Bus blog#1

Why not blog on the bus ride into work, I say to myself?

It’s October 2nd and I’m taking a cough drop because allergies are killing me this year. Is this how the world will kill us off? Choking on tiny particles of itchy plant-dust? Meanwhile, we imagine we’ll be drowned or burned by unrestrained sunlight.

A mysteriously large group of senior citizens gets on the bus. Usually seniors board in ones and twos. They disperse into separate seats so they’re not a cult or family.

The bus is very busy today. It’s a long, articulated bus, and as we pass through the normal student apartment area, the students appear with their oversized backpacks and blue jeans. They speak a variety of languages, so it’s always interesting to listen to them talk (for me) because all I can hear is a sense of the structure of meaning. Like Frost’s Sound of Sense.

More and more students. Many of us on our tiny screens now, having retreated into games, email, and movies to pass the time. There’s now only one pair of students still talking.

And then we’re at the corner where the CMU students disembark. The bus empties out by half. Off to engineering and computers and the technological wizardry CMU is famous for.

It’s almost my stop. I go through the anxiety of how to signal the young man sitting on the aisle I’m going to get off. What will be the right way to say move it, my friend?

A cough, a shift of weight, a pull on the yellow cord.