28. Writing

This year was the first one in a long time that I got to do creative writing as part of my English class. It's something that I've always enjoyed immensely, but in the past few years I've been too busy to find time to write consistently, so I was overjoyed when we did several creative assignments this year.
Instead of the normal post today, I figured I'd share my latest assignment -- I had way too much fun writing it, and I hope you enjoy reading it.

The assignment was a pastiche, which is basically a pretentious way of saying that you must imitate either the style or the story line of a specific author's work. Of course, I chose Virginia Woolf; I think that, stylistically, our writing styles are fairly similar, and I loved reading her stories, so it was an obvious choice. But coming up with a topic to explore was much more challenging. I finally settled on how much time we spend doing various things over the course of our lives; sleeping, eating food, exercising, et cetera. But the most ridiculous one was that, over a 79 year lifespan, the average person spends six months waiting at stoplights. Six months! So, in homage to Woolf, I decided to write my paper on this modern conundrum. Enjoy!

It is rather unsettling for one to consider the passage of time. It feels as though our stories are yet unwritten and there is much that life still has to offer us, and yet we have already completed a large fraction of our given time on this planet. Even if we live to see one hundred, our lives are already twenty percent finished. And, while musing upon that, one cannot help but consider the amount of time spent engaged in various activities. It seems we waste an undue amount of time consuming food, sleeping, sitting in classrooms, watching television….  But in this modern society, the crime most plainly incurred against Chronos himself is the torture we all must endure while waiting at a stoplight.

The world is out there for the taking, visible, plainly in reach, but something is suddenly preventing you from seeking it out; cornered, trapped, shoved back as though by an invisible hand. The sudden jolt courses through your spine as you are unkindly jerked to a stop. It is a feeling of wasteful meaninglessness quite unlike any other; to be trapped within the metallic confines of the modern vehicle, sidewalks and storefronts visible, but not quite within reach. It is bad enough when you are moving, making progress to some petty destination likely as devoid of meaning as your journey was, but nothing tests one’s patience like being captured by the changing color of a light. How many minutes, hours, days, months, years, are wasted? In a society so advanced that we have put a man into space and become masters of medicine, why is it that we do not have a system of transport that does not involve endless waiting?

Eyes green with envy, glaring at those next to you who are lucky enough to be turning right; what gives them the power to forgo this photon’s powerful clutches? Are they so important that they must arrive at their destination, whilst you remain trapped?

And where are they going, anyway? Maybe to work their tedious 9-to-5 accounting job, wherein they waste the majority of their time stalking people on Facebook. Or perhaps they work at a fast-food restaurant, flipping burgers and burning themselves on french-fry grease to pay their way through college. A barista at Starbucks? A scientist at the research center? Maybe they are part of a covert operation for the CIA, working under the guise of a shop-clerk, secretly spying on people while they peruse clothes at Value Village. They’re wearing sunglasses, so, seems pretty likely….

 You are wrenched out of your reverie by the rude blaring of horns – the traffic creeps forward, and you are finally moving again. Another minute, second, hour wasted; never to return again.