Riding Alone Amongst the Masses

September 24, 2008

Riding the bus in today I took another seat, one usually not my own. Engaging in the conversation that was bound to be going on in the rear seats I normally occupy wasn’t appealing to me in the least. What I wanted to avoid by this new choice of seat was not a particular topic of conversation, but rather the whole experience of conversation.

An opportunity to deftly avoid this entanglement presented itself. Where the severely handicapped/disabled/differentially abled (terminology on our physical challenges is so complex and so fluid today and one doesn’t want to offend) individual usually sits there was an extra row of seats because he was not on. When he is present those seats are gone. The seats are absent at that time so that he may be positioned and his wheelchair anchored safely. Carol my bus stop buddy preceded me onto the bus and headed for the back and took up the last spot in the rear of the bus that would not require sitting/crowding next to someone. Thus it was not considered socially inapt for me to take an empty seat at the front of the bus.

Placing my earbuds in, I heard Leonard Cohen singing Alexandra Leaving.

Suddenly the night has grown colder.
The God of love preparing to depart.
Alexandra hoisted on his shoulder,
They slip between the sentries of the heart.

Upheld by the simplicities of pleasure,
They gain the light, they formlessly entwine;
And radiant beyond your widest measure
They fall among the voices and the wine.

A beautiful ballad sung in a voice that carries the wisdom of the years in its tones. A look across the bus and out the window and the sun is coming up in its full, an orange ball gaining intensity. It was a moment lost in music and environment and I didn’t have to say a word or for that matter think anything. Empty was nice for a change.