I love that he just has us sit there and write.
I always used to be afraid of the bus.
As a kid, I watched action-packed movies over my dad's shoulder and was awed by tense chase scenes with impressive explosions. These explosions frequently seemed to be the result of a bus being hijacked by a villian who blew the driver's head off moments before the fatal crash. Water sometimes played a role of sorts, too. The nut-job would shoot the driver, the bus would crash, the crash would cause an explosion, and then the bus would roll and dive - in slow motion - into raging waters. Some finale.
To say the least, I wasn't pleased to discover that I was expected to take the public bus home from school one day.
I remember sitting at the bus stop about fifty yards off Highway 68 rush-hour traffic. The sun glared at me and fried my cheeks as insects hummed in the clover at my feet. I nervously clutched a dollar bill in my clammy, overzealous hands. As the bus pulled up, I unenthusiastically followed my sister up the wobbling steps.
The inside of the bus wasn't as sketchy as I had anticipated. Sure, there was another rowdy bunch of high schoolers sitting in the back, but other than that I remained pleasantly unfazed.
The driver even cheerfully flicked on the air conditioner to ease the vicious stare of the sun as we sat on colorful, over-stuffed seats.
Since then I've developed quite a relationship with those public busses. Sure, they smell a little funny sometimes, or a mumbling lunatic will sit behind me and tell me that Jesus loves me and could I please spare some peanuts, but I no longer fear those large, fast-moving machines or the passengers within. (I don't even know Spanish, but I could just about recite what the warm voice says on the recording.)
The bus is jolly, I suppose. People are generally polite to each other, realizing that they may never see one another again. I remember a very talkative Italian woman sitting next to me and educating me about cherry pie, and a large black man who told me about his activism in the sixties after he noticed my book about Abbie Hoffman, and the couple with horrible smokers' coughs who always have paper cups of coffee and wish you happy holidays and call you "brother" or "sister" and act like they've known you forever even though they don't even know your name.
The bus makes me feel very Kerouac or Ginsberg or Cassady, like I'm really supposed to be a hobo on a freight boxcar, lying next to a bunch of other hobos and being totally in the moment and with these people and engaged en route.
After all, we are simply together and quiet and mellow for those few moments, staring out the window and watching our breath fog the spotted glass.
As a kid, I watched action-packed movies over my dad's shoulder and was awed by tense chase scenes with impressive explosions. These explosions frequently seemed to be the result of a bus being hijacked by a villian who blew the driver's head off moments before the fatal crash. Water sometimes played a role of sorts, too. The nut-job would shoot the driver, the bus would crash, the crash would cause an explosion, and then the bus would roll and dive - in slow motion - into raging waters. Some finale.
To say the least, I wasn't pleased to discover that I was expected to take the public bus home from school one day.
I remember sitting at the bus stop about fifty yards off Highway 68 rush-hour traffic. The sun glared at me and fried my cheeks as insects hummed in the clover at my feet. I nervously clutched a dollar bill in my clammy, overzealous hands. As the bus pulled up, I unenthusiastically followed my sister up the wobbling steps.
The inside of the bus wasn't as sketchy as I had anticipated. Sure, there was another rowdy bunch of high schoolers sitting in the back, but other than that I remained pleasantly unfazed.
The driver even cheerfully flicked on the air conditioner to ease the vicious stare of the sun as we sat on colorful, over-stuffed seats.
Since then I've developed quite a relationship with those public busses. Sure, they smell a little funny sometimes, or a mumbling lunatic will sit behind me and tell me that Jesus loves me and could I please spare some peanuts, but I no longer fear those large, fast-moving machines or the passengers within. (I don't even know Spanish, but I could just about recite what the warm voice says on the recording.)
The bus is jolly, I suppose. People are generally polite to each other, realizing that they may never see one another again. I remember a very talkative Italian woman sitting next to me and educating me about cherry pie, and a large black man who told me about his activism in the sixties after he noticed my book about Abbie Hoffman, and the couple with horrible smokers' coughs who always have paper cups of coffee and wish you happy holidays and call you "brother" or "sister" and act like they've known you forever even though they don't even know your name.
The bus makes me feel very Kerouac or Ginsberg or Cassady, like I'm really supposed to be a hobo on a freight boxcar, lying next to a bunch of other hobos and being totally in the moment and with these people and engaged en route.
After all, we are simply together and quiet and mellow for those few moments, staring out the window and watching our breath fog the spotted glass.