Buses

Strange things, buses...

Boxes on wheels with people randomly entering and exiting. I can be in a crowd and be totally alone. I sit at my window seat staring out onto the city passing by.

Moving, yet motionless.

I feel like I'm in a movie, sitting in a stationary set with a superimposed background loop. It loses its feel of reality, becoming almost two-dimensional, like a silent movie that only I can see. A movie I grow bored of and retreat instead to the beach of my mind.

I am free to wander the shore, picking up thoughts, turning them over, washing off the sand and holding them up to the light. I pocket the precious ones and let the others sift through my fingers to be caught by the breeze.

Then with a sudden jolt and blast of noise—traffic and voices—I am back on the bus. And with the sense of loss one feels when one comes to the end of a really good story, it is time to disembark and rejoin reality.

Written in August 2001 when I was feeling downcast while job hunting and traveling a lot by bus.