Bus Moments

Warm morning this for January that is. Dead center of the month and I can stand at this bus stop writing in this eco friendly recycled journal with bare hands. Normally my digits each and every one of them, would be clawing their way into my pockets for warmth, but not today. A bit of a thaw is occurring. Standing water can be seen in the street. Looking down the road surface to the east where light is creeping into the sky the street view is ugly. Still with the air temperature hovering at a point well above freezing I will sacrifice and forgo aesthetic pleasure. The warm lets me grab this time for writing and that is something good.

Last night my dreams were tormented. From what I can remember I was at a lunch with an old friend, someone that used to matter in my life. In a very calm voice they were telling me they were dying. Okay what they were telling me was that they had a serious cancer one that is pretty drastic. Shocked I awoke and it was about 4 a.m. I lay there for a few minutes trying to figure out what was fueling the dream. The best I could come up with was that I was feeling a general sense of loss and it was rolling over into my subconscious.

In the past three years I have moved from feeling like an ageless thirty something to something more approaching old. Cancer, heart disease and all the aches and pains that creep in at odd times like when I am [insert activity here from sex to hiking]. These twinges and maladies have stripped me of about half of the good day mornings I used to have. You know those days, the ones where you wake up and think “I don’t know what I am going to do today, but it is going to be good day. I am going to make it be good.” Yeah I feel loss about that. I guess I had better start working through the steps to the point where I gain acceptance.

Oh well, on to other topics. Last night I returned to reading Chesterton again. Yes it did put me out drooling at one point but hey so does television. Despite the valium like nature of certain expositions he is among my favorite writers. My guess is that he was a good chess player. His words, sentences and paragraphs are all structured like clever and well nuances gambits on the 8 x 8 board. Each word, each sentence is picked with a view to what will happen ten moves ahead. His finishing sentence in a chapter is always an emphatic statement of “Checkmate”.

Back to the here, back to the now. Today I am riding a later bus than usual. The kids’ lives were a train wreck and I got dropped off at the bus stop late. This bus takes longer and I will be late for work. C’est la vie.

These people are real different. On the earlier bus the population has oxford shirts, ties and sack lunches in special little reusable bags. The early bus catches the frugal or eco-friendly middle managers and shuttle them off, all good civil servants dressed in grey. On this bus which will arrive downtown after the set starting time of this city of 8 a.m. the garb and the faces are a little more desperate.

Sitting directly across from me is a woman with a puffy face like a long time steroids user. She is as the term goes one of God’s special children. I have seen this woman a number of times before. She rides the bus every day and any variation in seating patterns gets her agitated. She likes a seat near the back on the curb side. If she can’t find one she makes noises and fumbles her bags and personal materials about. She will sit elsewhere but she will keep looking back to her spot. If a seat opens up she will dash back nestle in and then her world will be alright again. She will flash a little smile of victory.

Once downtown she will get off at the library. She works there doing shelving. It is most likely her highest and best occupation. My guess that by placing books in order and neat formation on shelves is the means by which she channels her particular brand of OCD into making some kind of living. She sorts books according the Dewey decimal system or some other alpha-numeric arrangement course and then finds them their rightful place. With her laser like focus she is excellent at her job.

Next to her sits the tall and lanky late teen community college student. He looks as if he has slept in his clothes. Maybe he got lucky last night and he hasn’t had the chance to go home yet. Maybe but I doubt it. His face is splotched with acne and his hair is greasy and flying wildly awry in clumps. A quick glance reveals he doesn’t have a book bag thus adding to the theory of no trip home last evening.

Tap, tap, and tap his thumbs pound away on his phone and then a blip noise. He sort of smiles, in a pained way, it is almost the look you would expect if he just passed some silent but intestine pressuring gas. Taken as a whole cloth he just looks sad and out of place in this world and in this morning light.

A man sits directly across from me. His winter knit cap is black. He has black faux leather gloves and shoes. He has cast several sideways glances at me as if he is trying place where he knows me from. Perhaps I put him on this bus (or rather keep him on this bus). His body language is tense; perhaps like me he has missed the early bus and is running late for work. He has pulled his small canvas bag that contains some oblong into his lap draping his hands over it. His hands now form an upside down v.

My bus has arrived at its stop. The air is warmer yet. Enough of the free people watching; now I move on to where I get paid money to do it.