Waiting to whisk observant folks past mind-expanding sights of all sorts
I’m on a bus to the Metro which will take me to into town so I can visit the Historical Society of Washington. Been a month and a half since I’ve been on a bus and it sure feels good, like seeing an old friend or slipping into a pair of well-worn jeans. I paid with cash, something I never did as a commuter in what seems like the distant past when I always swiped a card to pay for the ride. Putting a bill and coins into the box makes me feel alive, vibrant, and not just a moribund commuter.
The vistas and views I get while on public transportation thrill me. Sitting on a bus as it glides down the street pretty near always opens my eyes, my brain, my heart and soul to ideas and images and so many mind-expanding bits and pieces. Sounds a little like a drug, doesn’t it, but it’s not. Nope. Just the good old Metro bus.
We’ve got a changing of the driver now but I don’t care. I feel no irritation or impatience like I might have when I commuted and Had To Get To My Very Important Job.
So here I sit on the bus, a spectator. I love spectating, watching things stream by. Or maybe I should say: things standing still and being beautiful or ugly or interesting or boring while I stream by. A thought, one of dozens right now, floats to the surface and gets my attention: Should I worry about this? Am I more a watcher than a doer, an arm’s lengther instead of an up-to-my-elbows kinda fellow? I think I hope not but then again I think, well, maybe the world needs a few observant slightly removed watchers to, you know, look and interpret and write it all down. Ah, all this thinking and reasoning and worrying and philosophical cogitating. I’m going to just sit back now and enjoy this fine, fine view for a while.
So now I’m on the Metro, the subway that serves Washington D.C. For a while before the train gets to the city itself it runs above ground. That means I can keep on, like on the bus but just faster, watching the world whizz by. Oh, here’s the tunnel. This train is underground now so no scenery to see outside but plenty inside. Lots of people here sitting on benches or standing grasping a chrome hand-hold. I’m thinking this whole culture of D.C. commuting is an arms length experience. Hardly anybody talking, almost, though there’s maybe a pair of folks chattering away. Here in the Very Important Capital of the United States Of America we prefer our subways and buses Quiet If You Don’t Mind. Also, Please carry yourself with Decorum and Tasteful Dignity, if you’d be so kind. And for Pete’s Sake, if you’re not going to scurry up or down the escalator, please Stand on the Right and give the rest of us room to race to Wherever we are Going. Thank You Very Much.
I like people-watching on the Metro. I watch ’em on the sly since we don’t go for any gawking around here either. But I do sneak plenty of peaks, enough to get that fellow’s measure or that lady’s personality; to form an idea of what he or she is about. I once thought up an idea for a short story about a lonely guy with no friends who wanted a girl friend or guy friend or maybe even one of each, it didn’t matter. He just wanted someone to talk to and listen to and maybe share a meal with from time to time. Everyday on the Metro he’d watch the people around him and make up stories about them, create their life stories, even, just based on what the person looked like and how he or she acted. My short story would mostly consist of his stories which, gradually, would become more real to him than his real life. They would actually be about what he wanted, not what he observed, about the subjective within instead of the objective without. He would write them all down and become so engrossed with his manufactured non-existent realities he would lose touch with the real reality. Of course at the end he would still have no friends, still be no closer than arm’s length, farther away actually, to a real relationship in the real world. Kinda sad thing I thought up, huh? I still think it would make a good story.
So, it looks like I’m at my stop now. Gonna step out and visit the Historical Society. The bus and Metro got my eyes open and my brain working, made me ready for this new (to me) neighborhood where there’ll be more to see, more spectating to do and maybe, a chance to get up to my elbows, too.
