Article 3 - "RUSH HOUR, GRAZING STYLE" March 2007 edition of First Church of The Streets

    The traffic whizzed by as we ate our breakfast, busy going somewhere else by some particular time. Whether it was New York, New Jersey, Maryland or Virginia, the rush hour looking to beat nine o'clock was ubiquitous. Even though the traffic here was lighter than our New York home, it was still the same frantic energy that sped through the vehicles. Somehow I sensed it, even though the traffic was anonymous in the near distance. One person mostly per vehicle, staring straight ahead at the road in front of them like a laser point, a meditation and pilgrimage in its own way as they made their way to do penance for eight hours.

    Oh, the wonderful metaphors that one can come up with when one was liberated from the corporate world for one month.

    Instead of being on that road myself, I was parked in the distance, an outsider to the mayhem of the workaday world where time slowed down and everything became more pointed, not a distraction that was a hassle on the way to something else Down The Road. Here, removed from all of the din, I could focus on what was in front of me and really see it in the present, even though it moved too fast for me to really focus on it. Too busy to appreciate my observations. I sighed and grabbed another Hash Round from my Hardee's bag.

    This was one of the greatest experiences of when I traveled, to feel the essence of time to slow down and to really notice it. I looked at the digital clock as it ticked away the minutes, watching as the numbers clicked from 9:15 to 9:16, then to 9:17, finding a strange pleasure in doing so. Thinking of all the times where I was supposed to be doing something busy or worthwhile to become a Contributing Member Of Society, such as rushing to work, speeding by all the people in my way. I'd be rushing through the door and treating paperwork on a par level with those who worked with me, time something to be beaten but nothing to be noticed. Now, with no schedule to juggle, the illusion of mastering time had dissolved. Watching the clock turn over, it was something to be noticed. It was as though by watching and noticing the clock, I had become more aligned with time's rhythm. Or perhaps I was just noticing that no matter what human activity I came up with, I was subject to its rhythms, just as I was right now. In a way it was like I was finally noticing reality.

    Right now, my husband and I were sitting in a parking lot, eating our breakfast before we headed out on the road for Tennessee. There was a pasture in our view, one with rolling hills and trees glazing the horizon, like an aftereffect in a painting to give it more pastoral charm. There were cows, grazing their breakfast much in the way that we were, slowly chewing their cud while I chewed my sandwich. The cows moseyed through the field like college students who woke up early in the morning to get to an eight o'clock class after partying until two. Except, unlike the college students, they seemed to be aware of where they were. Their drowsy state only seemed to enhance this contentedness, almost as though they had been given a choice to be animal they wanted before they were born and they said, we want to be cows grazing grass in Virginia's Appalachian foothills.

    Maybe I was just reading too much into the situation, letting my imagination run wild in a scenario where there was nothing planned and nothing to keep my mind busy. Maybe it was as people would say back home, I had too much time on my hands and needed something constructive to do. That was a common diagnosis I heard in my hometown in suburban New York City: they have too much time on their hands. It was usually applied to people who did things that seemed too outside the box relating to the hustle and bustle of the life that ran on rush hours and schoolbus schedules, as though anything else that didn't pertain to that lifestyle didn't count. Watching digital clocks tick and creating metaphors about cows would definitely fall into the spectrum of this disease, needing corrective surgery immediately. Taking a month out of my life to spend time on the road was catastrophic, perhaps requiring a whole session of legislative debate in Congress. Well, not really: but it would be something to keep the neighbors busy for at least ten minutes' worth of gossip, a profound medical crisis indeed that needed to be kept at bay from spreading.

    But I disagreed with the diagnosis, creating my own second opinion that seemed infinitely more tolerable. Noticing the time, watching the rhythm of the digits as well as the hum of the animals chewing, this was something that made me feel real. I felt as though as I was part of what was going on in my life, which didn't always happen when I was busy working and doing the things that "responsible young people my age" were doing. Many times, when I did whatever it was that I was supposed to be doing, like fixing my house just so and being the good little worker that I would purportedly blossom into one day, I felt like life was happening to me, no matter how busy I seemed and how occupied I appeared to those who wished to judge if I were on track or not. Here, watching cows and eating Hardee's and noticing the change of a digital clock, it felt like real life, even if it wouldn't produce a report at the end of the day. The reason why is that I was choosing it, and was aware of the choice. Certainly everything I did on some level was a choice of mine, but when it was made in the name of elevating a role that I thought I should be pursuing, it felt less a choice of mine than now as I sat here in the middle of Virginia in a van while the rest of the world whizzed their way past me to work.

    It was getting to the point where it was time to begin my day. A long drive of four hundred miles lay in front of my husband and me. Enclosed in the four walls of the van, I nonetheless felt freer than when I walked to work, usually around this time. Four hundred miles without a timeline and a deadline to meet: a great way to spend the day. The cows chewed in agreement with me.

    I gulped up the last of my caffeine and was ready to start my day.