The Traffic Taxi

I'm sitting in a taxi that is stuck in traffic, and the lights around me look greasy and ethereal in the rain. The rain has been constant--heavy, oppressive, blinding, pouring until you are gasping for air. Gulping oxygen. Feeling the slight grip of panic around your lungs. But it's a warm rain, and it smells a little like sweet smoke. Like an offering. And rain always means that the traffic is bad. And the stillness of the traffic is making things start to bubble up inside of me and so I exhale them out. The driver smiles at me in the rearview mirror. His English is quite good, as he worked as a mechanic on an Air Force base near Pattaya during the Vietnam War. "Thai people, we are very patient," he says as he gestures to the metallic blockage that is spread out before us like a string of thick beads. "We just smile because traffic is so bad. But you can't get angry."
I smile. I'm intrigued. "How do you avoid getting angry?"
"Well, you can't get angry at traffic because you ARE traffic."
I look around me. I see taxis, and open air buses, and motorized fruit stalls with the skins of fruits catching the light and blinking, breathing, eerily full of motion. I see motorcycles with riders whose helmets are like the tips of soaked matchsticks in the rain, balancing on top of thin bodies. They are all traffic. I see chauffeur-driven vans whose dark windows swirl like liquid onyx in the rain, barely masking the flicker of a TV screen inside. I see a girl in a car next to me talking on her mobile. She lets out an enormous laugh--mouth fully open, teeth bared in joy--before remembering herself and putting her hand in front of her mouth. Her fingernails are long and painted, her wrist bends like an orchid. The rain comes harder now, and I can't make her out for much longer.

In the rain, in the traffic, we are radiating light, exhaling smog, and blurring blurring blurring.

The rain inhales for a moment, slowing to a trickle, adjusting itself for its next torrent. There is a brief moment before the light turns green. Everyone pauses, leaning, waiting, anticipating without the fever of hurry. And then, one by one, heads that have been sitting still, heads that have cupped calm like bony goblets, heads that have been watching without seeing, turn. Our heads turn to see an elephant lumbering along the side of the street, the skin on its trunk pink and speckled with age, white ink spelling sacred words on each of its legs, a mahout on its neck steering with his toes, a CD dangling from its tail. Swaying in its awkwardness, its sacredness, its cruel urban status. Its head is lowered against the rain and its trunk finds a railing, finds a sign, finds a car's mirror, finds a fire hydrant. The taxi driver and I find each other's eyes for a sympathetic blink before looking once again at the elephant.

It is traffic.