Traffic Jam

I did this sandtray quickly Thanksgiving morning. The basket of little cars in the collection jumped out at me, no doubt because I had a drive ahead of me and was hoping not to get into a mess on I80. So I created gridlock and then picked two passengers for one of the cars. I knew the guy was pissed at the traffic jam but the woman wasn't his wife, probably his boss so he had to watch his mouth--not easy for him I decided. This is a new job or a new boss and things are on the line for him. There was going to be trouble in this car. Then I had the truck (a railroad car standing in for a truck--memo to self, get a real truck for the collection) do something crazy, try to cross the divider line, would have been just a yellow line, to go the other way. That should heat up the conversation in the stuck cars. There is a lead Nordic warrior with a spear near the truck, probably the driver, very aggressive and ready to fight. Then there is a little monster kind of guy in front of the couple, who is the breeder of conflict in their car. There is an eraser with the slogan The No Asshole Rule, a big stack of money and a holy bible. This is the story:

Walker was trying to get his mind off the four lanes of traffic snaking in opposite directions, two each way and moving about minus three-quarters of a mile an hour. Gas prices were down and everyone was driving to grandmother's house this Thanksgiving instead of paying the exorbitant plane fares and extra fees for luggage, snacks, drinks and any body weight over 50 pounds. Except he and Joy, his boss, were not going to grandmother's house, but to a meeting with potential investors in a last ditch effort to save the company. Joy's text that morning said We KANT be late!!!!!!!!!!!! Did she think he had a super ray gun that was going to vaporize all the cars on the road so he would have a clear path to the man's office in San Francisco?

Joy curled her fingers around his hand on the steering wheel and stilled his drumming fingers. He almost jumped out of his skin. She wrapped her fingers around his and held them curled around the steering wheel. "I can't focus with that annoying tapping, Walker. I'm rehearsing the meeting in my mind. Just drive and don't distract me."

"Sorry," he said, "I didn't know I was tapping."

What the fuck? No tapping?

"I guess this traffic is making me nervous, you know, about the time and all." He strained his head sideways. Nothing was moving, but he could see around a slight curve that a semi was turned into the center divider. An accident. Crap and double crap.

"Maybe I should call Johnson's office and tell them we're stuck in traffic, but we'll be there soon."

He could feel Joy giving him a long sideways glance, her eyes burning into the side of his head. "It isn't good to arrive late with your hand outstretched, Walker. You should know that. Your head of Development. I left the travel arrangements up to you. I'm going to meditate to remain calm and I suggest you try to regain your center so you can get us out of this mess without undue anger. It clouds the mind you know."

He looked over at her, forty years to his twenty-eight. Fifteen years in the home gym business to his three but she was a 360 degree nut job. Except she had started the company with some cockamamie gadget she tacked on treadmills that "is guaranteed to massage your center of calmness as you work out." And it worked. The device was a simple vibrator that merely tickled the palm, but the literature claimed the vibration came from the center of being when a perfect state of wholeness was achieved on the treadmill. Joy had even sold him, Olympic grade cynic that he was, that there was a market for people who wanted to touch the core of their being while they sweated off the cheeseburgers. She was right. Callers on QVC ate them up when he was hawked the Art of the Spiritual Workout book packaged with Center of Wholeness and Joy treadmill on its monthly fitness special. They praised Jesus and the Center of Wholeness and Joy treadmill for turning their life around and giving it new meaning. It was also his job to convince them a few months later when they shouted outraged insults into his voicemail about the cheap piece of shit motors (he never realized what foul mouths those Christian women could be when riled up) that had a tendency to jam over 20 miles per hour and loft the exerciser across the room, that they had to work on their center of wholeness before they exercised again because the machine was so finely tuned to their psyche that it reacted violently to negative thoughts. So far no law suits. But the economy was zapping the core of everyone's being, QVC wasn't returning his calls to schedule his next appearance and there was one last payroll disbursement left in the checking account. As Joy said when he picked her up at her apartment, "It's the soup line for us if we don't score today."

He looked over at Joy. She was sitting in the meditation position with her hands splayed out in the mudra of deep concentration. So all right. He'd clear his mindof negative energy. He imagined what the gridlocked I80 east would look like from an alien's space ship approaching earth for the first time. A mating ritual between two long reptiles with multicolored scales on their backs, one inching forward, the other next to it inching the other way in an erotic slide? An aquaduct paved with semiprecious stones of many colors? Two conveyor belts traveling in a long loop transporting the inhabitants from point A to point B in lushly appointed compartments with slaves from a satellite moon answering their every command? Who would believe earthlings could invent a system of private transportation with insufficient road space for all the cars and allow them all to converge at the same moment on the same on ramp and hope to survive as a species?

The traffic was barely inching ahead. He rolled the window down to see what was happening with the truck. How were they going to get rescue equipment through this mess to get it off the road? But wait, the truck was moving. "Holy fucking Christ," he shouted. Joy bolted out of her meditation and looked around with a dazed expression. "What!"

"That asshole in the semi is trying to cross the divider to turn around! He's blocking traffic across all four lanes. Is he crazy?"

He stared at Joy for a long minute as though she had an answer that would get them moving. There was a soft crunch and they jolted forward. The car in front had stopped and Walker had plowed into him. In a flash a red-faced man jumped out of the car, opened the back door and pulled out a crowbar and came toward Walker shouting something in Russian.

"Do something," yelled Joy.

"What am I supposed to do," shouted Walker back. Tell him to contact his center of wholeness?"


Commentary: Well, look here. This is the third tray in a row I have done with an assertive/angry woman who has power over a man/men. Don't know what to say about that. I imagine this piece as episodes linking each car in the chain of traffic until we'd get up front to the truck driver who is tying up traffic on one of the busiest travel days of the year. At the start I didn't understand the bible or asshole eraser and wasn't conscious of them as I imagined the Jesus-praising callers on QVC, or Walker calling the truck driver an asshole. I looked at the photo as I was about to post this and saw those inspirations. Interesting, and I guess what sandtray writing is all about.