Untitled

This is not a riddle. I am no one, but I am everywhere. I am in every space and listening to every sound. I hear music. I hear laughter. I hear screaming. I hear silence. I am neither living nor dead. I come and go as I please with no plans or appointments. Some people talk to me without knowing that there is anyone there to listen.

I sit next to a 14 year old boy as he is staring at the window with pensive brown eyes. On the outside he is quiet, but on the inside, his thoughts are enduring and rapid. He's been numbed of the dull silence that is the only conversation between his parents. He recalls a time when the screaming and fighting would upset him and he could not stop listening no matter how hard he tried. His mother and his father have given up on even the most impetuous and bitter communication. Or worse, they no longer care. As I sit there i can see him contentedly express his accustomed emotions of stagnancy. No words to be exchanged no feelings to be shared. He smirks in my direction.

I'm at the shoulder of a wealthy man wearing a dark suit and expensive sunglasses. Brahm's orchestra fills the car. The man waves his forefinger with the symphony in between sips of black Starbucks coffee purchased early this morning. A peculiar thing I discovered about a person's music taste, is that it completely changes their perspective of the world in which they are racing through and ironically never look at. Or at least in the way I do. A Wall Street lays folded on the passenger seat next to an unopened envelope addressed to a Steven Ballmer. A small tear drop fills Mister Ballmer's eyes and cloud his symphonic world.

I am in the middle of a group of young teenage girls. The car smells like cheap body spray and lip-gloss. A palm tree air freshener sways from the rear view mirror as tedious conversation drowns out a bouncy hip hop song.

A young couple are holding hands on the armrest. I sit on the dash, watching their breath move their chests in and out. I see their eyes change shape, pupils contracting and expanding. It is a place unlike any other, I am there, but at the same time I feel so uninvolved and so extraneous. I am no one in the midst of lovers, for the physical space has been encompassed by pure emotion. And I am simply the lonely onlooker.

A tense middle-aged woman clutches the steering wheel and quietly curses to herself at every mistake made by other "bad drivers." She sings along to a Fleetwood Mac song and chews on Big Red.
"Thunder only happens when it's raining, players only love you when they're playing, say women they will come and they will go.....you stupid fuck...when the rain washes you clean you'll know...Jesus Christ unbelievable...you'll know..."

An old woman's stomach is growling as she's searching for her free Wendy's chili coupon in her glove box. The light turns green during her search through napkins, medication receipts, and slips of paper for which the use of has been long forgotten. A driver honks behind her and she quickly lifts her head and accelerates through the intersection. "Sorry!," she says in a light, embarrassed tone. She hums an improvised tune as she thinks of Mr. Collins, a friend she meets at Wendy's every Sunday after church. She enjoys the company and is content with the male camaraderie that she didn't know how much she missed until she met Mr. Collins. It's what she looks forward to throughout the week and often finds herself rushing to get there. Little to her knowledge, Mr. Collins arrives fifteen minutes early to get the perfect seat by the window and will insist on wiping off the table regardless if there is crumbs on it or not. On this particular Sunday afternoon though, Mr. Collins starts to worry because he's been waiting far too long.

When the truck hit us, I watched the old woman's head lash sideways and crack the driver's side window. The speed of the truck caused the car to balance on its side for only a moment before falling backwards onto the pavement. The woman did not have time to call out before the impact and was instantly killed. I could hear the trucker, who I once traveled from Omaha to San Francisco with, tell the police the woman pulled right in front of him and her mind was obviously elsewhere. He seemed sincerely upset and later cried himself to sleep in his bunk that night and many nights thereafter.

I've seen many deaths like this. I've seen the bitterest of arguments and the most intimate of conversation. I've seen children laugh and cry and I've seen families come and go. I sit and simply watch and listen, my presence always and forever unknown. I've sat hours on a congested freeway and days on the wide open road. Ironically, no matter how much I've seen I will always have the desire to be somewhere with someone else, experiencing their lives in that brief moment of travel, when they are just trying to get from one place, to another.