Honeycomb America

Under a slightly muggy September sky, I pulled the luggage along, its wheels rolling bumpety-bump over the cracks in the sidewalk and before long - a taxi. In a few moments I breathed heavily, exhaling relief as we whisked onto the highway to join the swirl of five-thirty traffic. My flight wasn't until seven-thirty. Even in the thickest of traffic jams, there would be time, I thought.

Oh no, traffic can be very bad, though only a short way, the deep blue turban of the cab driver was saying. I could not see his face in the rear view mirror. The turban was saying that he was going to take a short cut. It turned from side to side, eyeing the flow of traffic, ebbing slowly like poured honey.

All at once, all those cars pouring along the highway seemed to me like a swarm of bees, each one a distinct, oddly mindless individual, but all functioning in unison like an entity working for the greater glory of the Queen - the national economy, the numberless industries, the rearing of countless larvae through school and college. We were linked - each to each - like the interlocking connections of empty honeycomb cells: one driver leaves her office early and ends up in front of another, slowing him down so that he feels compelled to speed down his exit ramp but is caught by a traffic officer who slows him down further with a citation, preventing him from being home in time to let his son who has come from school into the house; so the child wanders around the neighborhood until the son of the man who employed the woman who left early from her office pulls up to the child in his car and offers the boy a ride.

In the next minute the whole swarm of cars swerved away, offering a clear trajectory to the airport exit ramp. The blue turban cannot believe it. "It is never like this, so fast, " he is saying.

"Never is a very long time," I say.