Running on Time

Ground and crumbled through the holiday mill, spit out grumbling out the other side, I find myself enlightened in a small matter: I have faint understanding of leisure. Between bouts of eating and sleeping, I've been as twitchy as a kinglet. The art of ease eludes me. Time lies ominous.

It's more likely a case of nerves -- anticipation of impending saintlihood. We have declared ourselves to be (imminently) non-smokers. Not a resolution, please! Call it a paradigm shift, reprogramming the biocomputer, spiritual awakening, jambalaya gumbo, or whatever, but not "resolve." That term melts whenever I place it in the crucible of thought, remaining ever ineffable.

Actually, for a while now it's been my habit around this time of year more to look backward than to try and see forward. I guess for me it's a case of: If you don't consider where you've been, how can you possibly hope to know where you're going?

The mind, though, is a puzzling and capricious thing. Rather than follow my threads back to reveal nodes of coincidence and significance, synchronicities soaked in profundity, nexus in the big flux, it chooses instead to summon snapshots of other people's lives.

Can we learn from other people's lessons? I believe we can, particularly when it appears that the lesson might be lost on the person for whom it was intended. The sketches that come to mind are funny now (albeit in a sardonic kind of way), but at the time they opened doors to a different kind of reality -- one which had originally drawn me, but which I ultimately abjured.

Consider these two pictures, and tell me you wouldn't have done the same:

City street, gray and windy day; close of the business day. Standing on an elevated train platform, watching the press of humanity across the street. My eye is drawn to an object moving out of rhythm: Tall spare man, well-groomed; fine suit visible under the fine overcoat. A successful man, with cell phone pressed to ear.

With running shoes: Running down the street with cell phone pressed to ear. In a moment of unkindness, I stuff an imaginary hot dog in his mouth: Your life, I think; eat it on the run; junk food life, running shoes. This is madness.

Second picture: Not the same day, though it might have been. And I swear on a stack, I'm standing at the same place, only it is darker.

The train travels the avenue, coming from the left. It crosses many busy streets, one of which is right there, just before the platform where I stand. The train is coming, many people moving to the rhythm of its coming.

Again, anomaly catches my eye: man running. Well-groomed, fine suit, finecoat. Black oxfords on his feet, though; fine leather. Hard leather shoes on snow and ice. Running towards us, towards the platform, he is looking back over his shoulder. He is gauging the speed of the train.

The mind is a marvel: Man can run on ice in leather shoes, looking backwards. He can judge the speed of a train travelling towards him as he travels, running on ice, in the same direction. He is able to calculate: I will arrive at point "x"' before the train, and thus be able to embark. He imagines.

Oy, Oy, I'm thinking. This man will fall, and I will be reluctant witness to his pain and folly. But to the amazement of the crowd (collective outflow of breath, a thickening of the mist in the cold, damp air), he does not fall down. He has reached the curb on the other side of the street. A quick glance at the traffic lights tells him: green; safe to proceed. He turns to look back over his shoulder again.

He is onto the street, running, still erect. The light is green. It looks good. It looks as though he will make it, hurrah (spectacle is a relative thing, isn't it?). Uh-oh! A car. The driver has seen the light, but the wheels don't know enough not to slide on the ice. Still looking over his shoulder, the running man runs smack into the side of the sliding car.

He falls back; his briefcase arcs into the air. A moment of appalled silence: The comedy, in a blink, has become a tragedy. God, did I really have to see this?

To everyone's amazement, the man leaps up from the road -- and starts running. On the run, he scoops up his briefcase; on the run, he brushes off his coat. He runs up the stairs of the platform, and squeezes through the train doors as they begin to close. He has caught the train after all!

I stand outside on the platform; I will wait for a train less crowded. The windows of the train as it pulls away is a diorama. The epilogue unfolds: There is much energy, talking and gesticulating and the patting of shoulders. I have a sense that he is not receiving succor so much as that he has won a prize in some incomprehensibly mad game. His peers are celebrating him; he is laughing.

What could be that important, I wonder, that couldn't wait seven minutes? I refuse to believe he risked his life because there was some game or another on television he didn't want to miss. I imagine he was thinking of his wife and children, some commitment he had made to them, while he was running on ice, looking backward.

I try to imagine what his wife and children would feel, if someone had had a camera aimed at the running man, and they were to see him running into the side of a car. Would they laugh as well?

Yes, I know we have no commuter trains here on the Sunshine Coast, but the metaphor's transparent enough. Make the best of a new year: Go easy, go slow, and find all the time you need.

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