Thursday, January 02, 2003

When something happens, I try

When something happens, I try just to notice it and not to draw conclusions.  When something happens twice, it becomes more challenging to remain open to the full range of causal possibilities.  For example: not long ago I sat on my usual ass on my usual buss, listening to my walkman and watching the streets roll past.  The seat next to me opened up.  A young man seated across the aisle and behind me a bit promptly got up and switched seats to the one next to me.  I checked back - the seat he’d vacated was not adjacent to anyone who appeared, on superficial visual examination, to be remarkably distasteful - I couldn’t see a reason for him to have moved.  He was no nearer the door; he was still sitting next to another person, he didn’t get a window seat that he hadn’t had before… He was in his 20s, I think, with red hair, red whiskers, a red zippered coat, chinos and sensible brown leather shoes.  He wasn’t making eye contact with me, or any other kind of contact so far as I could tell; he just plunked down next to me and sat quietly.  So even though I quickly exhausted my roster of potential reasons for changing seats without figuring out a good hypothesis for my new seatmate’s behavior, I was content to let it lapse into the realm of unsolved mysteries, or at least, mysteries not interesting enough to spend any more time trying to solve.  Shortly before the end of the line at the Transbay Terminal, where we both ultimately disembarked, he switched seats again so he was sitting right next to the door.  He didn’t make any communicative gestures toward me that I could see - and I’m a trained professional. 

But then it happened again today.  The bus was crowded, so I felt obliged to take a seat when one opened right next to where I was standing.  (I’d already opted against taking a back row seat next to a wildman perched like a coiled spring with bulging eyes and matted, coronal hair.  I hate taking the back corner seat, especially when it’s next to an unwashed human time bomb waiting to blow up or wet his pants or both.  Especially both.) So I sat and relaxed for a few minutes on the way to work.  Shortly thereafter I saw Red push his way through the crowd, his hair still a little mussed, his whiskers, too spare to be a beard, unshaven, his jacket unfashionably primary in coloration.  The slightly zoftig young woman whom I so often see on the bus gave him stinkeye but good as he shouldered past her, literally bumping people out of the way to get back to where I was sitting.  By this point a few seats had opened up.  He took the seat next to me again and this time rode it all the way to the terminal.  We didn’t speak or exchange glances.  It was like the relationship one has with the gent at the next urinal.  So I’m wondering why he has made such an effort, twice now, to join me for a silent ride downtown?  I don’t mind the company - it’s not understanding his basic motivation that has me so distracted.  Anyway it’s better than sitting next to the actively psychotic.