Attribution: Photo by Connor Gan on Unsplash
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper spending an hour in a UW campus/hospital parking lot next to one of the incredibly busy intersections.
The occasion was a Phyllis medical appointment and the keeper had brought along a book to occupy his waiting time. But he never picked up the book: instead, he was completely captivated by the incredible unending flow of humanity and wheels that splayed out all around him.
The busy intersection with its bus-stop focus and travel arteries branching off in all forms and directions was as routine as the afternoon sunshine but as unbelievable, in a sense, as perpetual motion. The intersection action even included an overhead med flight.
It could not be! But it was. This coordinated coming together of mankind and machinery!
For the keeper’s incidental entertainment, one of the millions of busy global intersections functioned flawlessly as people peacefully crossed paths to get where they wanted to be.
Phyllis asked the keeper if he had done a lot of reading while he waited for her?
He told her he hadn’t read but had watched an incredible show of pedestrian nurses and shift workers and bus and truck drivers and kids on buzzing bicycles and a young woman who sat on the shaded curb and either finished an assignment or called her boyfriend.
Phylis did not seem surprised and said her appointment had gone well.
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