The other side

E. B. White wrote:

Possibly you have noticed this about New Yorkers: instinctively, crossing a one-way street, they glance in the proper direction to detect approaching cars.  They always know, without thinking, which way the traffic flows. … Yet after that one glance in the direction from which the cars are coming, they always, just before stepping out into the street, also cast one small quick, furtive look in the opposite direction -- from which no cars could possibly come.  That tiny glance (which we have noticed over and over again) is the last sacrifice on the altar of human fallibility; it is an indication that people can never quite trust the self-inflicted cosmos…  (16 July 1932)

There's a place, at right angles from life's parade, where one can stand and consider the torrent.  A noisy spot to be sure, like the bleachers of a Grand Prix, but the view is splendid. It's from here that I file this report.

I've been watching this procession for three months now.  Not merely a procession, but dense like a river.  I know its rhythms, its ebbs and flows, the nature of its eddies and rivulets.  I've stepped to its edge and felt its damp breeze.  I can almost feel its breadth as I keep vigil on the bank, and I want to cross it.

And like White's New Yorker, I know the intricacies of its traffic.  I know the pauses, the lulls, how long it would take to scoot to safety.  I know precisely how to traverse this writhing morass. But like that same New Yorker, my gaze is drawn into wrong direction.  The direction from which no traffic could possibly come.  To the sight of shrinking sterns of bygone ships; people and ideas and ambitions floating away in the dark, undulating channel.

And it's no furtive look. I am hypnotized.  And thus, I stop before I begin. As the sound of the cavalcade fades into the horizon, I forget the deafening approach of the river behind me.  My focus is locked on the part to which I can never catch up.  On the terrible, untouchable future.

It strikes me, as I assemble this metaphor, that the sensible thing to do is join the parade, not cross it.  Surely the view from the other side is just the same.  Perhaps it is.  But to me, more inviting than the bustle and flow of anonymous hordes in the confluence, is the quiet bank cupping the other side of this river.  Why I want to stand there, I don't know.  But I do.