I stopped at the red light even though there was no traffic as far as I could see in every direction. The sun was about to come up, people were still asleep, and no one would know if I pedaled through the intersection, but I decided to wait, to enjoy the scenery until the light turned green. After all, I wasn’t going anywhere in particular. I was just kind of riding around. Aren’t traffic lights also part of the journey, a neighborhood sight as worthy as birdsong to behold and savor?
Rings of lights populate the world, street corner by street corner, so familiar they’re invisible. Mostly we just use the lights for the information they tell us – stop, go slow, go. When they show us arrows, we follow the arrows. They point away from themselves. When they show us redness, we wait. We never savor the redness, despite its luminous richness. We study the illuminated canisters only for their symbolism, not for the beauty of the canisters themselves.
I stood over the frame of my bike, straddling it on tiptoes, as one set of light turned from green to yellow to red and another turned from red to green. The simple movie of it felt magical. In my thirty-seven years on this planet, it was like I had never seen traffic lights before. “Strings of street lights, even stop lights blink a bright red and green.” Traffic lights and Christmas trees wear the same colors.