Sending Out

A commute is a surreal experience. Often, making a repetitious journey day in and day out, the mind will drift into other planes of awareness upon awareness. We leave our homes and arrive at work. We leave work, and arrive home. Many times we reach our destination with little recollection of the details between point A and point B. When processing the events of a day, or planning those of one yet to come, where do we go and what do we tap into?

On Tuesday evening, in the midst of one such commute, I found myself stopped for a red light at a busy intersection. My eyes glazed over, the lights outside going out of focus and blending into amorphous shapes and colors. Something played on the radio but I wasn't paying attention. I thought about what I'd gotten done that day. I thought about what I hadn't gotten done, and what had to be done the next day. I looked forward to watching The Descent when I got home, and began my mental checklist of things to do once I got online, including uploading the week's photos. I thought about the pizzeria at lunch, and the hispanic gentleman who stopped at our table, grinning at each of our confused faces as he repeatedly inquired, “Do joo boat? Boat!” I was about to say I didn't swim when he handed us a flyer for a political candidate.

In the midst of my jumbled, exhausted reverie, a dark shape moved across the mosaic of lights beyond my windshield. My eyes focused on a young woman crossing the street, bundled up in a hat and scarf against the bitter cold. All I saw were her eyes, which suddenly locked on mine. Time froze as she stopped walking, and returned my gaze. As I admired her eyes and wondered what the rest of her looked like, a car on my right suddenly squealed past, zipping around the corner to make a turn on red. It snapped us both out of that weird zone as sound and motion returned to the world around us. She hurried on as the light turned green. The first thing my ears latched on to was my radio, where Sting was repeating a fading line, ”Sending out an S.O.S., Sending out an S.O.S....”

I drove on, pondering the alignment of elements I'd just encountered, speculating about brain frequencies and fate and the way we perceive time in relation to what time might actually be. Did I sense distress? Did I reach out to her and make her stop? Before I got too silly in my thinking, my conscious mind rationalized. Chances are she was never looking at me, only in my direction, over my car to see if other cars were coming. At some point in the few seconds that felt a lot longer, she may have cast a cursory glance down and thought, “What the hell is that nerd looking at? I better keep walking before he writes about me in his blog or something...”

The world is a place of tangible, material experiences. Facts arise from experience and the consistent outcome of similar events. The world is also a place of imagination and possibility, and just as one part of our brain can steer us safely home while another part wanders, so too can we accept reality while drifting through fantasy.

Huh. I'm at the end of my post now. When did that happen...?