Snapshot of the Surreal

I had a transcendent experience tonight at a railroad crossing of all things. Saying that, I realize this is the second time I've used that word in the last few days; the other time was in describing Constantine's performance of Bohemian Rhapsody on American Idol. So maybe I'm too quick to call something "transcendent"... but I'll stick to it for now.

One of the (only) drawbacks of our new apartment is that there's no office for delivery men/women to drop packages off at if the recipient isn't home. So I found myself driving to Cerritos at 8:00pm to pick up a package from UPS. Brought the iPod with and made the best of it, cruising along to Keane. The UPS building is right in the center of an industrial area, and with it being nighttime, I often found myself somewhat alone on the streets as I drove.

I was driving home after picking up the package successfully and up ahead I saw the red lights flashing and the arms of a railroad crossing come down. I came to a stop behind three rows of 5 or 6 cars each, and it wasn't long before there were a few dozen cars behind as well. I threw the car in neutral as Counting Crows sang Goodnight L.A., and watched the red lights flashing and a freight train idle by.

After a few minutes the train was gone, but the arms didn't move. Lengthy seconds passed. Then the fun began. Drivers across the three lanes started inching their cars forward, for what reason I have no clue. I mean, the arms aren't exactly going to fly up and take everyone by surprise. And it's not as if the signal is watching the cars for any sort of creeping motions in order to decide when to let everyone continue on. And as it turned out, we weren't going anywhere for a while yet.

The whole situation struck me as somewhat amusing and surreal, especially given that I had just been navigating through mostly empty streets in the middle of LA/Orange counties and now I was sitting at a railroad crossing along with everyone else who, like me, had some errand on these streets this April evening. I sat, half-smiling, watching the red flashing lights, contemplating this scenario and enjoying the break from my somewhat-planned night. Cars continued to creep forward ineffectively. I forgot what street I was on, and found I could easily imagine that we were in the middle of nowhere. That made the impatient cars seem all the more absurd.

Counting Crows gave way to Muse, via some other artists that didn't seem to fit the moment. A commuter train sped by and still we sat. Eight minutes after arriving, the lights fell silent and the arms rose. We all continued on our separate ways. And I found myself alone on darkened streets once again.

A Twilight Zone episode just came to mind, bearing some similarities to this evening's experience. I think it was called "The Crowd," and it was about a, well, crowd of people that appeared suddenly at the site of whatever accident or tragedy had just happened. It was always the same group of people and they came out of nowhere practically. Kind of like the cars tonight... Now just throw in a little fog and a narrator and we've got something here.