Slow motion

I was stuck in the traffic and I was stricken by how everyone around me was stupid: the policeman, the muscled guy in the black shirt, the street boy begging to wash his car, the curly headed lady leaning over the steering wheel unaware of how the horn of her Peugeot is making me want to put an end to her life. I am not going to accept that they are all victims of a bigger problem beyond them called traffic jam in Lebanon. No, that is one thing and their stupidity is something else. But nothing made me want to jump out of my car more than that stupid very old man with that stupid smile on his wrinkled face driving as slow as if he is walking on a high rope above the Amazon river, because he thinks that the slower he goes, the slower time becomes and the farther away his death.

I was waiting for the elevator, cross legged, my elbow on the elevator's edge, when I realized that I have been waiting for more than five minutes. I remember I had a rush of thoughts invading my head, some meaningful ones and some nonsense. I can't remember any of these thoughts now, all I remember is the image of me waiting by the elevator, cross legged, my elbow on the elevator's edge. I did not see myself stand there, yet in my memory I have that copy image of myself standing there and that useless memory is now carved in my head. As useless as it sounds, as stored it is in my memory to the extent that I have to write it down here so that I get it out of my system. And yet now it has become even more memorable after it has been written.

Before the age of speed, and when everything around was slow, the "meantime" had a certain meaning. Roads were not mere connecting lines but were part of the destination plan. People used to take food for the road, stop for a bonfire, or just contemplate sceneries. In the slow motion age, same as in the speed age, people invent coping systems. Here we are stuck in between the two ages, we are like that stupid old wrinkled man in the car unable to reach to nowhere and slowing everyone behind us.