Automatic Transition

A story:

His morning was a Merriam-Webster routine.  Double taps on the snooze.  Releasing himself from a down duvet.  An iambic walk to the kitchen.  Sweats pulled on.  Grind beans.  Auto-drip.  Something called Truvia.  Hobbled gait.  Sit at desk.  Squint.  

And every day there came the silence of the first minutes against the dawn.  It was these acute moments that his consciousness, still infantile, expanded and tried to stretch into the day.  He put his wrists together as if he were being handcuffed and cradled his chin. His lids closed easily.

It was cars he saw, just cars.  A line of traffic filing into a beltline, one whirred by, then two, then six. It was mesmerizing, and the accelerando of increments made him plain giddy, more and more, a Boléro of cars.  Soon it was a paralytic rush hour, complete with a cacophony of horns and screeching rubber and tiny clouds of exhaust from each of the stalled motorists.  Frozen in his creaky chair, he stared a thousand yards through his wall, the coffee's steam whisping into his nose, looking at these cars grid-locked on an eight-lane freeway.  Every day, as true as the sky is blue,  this cerebral traffic jam occurred, without fail, just like his coffee and slitted eyes.  Cars of all kinds piled in: an '02 Ford F-150 with subwoofers so loud it hurt your balls,  a '97 Grand Am who's sporty headlights were about the only thing sporty about it,  a '92 Buick with rust creeping up from the bottom but comfy seats, a '93 Ford Taurus with a faded maroon exterior and interior to match; a '97 black Honda Civic with not a sun- but a moon-roof;  a stick-shift '98 Dodge neon who's speedometer always seemed far too big for the dash, a BMW motorcycle with leather saddle-bags, a white VW Cabriolet without power steering; another Ford Taurus, black, with faulty weather-stripping so inevitably when the car accelerates above 30mph, you reach for the automatic window roller-upper button only to be reminded for the x-ieth time that that hissing of wind won't go away.  More and more and more the cars sat, bumper to bumper, and he sat in stasis bemused at the tonnage of memories.  Each car idling in his head while the day inhaled and held its breath, and while to any other level-headed human the idea of a packed commute would be simply ingratiating and create a rage-laden anxiety unparalleled by any other worldly occurrence, but to the man, it was a time of clarity and understanding.  There they all were, together, a pile of steel that stacked from the bottom of his heart to his throat humming the tune of an engine in waiting.  He wished he knew where they came from and more importantly he wished they didn't have to get to where they were going, but in these first minutes against the dawn, he would bring all the cars together, pack them in tight, and look upon the love that each vehicle held.  His face went numb, and heated as if just coming in from the cold.  He smiled.  Soon, with the exhalation of the a.m.,  they would disperse and speed away, exiting off various ramps, continuing on.  He tried to hold on, to keep them crammed in, but they would leave just as they came, in small groups, then six, then two, then one. 

And throughout the day a car would zoom by, hard to recognize what it was, though.  Maybe a Mazda 626 that took him to a concert in high school, or maybe a Dodge conversion van where a friend's step dad smoked while he drove, or was it that hatchback sans a rearview mirror.  The anxiety of loss and the emptiness of his highway left him but to finish his coffee, shower, dress, and get into his car, and take the morning drive to work.  And as he idled on the freeway, he looked at the other cars, and knew no one, and it just wasn't the same.