Stuck on the Escalator
July 31, 2008 · Print This Article
(Disclaimer: I do not fancy myself a surrealist with an intuitive and spontaneous understanding of the world. I don’t even believe I have a certain predisposition to recognize the surrealistic quality of my existence. It’s just that there are moments when the world is strikingly surreal. More than what I see. Or more accurately, more than what I choose to see. Okay. You have been warned.)
I am exiting the Metro station when it happens. You know, that thing that has been happening to me lately? That thing where I am struck by a moment of dreamlike clarity, where everyone and everything around me suddenly seems so real, so true, but in a way that is wholly unreal? You know? That thing?
It is the escalators. I blame them completely. Or, I suppose, I blame the people on them. As I approach the escalators I am arrested by a flash of pure light in my mind’s eye, and it is as if I am suddenly outside of myself– not me, not Cat, I just am– and an explosion of silence drowns out the hum of hurried voices, the scuffs of shoes, the sneezes and coughs. The world spins around me but I remain still, mesmerized by the view. Because the colors are bolder and brighter than before and everything is somehow bigger, larger than life. Life in High Definition.
And these people on the escalators, they aren’t moving. They aren’t stepping. They are just… standing. Staring with eyes unfocused on the gum-defaced billboards. Listening with ears plugged up with white iPod ear buds. A thinning river of humanity, standing to the right, quiet, unmoving, patient, content to effortlessly travel the straight line, up and up, propelled by unseen hydraulics along an unwavering, predestined course. Together, but so disconnected from one another that there could be miles between each of them rather than only a step. A part of the machinery, slave to hydraulic lift–
–but a passerbyer shoulders me, shatters the illusion, and it all changes. Dulls. Hums. I can just make out the tinny crackle of the loudspeakers announcing more outages on the Orange line. As a surge of newly-arrived travelers wash past me, I bow like a weed in the stream, momentarily able to withstand the rush, but knowing that despite my tenacity my immobility cannot last. I see that there is nowhere to go but up, and it occurs to me that such is life. We all move inexorably forward, up and up…
With that thought, I take a breath and charge up the escalator.
So if you happened to see a wild-eyed gal garbed in business cazsh thundering past you on the left-hand side of the escalator this morning, taking the steps two at a time, know that the wild-eyed gal was me. Because while I accept that we must move forward, up and up, how I go about getting there?
Well, that is entirely up to me.
Robert Hazard…Escalator of Life.