Stuck in the Unending Afternoon Traffic Jam on the Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles

I dreamed this, does that mean it didn’t happen?Louise Gluck

(“Castille”)

I am here, somewhere on the completely clogged up Santa Monica Boulevard, in the cool afternoon

Seemingly not going anywhere any time soon

This is sometime before GPS

On my way, to pick up my very pregnant wife, who’s waiting on me, coming from a Doctor’s appointment with our first child, and going to another Doctor’s appointment in Hollywood

This is also before the increasingly debilitating time of cell-phones let alone iPhones

She has not been feeling too well, which makes me very, very nervous indeed

This is may veray furst chile, ya know…ah hope allyo ga may..ah nervous as shit..ah, qiuan tell yo tha

All around me some increasingly irritated people are getting out of their respective cars and trucks

We have been once again stuck here in the middle of nowhere for sometime now

I see an outraged few of my fellow stuck car drivers kicking their tires in utter rage and disgust

While some others, simply scream out, at no one in particular just to ease the stress, I suppose, and not to go completely loco on the heavily polluted freeway in the process

I look at my wrist watch and my time is running short to pick up my expecting wife for her and our doctor’s appointment

I hope that our little baby will be okay, and that the baby will have some patience with the tiresome traffic jam world of ours

But, still not enough patience with the world, as it is becoming, not to constantly organize and to push

For some much-needed changes, in the way we live our lives together, and also ever more against one another in our increasingly suffering Mother Earth

On the radio they say there was a major car accident ahead somewhere with some injuries and also a fatality…….a few helicopters quickly fly by overhead….this is equally before the time of the internet

A young profusely sweating Asian-American woman besides me is furiously fanning her little crying baby strapped into the car seat, in the backseat of her big old robust North American car

I believe that it is a Chrysler, but I’m not too sure because I really do not know too much about cars

Others start turning up their all-different kinds and types of music loud on their respective car radios — -Latin, a few classical, rap, soul music, Asian, reggae, and in the process flooding the jammed highway

Creating an interestingly surreal, and deeply mixed and mixing multicultural multi-ethnic soundscape

On the paralyzed Santa Monica highway, in the middle of an always bustling and of a forever changing metropolis, bordering the large and restless Pacific Ocean

With all these rich, complex and continually changing sounds, constantly being interrupted by angrily barking dogs scattered in the different colored cars stuck apart together on the huge boulevard

Not too far ahead of us a public transportation bus filled with people is also stuck with the rest of us*

I look at my watch and I see that we had to be by the Hollywood doctor right now

The extremely busy LA doctor had made an exception for us, so that my wife could get in to see him

Today, on all of these connecting disconnecting roads, highways and byways in LA

I believe the doctor may becoming somewhat tired of us because we are always rushing in to see him for anything that bothers us concerning the baby and/or my pregnant wife ………this is for the both of us our first little precious baby, ya ga may..ah hope tha ya do.

*Los Angeles once had a very good public transportation system before it was systematically destroyed by the expanding U.S. car industry with local political help, in order to be able to sell many more cars to the public.

©Gregory Gilbert Gumbs