How often in a day are you confronted by the fact that there's something more than just what's in front of your face? I find myself backed into a corner by this on the regular. My throat tightens up and my mind races to come up with an explanation that will make the pins and creeping static at the base of my brain away, but nothing ever comes to me.
I ride on public transportation. I like to tell myself it's for both the exercise and to help the environment, but I know it's the only feasible choice with my money managing skills. That's okay though. I get to see a million faces. Many times I'll see the same people get on and off the bus. The route I take downtown goes through what can't really be called a retirement home and can't be called a ward. It's both and neither because during the day these lingering souls disperse and work awful retail jobs. Greeting at Wal-Mart, bagging, slinging world weary smiles at screaming toddlers and collagen packed mid thirties mothers who don't bat an eye. Some of these old people get on the bus. Sometimes they stop coming. I don't think anyone else notices they're gone save for myself, and yet I can't help but notice the seats they once occupied remain vacant more often than others.
I used to play the flute. I don't anymore, but at one point I could. My fingers are stiff and I don't keep a tune so well now, and I'm mostly partial to quiet. Sometimes I dream that I'm on the bus with a true spectacle of a flute. Gilded, gorgeous minute etching even Durer would balk at and claim some divine work, it's pitch and ring was perfect. The bus is empty and it is dark outside. We are moving and there is no driver but this is normal and I feel fine about it. Dim lights flit by the window, as though the entire city had been drugged with some eyelid lowering narcotic, lulled into half sleep. The bus slows to a stop and the door opens and I am out front of the home, the ward, the slow spiraling descent towards an end with little dignity. Then the dream ends.
Sometimes I think I should bring a flute on the bus with me. Sometimes I just want to stop going. Mostly I just want to read a book and get to work without the repeating loop of garbled static that sounds like i could understand it if only the wind changed a tiny bit, or someone turned off a faucet in a room. I think I will know what to do when i finally hear that message. I know I will do it right out, as well. There can be no hesitation. It will be right, and I will know sleep then.
