Wednesday, September 01, 2004
The Good Ride In
Nothing really starts life back on the right track like good bread. Last night I brought home a freshly-baked loaf that a dear friend thoughtfully overnighted to me from a distant clime; after supper (another flawless Gordo’s carnitas burrito) I toasted up a few long narrow slices of the staff of life and buttered them, arranged a single fat fig, sliced beautifully thinly, over each crispy glistening yeasty wedge, and ate heartily of the essential goodness of which this world is capable. This morning, more wonderful freshbread toast, with my old standby tofu scramble on top - as the Molemen said, “better than it sounds,” and actually quite good. It’s a fine way to start a day that demands, like very few days I’ve ever had, some solid reliable karma.
To reinforce this precedent I’ve set with the tasty baked goods, I’ll share a short essay I wrote on the bus to work a few weeks or so ago. It was a day that started with good karma and just kept on karming till there was karm all over the goddamn place. I mean, in the good way.
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I was getting out of the house early, which is to say, on time. Out the door with an unfamiliar backpack instead of my old beloved defunct messenger bag - and halfway up the half-a-block to the corner there’s gap between the trees of the greenbelt; I can see my bus stop acros the highway. And my bus is there and the light is green - I am allowed to cross but I’m still too far from the crosswalk and the bus could leave at any moment. I bolt, cover ground unexpectedly quickly, feet flying, and I’m at the corner fast - but I still miss the green by a fraction of a second and six lanes of heavy traffic in front of me start rolling past. I have to wait. Maybe I’ll miss that crowded old bus anyway.
The bus driver was cool. I watched him as I dug in my toe and got in position to dash across the intersection if I had to. But he just sat there, letting people walk up, one after another; he wasn’t getting antsy and closing up the doors, signalling and starting to merge back into traffic in anticipation of the eventual green light that would let me at him… bu it is a very long light and I felt like a good fatih effort would be needed to show him I was serious about making his bus once the light changed, so I bolted again at the green - but as I ran, I saw, one block up the road....
Unprecedented. A big new articulated muni bus making a left onto Geary and bearing down on my stop. Thing is, that bus doesn’t take that route - this was a sudden swoop in from a cloaked position. Eerie. But cool. The mellow driver in front of me was ready to go after his long wait at the green and as I jogged toward him I waved him on. I stood at the stop for almost 20 seconds before the new bus pulled up. I got on and found myself alone. I’m used to being the first, sometimes the only, person on the bus as it pulls out from the TBT downtown at the end of the day, but my morning bus stop is a major node on a major route and the bus is usually crowded by the time I get on. (For comparative purposes, in the week before this incident I’d ridden with Katrina three times out of five days. If you want more info on Katrina, type her name into the “search” window.) But this time: total solitude. Total potential. Tabula rasa. An omnibus that truly felt like an omnibus - one that could transport anything anywhere. And I was its sole occupant. All the opportunities in the world awaited my convenience.
It felt great. I took my usual seat and composed my mind for a moment (that’s all it took, honestly, I’m not working with much you know), reached into my pack to find my pad. By the time I’d dug it from those depths, and a pen from my pocket, someone else was already getting on my bus. I decided to be magnanimous about it and let her and her baby on.
Now (as I write this in my notebook) we’re already turning onto Market Street downtown and we’re almost to the terminal. The bus filled up completely, of course, and it didn’t take too long to happen. But even so, nobody sat next to me the whole way in. I got to keep a chunk of my own bus from start to finish on my morning commute. Maybe I can carry it on out of here and into the office with me. A chunk of bus has so far proven to be exactly what I seem to need today. Commute karma can get you a lot farther than just the office.
****
There you go, a little positive karma for this short workday. I have an important meeting this afternoon and I’m lining up all my karmas in a row, getting them nicely organized and tidy-looking. I’ve got some damn good bread to feed them and I expect them to be on their best behavior. Have a happy and I’ll catch up with you on the next bus.
