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Stuck in Traffic

© Joe Jeskiewicz

I wouldn't call it a metropolis. A city? Yes, but it doesn't fall in line with the truly great wonders of mankind's engineering prowess like New York, London, or Tokyo. It is however large enough to get stuck in traffic due to ignorant drivers, construction delays, or catching every red light from here to kingdom come. Of course I'm talking about the city in which I work, but many people can probably relate.

If you live in a small town, then traffic just isn't the same. A delay is hitting the red light at just the wrong time or getting behind the slow driver on your way to the grocer's, which is 5 miles away or 35 down roads no one travels. But in a city in which thousands of people are all trying to use the same 2 to 4 lanes all at the same time going various directions and crossing in front of you blaring horns and waving hello while failing to put up every finger on their hand, 5 miles can REALLY feel like an eternity.

It's during this time that I find my mind wandering around looking for anything that would make a good picture or pastel. During a snowy winter's day, a traffic light covered in snow is a rare treat in this climate. Or perhaps some people actually talking in stead of standing next to one another in self-prescribed isolation. Even in the summer a person stopped to wipe the sweat from their brow while they squint towards the sun looking for the opening to cross the road. Some images are so much a part of our every day lives we forget how attached we are to these things at the moment.

There used to be a period in time when men dressed in their top coats and flagged down a horse and buggy for a quick jaunt across town to engage in conversation with the young lady of their affections. Thin muttons and moustaches were all the rage and all the good roads were made of brick rather than a tar and stone compound. The everyday image of that time period today makes interesting art. It's something we look back on and wonder if we could have survived.

What about a hundred years from now? When our hover cars are zipping down the multilevel plane tracks over magnetized strips and we spot one of the nearly extinct deer, raccoon, or opossum (local roadkill, all of them) meandering away from the nearly silent hum of our Ford Air Tracker 2100 LS series pickup, or our Pontiac SkyScape J series hatchback, will we think how mundane it all is? Probably. We'll look back and see grandma in that old earth rider, (what was it called, a Firebird, how Ironic, it never left the ground), and wonder how they ever survived.