Moments spent waiting in line feel different from the rest of our moments. When I find myself in the midst of a stagnant queue of persons, I become obsessed with one goal: reaching the front. Because the achievement of this goal is hopelessly out of my control, the time becomes characterized by stress, anxiety, and impatience. I lose sight of the reality of the moment.
Until, that is, I realize that the distinction I have created between “waiting” and “being” is entirely illusory. When I realize this, I understand that each of these persons is not just an obstacle in my path. Suddenly, I have all the freedom in the world to assert meaning into the objectively insignificant. I can turn a stranger’s miniscule gesture into an entire character and have a conversation with them in my head. While physically I might go nowhere, mentally I can travel anywhere!
Once I was sitting in a coffeehouse (I’m in the same one now) and had just poured a trickle of soy milk into my coffee. With my ostrich mug filled to the brim, I crept carefully back to my table, testing strides of different fluidities to hold the coffee. I had a familiar strain of focus in my eyes, the same one I get when I sing self-consciously in front of people and try to hit the right notes. I may have been biting my lip as I explored the “quick stride,” and was pleasantly surprised that fast steps make less spills than shaky slow ones. Slow ones make sloshes that splash onto knees and halfway down shins, where they leave coffee-colored stains.
I reached the table, where I watched the soy milk whirl and curdle. Captivated by its potential meanings, I remembered reading fortunes in Turkish coffee grounds. Today’s curdles were stormy, like the midwest skies I had just left behind. And then the ram’s head skeleton that had been watching from the shelf across from me shook free and threw itself on the ground, shattering into a million bits and the barista came out and swept it up and mused that there had been an earthquake too subtle for us to detect.
I was enthralled by this specific set of happenings, and ignorant to all else going on. Eager to understand why these instances commanded my attention I looked closely at them and they revealed one clear theme: storm. To me, “storm” is not a symbol for darkness to come but an electrifying feeling that the world is happening right now, and I am in the thick of it. I am biking up and down hills while the sky is falling down on me in warm sheets of rain. It leaves drops on my bare arms and legs that rest like sweat on a piece of warm cheese. And even though I know the truth (that they are raindrops) I deny it and believe they are sweat.
I have the freedom to travel within my own reality, and also to join others in theirs. Conversation begins as people in a dark room. As one begins to speak, a light illuminates their face. They become a talking head and the creases and folds of their face come to life like clay forms in motion. As each person enters and exits the spotlight, the group blurs effortlessly through various settings: an alleyway in Portland under a comet-filled sky, the porch of a fifth-story apartment building in Madison during the ‘70s, a high school English classroom. And while the conversationalists are traveling together, none of them are in the same place.
Attention and engagement can unleash a world of possibilities at any moment, and suddenly, we have choices. We can travel freely, and for free.
