Semafor

Happy Birthday, Mom!!

Sfantu Gheorghe has one four-way stop light and I can be found there at least once a day, waiting with my fellow pedestrians for the light to change. Sometimes it takes 30 seconds of waiting, sometimes 2 minutes, but it's always a pause in my walk that I enjoy. The streets are so crowded and everyone is either hurrying by, nearly knocking me out of the way or is teetering along, dependent on a cane and left well behind within a second, that I hardly get the chance to see a face let alone wonder about the mind within. I love to walk, especially quickly. My mind never works better than when I'm swiftly walking alone with no particular destination. It gets lost within itself and tells stories and comes up with bizarre scenarios and gets thoroughly into its own thing, all while deftly maneuvering around slow moving or motionless objects, dodging rapidly approaching obstacles, leaping over man-holes left ajar, and changing directions with such dexterity that contact with the wobbly toddler, the little old lady, and the pile of dog poo were completely avoided. It gets into a hazy zone of surreality, a mixture of walking and mental talking, and doesn't quite emerge from it until the pattern of left-foot-right-foot is broken. And this nearly never happens until arriving at the stop light. It's a relief, almost. A break. From thinking and walking. The obstacles and objects I had been planning my route around morph once again into people and the white background noise returns to conversation, despite the fact that I still can't understand it. Faces appear across the street, awaiting the same signal as myself and I take full advantage of this brief moment where it's ok to stare fixedly at a stranger, to wonder what their life is like and to question why they are buried so deeply in their jacket. And to not mind that they are staring back, wondering why my brow is furrowed and why I'm wearing such strange shoes. It's a moment that can't occur while walking or otherwise doing things - it's a moment that belongs solely to a stop light and to the pedestrians waiting patiently at its side. It's a moment I sometimes wish wouldn't pass. Then the light changes, legs are put back into motion, the faces you were staring at start to blur by and become simple memories. We could stop eachother. In the middle of the intersection, we could introduce ourselves. I could put out my hand to shake and ask them why they look so worried. We could go get coffee and become friends and not be strangers staring at eachother from across the street anymore. But that would take too much effort and would spoil the beauty of a stop light.