335 x 228
The picture is 335 x 228 and has a life of about two minutes before it refreshes and then it is gone. In it I am hard to find. I-5 at milepost 250.7. If you did not know what to look for you may think I’m a street sign. The state owns the picture.
There is a French guy named Marc Augé who wrote a book. Non-places: introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity. The elevator is a non-place. The aircraft cabin. The supermarket and the hypermarket. The Motel Six. The DMV. The self checkout telling you to please place the item in the bagging area. The Denny’s at three in the morning off the interstate in a town you do not know the name of. The airport chapel. And the highway. Interstate 5. Mexico to Canada. 1400 miles.
You can sit down in the DMV. You can stay at Denny’s until they stop refilling your coffee.
You cannot stand still on I-5.
Augé does not mention this. I looked.
The shoulder is for the broken down vehicle and the tow truck and the trooper. Everything else out there is moving at seventy and if you are not moving you are a hazard, an incident, a lane closure and a backup.
And I wanted in. I wanted to be the thing in the frame that was not a car. This is achievable. This is a matter of standing in a location. Many people have wanted much harder things.
I wore my bright orange puffy.
I had been watching the camera for a week. I knew where the frame ended. I knew which patch of trees to stand by.
I walked past the Gatorade bottle, a shoe, a bungee cord, a blown tire. Cars blew past, one behind the other and each one dragged wind behind it that would take my jacket for a second. I stood in the wash. A silver car and a silver car and a white truck and a red car. In the windows the faces turned and each one had me for the moment. Kid in a car seat. Woman eating sandwich with one hand. A man mouthing something at me. A man looking straight ahead.
PEDESTRIAN ON ROADWAY. USE CAUTION.
Two minutes and the picture refreshed
and there I was.
335 x 228
I picked up the bungee cord. I put it in my pocket. It’s a good bungee cord.
Two minutes and the picture refreshed
I ate a granola bar. Oats and honey.
Then the air brakes. He pulled onto the shoulder ahead of me and put his hazards on and cranked the window down.
Him: Hey man. You okay?
Me: Yes.
Him: You okay?
Me: We are occupying the non-place.
I pointed up at the camera.
Him: Okay. You can’t be here. Do you need a ride?
I considered this. I looked at my phone. The traffic camera was pulled up. I took a screenshot while he watched me.
The state owns the picture. There is a building where the pictures go. An office in Shoreline or Olympia with a wall of monitors and a person in a chair and the monitors cycling through the cameras, and someone watching the one that matters. A collision, a jackknife on the pass. Right now the one that matters is a truck on the shoulder with its hazards on and a man on the other side who is fourteen pixels tall. 335 x 228
No I don’t need a ride.
He put the window up. The air brakes hissed again and he pulled out and got up to speed and was gone into the traffic.
I ate the other granola bar. They come two to a package.
Two minutes and the picture refreshed
I walked back down the on ramp.
Two minutes and the picture refreshed
