miles on the whim of adventure

Public transportation is fascinating. It is one of the last remaining places where strangers are forced to cohabitate. To coexist in all of their glory and hatred, fear and discontent towards one another. Think about a large passenger vehicle traveling along a road, picking up randomness throughout the community. Any and everyone can talk and express themselves about anything. The young and old, the black and the white, the weak-willed and strong minded. They all ride the bus. I am often more perturbed than enlightened. Probably speaks more to my character while at the same time, the environment can be too much for the thinking man.

The overweight black woman across from me talked about how she managed to stop doing drugs and now works with a job coach at her local Stop and Shop. The young women in the back of the bus talk about their plans to beat up a class member for “Fucking with my man.” The older gentleman squished in the seat next to me hoots and hollers at a younger woman as the bus passes by. The two Japanese women talk back and forth in their native tongue, probably about how decrepit American transportation is and how they can’t wait to get back to home. It was there we all sat, this moving heterozygous mixture of cultures, beliefs, and ideas- all trying to get to some place else.

The bus finds a way of finding my particular set of peeves and extenuating the limits of my ability to endure them. It stopped to let people on and off. Many people get on, including a young Mexican couple and a twenty-something black woman. Two black women in the back begin to discuss their childhood together. “You know me, I have never been that type. You know me girl!” I hate when people say you know me or you know what I mean. Then someone starts popping gum. Not just popping gum, but popping gum. I couldn’t think of anything more inappropriate at the moment than rudely smacking on gum in the middle of a crowded bus. Despite the hum of the diesel engine and the general murmur of the passengers, I could hear that gum snap snap snap to a rhythm akin to Chinese water torture.

A shifty forty something (a hard earned forty-something) black man began to talk to the bus driver about politics and how he can’t find work but his boy Obama is handling things. One older woman chimed in from the middle of the car: “mmm hmmm, I know that’s right!” The man, now with an audience, switched to sports, and on to other nonsensicals. The driver never replied, but the man was undaunted. He cackled when he thought he made a relevant point or said something funny. Lack of an answer doesn’t necessitate silence. I made a note to myself.

The bus trip itself caused my mind to set adrift. To think about the origin and the destination. The bus left from the main hub, located in arguably the poorest most populated city in Connecticut. It went down the coast, each town becoming more affluent and highbrow, insisting upon insisting upon itself, if it were possible. From early model Honda Civics and Oldsmobiles to vintage model Mercedes and corporate BMW 750i. Here are people less than 30 minutes apart from one another who live everyday like a vacation, compared to wishing for one. Oh how the other half lives.

The Common lyric came to mind: “While white folks focus on dogs and yoga/the people on the low-end trying to ball and get over.” I begrudged no one of success and leisure. The people on this mobile blight had the same dreams. Many would never be reached, but they could see it from their windows, partially blurred with advertisements, of course.

nothing new under the sun

I have officially entered the blogosphere. My resistance held up for so long because I insisted that I did not want to be “one of those people.” You know the type: living their lives online, crying about their problems for the world to hear or sharing every insignificant detail of their life: “Yesterday I went to the store and got a milkshake. It was awesome.” I live my life for the sole purpose of not becoming a cliché. How can I provide a unique take on my experiences without falling victim to bowels of the internet? You can’t. As the poet Nascir Jones once said, “There’s nothing new under the sun.” People often fail to realize that their very personal, very private once-in-a-lifetime experience has been relived several times but many people in that exact same way. Soon we will all become the cliché to the cliché- the living embodiment of that which we disdain. Perhaps there are no new experiences but only new perspectives on those experiences. Perhaps that’s all conjecture too.


Ill try to post relevant information and share experiences that mean something to someone, but mostly just to me. More than anything, I promise never to talk about an awesome milkshake.