The air was cool and dry, I can feel the lack of humidity. The breeze and the sun hit my face at the same time, making a good combination of warmth. Dew accumulated on freshly mowed lawn and the smell emanated from the front yards. A woman, straggling, in her pajamas, with her hair half-way done all of a sudden appears and coming towards me. Her eyes fixated to something, behind me luckily, with such an intensity as if laser beams are about to shoot out. Her arms pointing and flailing; she mumbled a few words but I rode too fast past her and the wind made it nonsense to my ears. I glanced back quickly, seeing nothing.
Dogs are barking and few people are poking their heads out the front door from their homes. Somehow they are all aroused by the same commotion that attracted the women. I stopped my bike, attempting to see what they are doing. A car comes swerving by from behind, almost hitting me; I see a finger from out the window as it continues on. A typical peaceful morning, ruined, by the crazy driver. As I stand there, I feel the sweat as it rolls down my face. I feel my muscles tighten and a sudden chill go up my legs: something is wrong. What’s the commotion? And the crazy car that almost hit me? Don’t they have any sense anymore? Thoughts raced across my mind: I should get back home, look for my parents. But I desperately want to find out what’s going on, but I’m scared. This has never happened in such a safe neighborhood.
A middle-aged man walked out the front door. He was the same as the woman: disorientated, in pajamas, not groomed. But there was one more: his clothing contained blood smears. I am panicking: real blood! Heart’s beating faster, I approach him. I can feel my veins popping out my neck, the intensity in which it throbs with every heartbeat. The man rushes towards me, pointing to the sky. I quickly fall back to my bike and prepare to ride. His eyes, just like the first women, red, filamentous, bulging and fixated behind me, into the daylight void. He did not try to talk, except for the incoherent gurgles and slight moans.
The dogs have stopped barking. The air is an eerie silence, only filled with occasional sounds of thumping steps. The breeze has stopped and the sun full brimming. I froze, right on the sidewalk. My hands clenched to the handle bar, so tight they are turning white. The fight-or-flight response is kicking in, but what’s there to fight? Innocent people with blood on their clothes? But either way, I need to get out of here. Several more cars just sped past me, coming from the same direction as before. They are crazed, like piranhas frenzied at the first taste of blood. The drivers look insane, escaping, as if something is chasing them. I look back towards the direction of the woman, still nothing, yet she walks on.
I turn my gaze around and am overwhelmed by the number that has gathered in the streets. Where are they come from?! They are all moving, in the same direction: towards me, towards the happening. My heart beating with every sluggish gait.
Then it started: a loud groan, (or roar was it?), followed by sounds of sirens and destruction in the distance. The crowd moves ever closer, towards me, towards the happening. I get on the bike and pedal frantically away, fearing for my life, not knowing which direction I should take.
Quotes From Reading:
(useful to me)
“One wants to know what is happening, but one also wants to suspend the demands of knowledge and instead savor the unknown -- or at least, a kind of knowingness that can incorporate the irrational.”
“If the open hand, in gesturing, deals with meaning -- a vocabulary of direction and velocity -- then the closed one, in punching, cuts through it, eradicating distance and time. They often work in conjunction, in law as in crime.”
“But speech is not necessary -- the gesture is enough. As recipient, you feel a wave of anger, as if the finger had indeed touched you, made its intended contact with the vulnerable flesh of the ass.”
However it is not a bounded entity over there for it includes the assembled crowd here. Or rather, the crowd includes it: there is a symbiotic relation, one bound up within the other.
We, the gathering crowd, stand close to one another, closer than we would otherwise be.Something comes alive.
Unless it is carefully modulated, speech cannot do justice to the eruptive event. Speech can cheapen it, destabilize the solmenness of its captivating unity. Speech can spoil the mood -- as during a funeral or a sexual encounter, where one relies not on words so much as the intangibilities of atmosphere, movement, and touch.
Yet the sense of wanting to be "in" the happening-something -- to touch it, taste it, surrender to it, absorb its force -- cannot be dealt with in terms of visual mastery
At that point, a critical threshold has been crossed: we say, Oh, something is indeed happening over there. An event coheres, accompanied by, and seen by way of, a collective atmosphere.
If no one gawks, the event could simply run its course, unnoticed, and therefore not become a happening at all. Without the mood, the event does not exert a pull.
There are always a series of smaller happening-somethings within the larger one
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