Friday, February 17, 2012

Life Imitates Bus: Sick Chick and Cupid versions

I like to mix things up here at the ‘hut, keep the variety… um… various.  The last post was about the bus, so this one should be about toys from my childhood, or weirdos in line somewhere, or suchlike.  But that’s just where the bus metaphor kicks in.  First, the bus brings what it brings, regardless of what you may have wished for in your naive heart.  JUST LIKE THIS BLOG.  And, one might say, like life itself, but let’s not overreach.  And also: the bus is often a bit late.  You wanted it yesterday, but it’s here today.  Again, just like this blog, though somewhat less like life.  This isn’t making much sense.  Much like life, though not exactly like the bus.  However, the bus can make some serious sense, if you step back from it and exercise a little perspective.  Let’s see if we can bring that life-bus perspective back to this blog.  I’m wearing my damn self out here. 

Tuesday was Walentime Day, and god bless Tiny Tim and the Tim-ettes and all the cupids in their cupidity.  I worked late and had frozen rizotto for supper, and a tankard of cheap wine.  But then came Wednesday, yesterday, and I hauled my non-romantic ass aboard my bus at buttcrack o’clock again for the haul downtown.  The bus was much more crowded than it should have been, for which I blame myself, having just blogged that it’s usually empty when I board and I can take my favorite seat every time.  Well, not this time, because the *good* seat was already taken by some selfish wanktwaddle.  Instead, I had to take, not even my old favorite seat, but the seat *across* from my old favorite seat.  Which wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but I figured it might get worse anyway.  And then it did. 

Things got crowdeder, and then more so.  Pretty soon the damn bus was packed, and we were still way out in the outer Richmond.  Old ladies were standing up; tottering liverspotted men in furry hats were swaying alarmingly from hand-straps all up and down the aisle.  I didn’t get up for any of them, though, because they were not really right in front of me.  Right in front of me were some fairly well-favored young women, and I was - I admit it - okay with that.  I had my funky Grant Green mix in my earbuds, my notebook was open on my lap, and a bunch of well-tailored skirts filled my immediate visual range.  Mornings have started on less promising notes.

Right at my left knee stood a tall, lithe woman in her 20s, wearing snug, costly-looking blue jeans and a nice coat.  Her skin was creamy and without blemish, and her features were patrician.  Her hair was thick and full, hanging with prep school straightness down her perfect-posture back.  I really got a strong vibe from her: no one on that bus was quite authorized to appreciate her loveliness.  So I only snuck glances as I wrote in my book.  I really didn’t care much about her anyway, but if someone beautiful is going to take up space in my immediate vicinity, I rather prefer them not to make me feel actively inadequate.  I’d get over it, though.  I’m the bigger man.  Especially since she was a woman.

But at Park Presidio she actually tapped my shoulder, and I extracted one earbud to indicate a non-excessive degree of attentiveness.  She asked me if she could have my seat, because (mumble) was (humble).  I wasn’t sure exactly what she was on about but what the hell, she wouldn’t have invaded my sphere of shiny bald austerity if she wasn’t serious about something, so I got up and gave her my - my! - seat.  I was congratulating myself on really being the much bigger man, when I realized she was curled up in the seat with her eyes closed and her fists pressed against them.  She looked mighty uncomfortable.  Occasionally she glanced up out the window to see how far the bus had gotten, but her gaze seemed unfocused.  I ventured to speak to her, offering to tell her when we got to her stop if she wanted me to.  She answered abruptly that she was going “all the way downtown” and she’d “mumble gumble fumblewuzzle...” I didn’t really understand her whole answer, actually, but it sounded like she didn’t want my help and wouldn’t need it for a while anyway, so I retreated back into my funky funky tuneage and let the bus roll along underneath my feet.

Within a few minutes we had reached Masonic-Presidio, just at the eastern edge of my neighborhood.  She suddenly stood up and left the bus - still far from downtown.  Whatever, woman.  I let an old Chinese lady take the seat, and watched out the window as slow-walking high school kids and Russian army veterans shuffled up into the double doors.  I noticed that the woman who’d been standing next to me, and then sitting right in front of me, hadn’t gotten very far after leaving the bus.  She was just perching on a low retaining wall next to Office Depot, her back curled in an uncomfortable-looking crook, her eyes closed again, her skin paler than ever.  Oh, I realized, she’s having a migraine and is about to hurl.  Now that’s a nice post-valentines day gift for me - she could have barfed on my feet while she sat on my bench, or even right in my lap when she’d been standing next to me.  That would have been disappointing.  Somewhere, someone was looking out for me that day. 

All these thoughts had been cheerfully extirpated from my mind by the time I got back on the bus to come home late that evening.  I did get “my” seat again, and reveled in it.  The people who boarded around me were generally young and interesting-looking, except for the big black guy who smelled strongly of very long-unwashed laundry, and the tall sketchy latino across from me who reeked of cannibis.  But the ride was smooth and reasonably quick, and I had a fun book about bomb-throwing anarchists to keep me company, and no one acted like he or she was about to york off on my couture.  Before I knew it I was back in my own neighborhood and needed to start paying attention so I didn’t miss my stop.

Near the back exit door, a little plastic document-holder was bolted to the wall.  Usually it’s empty but sometimes the bus folk use it to distribute new schedules or warnings about service changes or pickpockets.  Last night it was not empty, but from where I sat I didn’t recognize the documents within it as bus-related, so I hoisted up for a moment to grab one and examine it.  What I came away with was one of a stack of a dozen or so white business envelopes, with a black silhouete of a bird in flight where the stamp would go, and a single word printed - seemingly typewritten - front and center: “Love.” I’ll admit it, I was intrigued.

I opened the envelope and found inside it two small pieces of paper.  On one was a photocopy of an image of a mustachioed man sitting on a stone bench by an arched opening in a stone wall; a hat lay beside him.  He was dressed in a formal old-fashioned suit and tie, and stared out into a starry night sky with hands clasped over his heart.  In that sky hung a crescent moon, and on the crescent moon sat a young woman in a white gown, long dark hair cascading over her shoulder, hands clasped to her bosom.  It all looked stilted and staged and from a long-past era, but very romantical.

The other sheet contained the following poem, again, seemingly typewritten, with which I leave you as a bus-borne bonus for post-post-Valentine’s day, with the sincere wish that good things keep finding us all, and gross things choose other folks and elsewheres to do their dirty work:

Two Horses

I thought the sun breaking through
Sangre De Cristo Mountains was enough,
and that wild musky scents on my body
after long nights of dreaming could
unfold me to myself.  I thought my dance
alone through worlds of odd and eccentric
planets that no one else knew would sustain
me.  I mean, I did learn to move after all
and how to recognize voices other than the
most familiar.  But you must have grown out of
a thousnd years of dreaming just like I could
never imagine you.
You must have broke open from another sky
to here, because now I see you
as a part of the millions of other
universes that I thought could never occur
in this breathing.
And I know you as myself, traveling.
In your eyes alone are many colonies of
stars and other circling planet motion.
And then your fingers, the sweet smell of
hair, and your soft, tight belly.
My heart is taken by you and these mornings
since I am a horse running towards a cracked sky
where there are countless dawns breaking
simultaneously.  There are two moons on the
horizon and for you
I have broken loose.

Joy Harjo