A Few Days

I booked a few days off of work, giving me a sizzling 5-day streak of not spending my day quiet-quitting a job that has no future and, impressively, also feels like it has no past. It is going to be hot as balls, putting my fancy new a/c to the test for what is shaping up to be all-day in bed on Wednesday and maybe Thursday. In over 2 years at this job I’ve never taken a real vacation. I’ve ventured as far afield as New Jersey but that’s about it, and even those little jaunts came to feel like more work than anything else.

I wish I had more time to stare at traffic cams. I discovered that 511ny.org has hundreds of them. Not all of them stream live video but many do. I don’t even care where the roads are. I just like to see into these little windows of activity and see that the world is churning away without me, self-sufficient, in its rich mundanity. I find it almost erotic to see traffic roaring over an upstate New York interstate, or an urban New Jersey highway (511nj.org also has an array of traffic cameras across New Jersey).

Across the country most states, if not all of them, have some sort of traffic camera network on their interstates and major highways. Not all of them stream live video. Nebraska’s cameras, after staring at NY and NJ’s endless churn of vehicles, are positively placid with their open, empty roads that might see a single vehicle cross about every 10 minutes. I don’t think any of their cameras stream live video.

I have not witnessed an accident as it happened but I have been tuned in to some cameras after a vehicle overturned or broke down. That’s nothing to look out for but it happens and the grunt work of clearing up these matters can be arduous. I feel like I am there, safely extracting the driver from the vehicle or arranging a tow truck for a failed rental car.

It’s not just traffic cams that fascinate. Any kind of window into an ordinary diurnal circumstance or routine can have me staring for far too long. But traffic is different from most. So busy, so many people, so much movement and trabersal of space and time.