Sunday, July 27, 2025

The Commuter



(2006)

Driving down the highway, I passed a Mini with one of the best bumper stickers ever:"Actual Size."If you are an every-day commuter, you have to grab whatever pleasure you can from the grim surroundings of Highway 101.

Each morning I look forward to finding out which vectors the jumbo jets flying in and out of SFO are taking. There are certain cars I seem to see day after day, like the orange mini driven by a pretty Asian girl. She gets on 101 South at the same exit I do and gets off to park in the same lot as I do. We've never met, and perhaps we never will, but I find her presence in the traffic flow oddly comforting, maybe because it feels like proof that I really am there.

This is an issue because sometimes I have been so distracted that I arrive at work with a scary realization I have no idea how I've gotten there. Every move I made was on autopilot.

Commuting is, I’ve concluded, addictive and harmful.

A friend from Japan told me that some people hate their jobs so much that they get on the commute train and travel in the opposite direction from where their office is located as a form of protest. She said she had a boss like this once, a very nice man, who hated his job and just couldn't force himself to get off the train at his proper exit. He'd either keep going, or get off and ride back in the other direction, for hours, before finally giving in like iron shavings to a magnet, allowing himself to be drawn into the office.

She said she then started doing the same thing as her boss. Getting off the train at her office stop, climbing back into a train going the other direction. She said she would take it all the way to the sea.

Commuters are like prisoners. We tend to follow the unwritten rules of the road after a while. We don’t do "road rage." Motorcyclists are another breed. Twice in the past few months, I've seen motorcycle riders duel their way through slow traffic, flailing their arms at each other, engaging in some sort of angry dispute.

There is no traveling involved in your commute. It is all done by rote. Travel is a different experience. I met a woman who quit her job, broke up with her husband, and traveled for a year -- six months in Central and South America, and six months in India. As I listened to her stories, I noticed how her eyes sparkled and her hands danced through the air with excitement.

By contrast, when I asked her about being back in the States, pulling her old life together in new ways, she slumped a bit in her chair, her eyes became worried, her hands returned to the glass she was sipping red wine from. The migration between moods touched me deeply. I wanted to hug her and assure her everything would be okay.

But she presents herself as a very funny person, easy-going and open, and she pretended she was as carefree about living in America again as she was backpacking around southern India.

Talking with her, I remembered how much I once loved to travel. Right now my restlessness is at a peak. It's summer and everyone is traveling here and there, including all of my kids. I face some periods of being entirely alone. For all the right and wrong reasons both, I haven't taken a vacation in over a year. I haven't even known where to go or what to do. I’ve stopped dreaming about that.

One of my friends at work told me today she hopes I take a break soon. I didn't realize it was that obvious, the shape I’m in. 

Maybe I will take a break, just for a few days, and drive somewhere out along an open road. I don't know yet; I'm waiting for the right signal — maybe a bumper sticker.

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