Traffic Light and Dylan

The traffic light blinked off and on.  Red, blink, red, blink, red…  Dylan’s blinker flashed in tune, indicating that the car would soon be veering right.  No cars were on the road.  It was night and nothing much was happening at all.  Dylan just sat there.   He had just dropped off his oldest son, Bobby, at football.  Another day, another practice, some more driving.  Tomorrow he would wake up and go to work.  That’s what he’d do.  Wake up, go to work, come home, drive Bobby to football, go to sleep.  Another day would pass, he would get just that much older; the lines in his face would deepen and his bones would be that much sorer.   He would wake up and do the same thing all over, again and again and again.  He would wake up and his hair would become grayer, the love for his wife shallower, the caring for his children bitterer.  He would wake up to the alarm, buzzing and awful, screech from Hell, and clamour out of bed.  He would wake up.  Wake up, Dylan… 

          A car honked behind him.  Dylan was lost.  Where was he?  Blinking red light, that’s right, forever blinking red light.  Red, blink, red, blink, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, blink…  Dylan thought he was hallucinating; for surely the light had stayed red, but then he saw it was just the same as ever, red and blink over and over, and he knew he had been hallucinating.  Just the same, one more thing to add to the list of problems.  The car’s lights stared at Dylan’s back, angry that he had not moved.  Dylan stared at the light, watching it blink in tune with his lights, in tune with his eyes opening and closing.  The road was empty ahead, a car waited behind.  Eventually he heard a shout from the side and the car drove past, a finger was shown but Dylan wasn’t sure why, or how, or when…?...?  That was the question, right?   Something was up.  He felt crazy, all these thoughts floating around completely unattached from ideas, like decapitated heads floating in the cloud, clouds of headless bodies.  He shook his head.  Oh, the light, the light, right,  the blinking of the light.  That’s what’s up, up, up, and away towards the sky, towards God. 

God?  Was he real, would he do this to Dylan, all this nothingness?  This dull existence, this decrepted lifestyle.  Everyday the same thing.  How could he coup.  The light blinked on, God’s voice spoke, yes, no, yes, no, yes… God doesn’t know.  God doesn’t know why God had made Dylan this way, if god had made Dylan this way.  God is just another chump on the street, watching Dylan waste his life away.  God had mae Bobby and Mommy and Wife, all once loved, but now, with Dylan’s growing weariness, Dylan’s decaying mind, Dylan no longer cared.  This God did, but did not know.

 Why would it be Dylan sitting in a car on an empty street.  Of the people in the world, why him?  God had no answer, Dylan had no answer.  He realized could go off and leave, could go straight, what if he did go straight?  Bobby would miss him, at least, he guessed he would miss him.  What if he went left?  Dylan supposed then Bobby wouldn’t care, but his wife might miss him.  So hard to decide, which universe to choose.  What was the answer to all his problems…? Right, the light.  The light existed still, solid and in front of him.  God couldn’t say, he couldn’t say, and it wasn’t Bobby’s fault. 

          Go forward or go straight or go left, that’s the trouble.  He could go either way, change his whole life around.  Would that be fair to Bobby?  Wife?  Would it even be fair to himself to just leave?  Would he get bettered, would his clouded, shambled, mind regain health?  Something troubled him.  It was the light?  No, not the red, the red made sense.  It was the left.  It wasn’t Bobby’s fault, but it might be wife’s.  ‘Mid-life depression happens for a reason, you know,’ God would say.  So, if it isn’t Bobby’s fault going left would be the answer, because then Bobby won’t miss him.  Right?  Right, oh, right, he had to go right.  Left wasn’t an option.  This wasn’t a land of dream-believe, this was life and life meant choices and choices meant responsibility and responsibility meant going right.  But still, Dylan day-dreamed about the dreamed day where right wasn’t the right answer.  Home wasn’t the house to be.  Wife wasn’t the woman to have.  None of it made sense.  Why go right when right might not be right.  It was still his choice life and responsibility aside.   Figured that’s how it goes though, choices and decisions.   That’s how life is.  Might be his choice, and that was nice, but he did eventually have to choose or he’d be stuck at the light forever.  Decayed mind, depression, unloved wife, football son Bobby aside, he had to make a choice and move his car from where it was parked.  Thus the car moved from its stationary position.