Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond. 

Crosstown Traffic

One bright and muggy day, like any other day only more so, the traffic was as it always was, chaotic and confused, idling one moment and racing the next. The city had no locus. Roads went everywhere, criss-crossing, climbing over and crawling under each other. A many-tentacled creature whose every appendage had its own perverse agenda. Buildings seemingly had to accommodate the roads rather than the other way around, standing at bewildering angles, disjointed and separated, with the sole purpose of enabling the cars to keep flowing onward to some other destination. 

Yet it did not flow. Traffic was forever snarled. Even the motorcycles that darted through every nook and cranny available, oblivious of any law except for those of geometry, were forced to slow or halt on occasion. You could drive for hours seemingly and suddenly look up and be on a street much like any other, surrounded by cars (surely not the same ones?), swarms of motorcycles still lunging ahead, following their own logic. Looking around you could be filled with the sinking feeling that it had all been for naught, that you had gone nowhere and would never go anywhere. That the future was an endless line of idling traffic going on forever. 

In the midst of this despair a motorcycle appeared, distinctly visible from the rest because of the party balloons tied to the back of its seat. Dozens of them, multicoloured, filled with air and bouncing in the air high above the traffic. So many that you could almost swear the rear tire took air with each bump of pavement. You could almost imagine the motorcycle being lifted up, taking flight, a creature of the air now, drifting where the winds would take it.