly like the pieces you post and THEN read them. Says a lot doesn't it?