The bus takes me where I’m going to. If only the rest of the world was so accommodating... think of all that we could accomplish!
I really feel sorry for people who drive themselves everywhere in their own car. They’re so isolated. Riding the bus is one of the great communal experiences life has to offer. Most of what we know about people is abstract, is based on the roles they play: family member, coworker, employee. But when I ride the bus, I feel that I really get to be physically close to my fellow humans -- sometimes even jammed right up against them! -- and really get to know them in a close up and personal way -- sometimes closer than comfortable -- without having to worry about “who” they are, but rather, directly experiencing, simply, how they are, right there in front of me. I sometimes spend the entire ride inspecting the body of the person in front of me: their hair, their skin, their clothes, their odor. I don’t even know this person’s name or anything about their life, but I have an intimate knowledge of their being.
I once spent an entire twenty minute ride on a bus that was so crowded I couldn’t move an inch squished right up against someone I never saw before -- or since, as far as I know -- eye level to the back of his head, and had the time to consider the reality of hair in a way and to a degree that I never had before and probably never will have again. If ever my mind finds itself confronted with hair, whether of its own accord, or directed their by the course of a particular conversation, I cannot help but be brought back to this one bus ride.
Then there are the other times, the times when the bus is absolutely empty, save for myself and the driver. These too are times for contemplation, but in these cases it inevitably is a contemplation of what lies without the bus rather than that which lies within. Paradoxically, however, I have always found that looking out at the world through a bus window has always resulted in my thoughts boring more deeply into my inner self than at any other time.
No, believe it or not, my dad didn’t even like riding the bus. He thought everyone should walk everywhere. Yeah, he was seriously old, old school. But I like the bus. I’m sometimes even tempted just to get on the bus and ride it around to nowhere in particular. But I know that is antithetical to the essence of the bus ride, that I should just take it when I need to, and find my peace and my pleasure then, as part of my quotidian routine, that this is a crucial component of the ride experience, that if I went out of my way for it, I would risk spoiling its essence, corrupt it with willfulness.
Oh, certainly the driver makes a difference. It wouldn’t be the same without Zora, of course. The driver’s attitude towards the drive suffuses the ambiance of the route. Even the driver’s mood makes a difference. Sometimes when Zora’s distracted her stops and starts are jerky, like she’s not thinking about it until the last second because her mind’s constantly moving off to whatever it is that’s nagging at it. But when she’s got her groove going it seems to actually alter the reality of the bus ride -- or at least my reality -- as well. The rough edges drop away and everything is just so smooth that I don’t even notice the stops. I think that I kind of go into a trance.... At those moments it seems as though all is one and peace truly rules the universe.
Right, but then there’s my stop and I have to get off, HA HA!