Anatomy of a Traffic Jam

Being stuck in traffic in Los Angeles is much like taking the slow boat down the river Styx. After a while, whatever your destination (be it work, Hell, or otherwise) starts to seem pretty inviting.

It's a combination of the surrounding desert hills, endless palm trees, and persistent sun that make the solid bumper-to-bumper journey all the more maddening. The looks on the people's faces: confused, dead. Confused as to how they have died? Scared. And of course, the droning sound of the helicopters.

Helicopters?

Helicopters. Only in Los Angeles will every helicopter in the county buzz out to cover the chaos. No matter what the magnitude of the atrocity. I guess vultures circle for a dead lizard every bit as much as they do for a dead zebra. In my case, I was held up by a dead tzi tzi fly. After all the commotion, the hour hold-up, the helicopters, the digital reader board claiming "major accident, all lanes become one", the 0 mph, and the dead faces; it was all for glass. By the time I realized this, however, I had far passed the point of rage and frustration. That was how it started.

The psyche of a human being adrift in a traffic jam sea can be broken down into a few simple stages. No one's mind is safe from the torment. And if you can cut through the daze, if only for a moment of sheer will, you will notice that everyone around you is experiencing the same twisted mind fuck. I did just this. Before turning my head onward again, and re-entering the funhouse.

Upon realizing that I was slowing down, something akin to "oh, come on" was softly dispelled from my lips. Directed at no one, and heard only by me, this proved nothing aside from agitating some inner morning demon. He would proceed to convince me that "this can't be happening", at this moment in time.

After some time in a dead standstill, I found myself uselessly swearing into the empty cab of my truck. Swearing at no one at first; eventually turning the tirade to anyone I made eye contact with, anyone I couldn't see ahead of me (including the poor suckers involved in the accident), and anyone that came to mind that had pissed me off recently. Swearing seemed to make the truck crawl at around 2 or 3 mph (depending on the creativity of the word).

Then comes the acceptance of one's own fate. Looking around, I noticed everyone had reached this moment of zen at the same point in time I did. The guy behind me was tapping away on his steering wheel with a pair of drum sticks. An Asian woman next to me stared peacefully into the early morning sunrise. The music I had turned down, in order to better hear myself swear, suddenly became calming and every word poignant. "Even if things get heavy we'll all float on". Beautiful.

Fuck. The swearing seemed to be more effective. These traffic jams, they respond better to a little roughness. You've gotta grab 'em by the shirt collar and shake the hell out of them.

The closer you get to the incident, whatever it may be, the less you care about what it is anymore. I'll have to shift gears here for a second and revert back to the possesive "I"; because if "you" happen to be an Angeleno, then at this point in the jam you still care very much about what the incident is. In fact, as I would find out in this case, it was "you" all along that put me through an hour long inner struggle of fragile nerves and self doubt.

I understand the curiosity of an automobile accident. Death and injury aside, two or more large pieces of machinery entangled together on the side of a highway is a rather impressive display, and not something you see every day. However, in Los Angeles, the native's necks seem to be made of a much more pliable and liberal rubber than anywhere else in the country. I recall times when I would pass up an accident without blinking an eye. And they happen far more often in this city! But at this point in this particular jam, the crawl had gone on for the better part of an hour. So, morbid as it may be, I thought to myself, "this mother fucker better be good. Maybe I'll even wind down my window to get a better look at the carnage."

As I rolled into the vicinity of the veritable auto battlefield (as the digital reader board promised; and the helicopters implied) I realized the extent of my heartache and pain. As I said before...glass. Glistening in the sun, and crunching delicately below my tires. I wondered if the helicopters could even see the glass from way up there. If the cameras would be able to pick that up. They weren't anywhere to be found anymore, so I guess they got bored, and fluttered off. Clearly, either I had been in limbo for so damn long that the accident had occured, been responded to, humans rushed to the hospital, reported, and cleaned up, all before I reached it; or, I had been the butt of a very cruel LA joke. They were breaking me in, giving me a taste of what I can expect for the rest of however long I spend here.

If this, resulting from glass on the roadway, is any indication...then I'll be packing my bags tonight and hitting the 101 back North. But then again, I'd probably get stuck there too: plastic bag in lane 3.