A Series of Encounters on the Bus

A man sat next to me on the bus. It was evening, and I was reading The French Lieutenant’s Woman on the way home from work. The man’s large stature filled his seat, nudging against my side. I was at the window; he was at the aisle.

“That’s a fantastic book.” He pointed at The French Lieutenant’s Woman.

“It’s pretty good so far.”

“I read once that men cramp and crowd women on the bus. Ever since, I’ve tried to be more conscious of it. Are you okay? Do you have enough space?” I was a bit cramped but wanted to be polite, so I just said ‘you’re fine’ and kept reading. He continued to bring it up as we rode along, “Still doing ok?” Neither of us had moved a bit.

He asked so much that for a brief moment, I thought he might be coming on to me, but I think he was just being nice, and I appreciate that.

This morning, I got on the bus and sat next to a man. In Pennsylvania, I would have said this man was in his 60s, but somehow, everyone looks younger out here, so he was probably in his 70s. He was sitting at the window reading the newspaper. When I sat down next to him, he didn’t move or even look up. I peered over his shoulder at the paper—an image of a squatting drag queen showed under “theatre”. The man had both pages of the newspaper open and splayed before him; his legs were spread with his bag on the floor between them. I awkwardly leaned into the seat to stay sitting on it. He got off three stops later, beckoning me to stand so that he could leave.

On the way home, I was rushing. I don’t know why I’m always rushing, but as I neared the bottom of the escalator, I noticed that the man in front of me was blind, using a cane to feel for the step. I didn’t know what to do; what is the appropriate interaction?

As I stepped onto the escalator, we were nearly next to each other. He stepped to the right, and I began to walk up the escalator, as I usually do.

“Hello!” he said as I stood with my foot on the next step. I felt like I had been busted.

“Hi.” I replied.

“I am looking for the D bus line? At Pike.”

 “Of course, just come with me; I’m going exactly there!” We conversed for the entire 45 seconds escalator ride, though I mostly just said mmhmm because his thick accent was difficult to understand. We were going to the same place, and that was all that mattered.

At the top of the escalator, I walked a step ahead of him. He apologized every time he tapped my heel with his cane, but I just assured him, “That’s what I’m here for.” I was trying to clear the way, but he kept veering to the left or right. I thought it might be weird to guide him by his arm, but by the time we reached the corner, I did. We arrived just in time for the bus. As we stood in line, a polite young man grabbed the blind man by the arm and said, “You go ahead, sir,” and guided him up the step to the bus.

My pass wouldn’t work; as I tapped the box, it read “Error, try again” but three times it declined.

“It’s not you, it’s me,” said the bus driver, “Go ahead.” He was awfully chipper for 7am on a Tuesday.

At 2^nd and Broad, an older lady slowly made her way down the steps with her walker.

“Don’t miss me too much next week,” the bus driver said to her.
“Ok.”

“I’ll be in Barcelona on Friday.”

“Ok.”

As the next person got on the bus, he revealed their friendship: “She prays for me every day, so I like to treat her special.”

A few stops later, a man got on the bus and asked, “Are you on the regular schedule?”

“Sure; I don’t know what that means.”

“Heh, me either.”

work chronicles

I was going to document this as “life without a car,” but then I remembered that even when I had a car, I took the bus to work.

I’ve learned that relying on busses means a lot of running, which I guess is fine because, other than walking Pickle, it’s pretty much my only source of exercise.

Yesterday morning, I ran to catch the bus. Our first bus ran off the track, but when the driver when to fix it, he smashed the line into the truck behind us, meaning he then had to file an accident report. Only about five blocks from my stop, I got out. Then I looked at the time. Three minutes until my bus was due to arrive in the tunnel.

I started the run. Around the bend, my ankle turned, but I had to keep going. I arrived in the tunnel just as my bus was pulling up to the stop. Panting, I got on and made it to work on time.

When I get off the bus, I always make a quick stop at Blazing Bagels. They sell day-old muffins for $0.50, which I find quite a deal, even if they aren’t vegan (one of those exception instances where my wallet rules my diet).

The muffin man knows me. We’re on a first-name basis, even if most of the time, he calls me ‘love’. When I walked in the door this morning, there were three people in front of me. I stretched to look over their heads for the basket of day-olds: one left. Don’t take that muffin, I thought on repeat in my head. When the muffin man saw me, he quickly swooped up the muffin and walked up to register. I walked around the folks in front of me and dropped my two quarters into his hand.

“One left, love!” He knows that I get disappointed when they run out of day-olds before I get there; when they don’t have any, I dish out $1.79 for a bagel to be polite.

I smiled, took the muffin and wished him a happy Friday. The whole exchange took about 47 seconds, and I walked out of the door with a lovely chocolate muffin.

There are a lot of little shops like that near the transit center. A few blocks away, there’s Café Habits, which I’ve never been to, but yesterday as I walked to catch the bus home (an early evening at just 4:10!), I heard someone call my name from the café door. One of my co-workers was waiting for his coffee order. We stood and chatted until his coffee was ready. I then continued my trek to the bus, praying I wouldn’t miss it.

There’s a big intersection before the transit center. After the two traffic lights, a pedestrian light comes on; there’s no crosswalk, but the light say, “Crosswalk is on for all crossings,” and all of us walkers scramble in zig-zags to get to our appropriate corners of the center.

I was waiting for that light. I saw my bus sitting at the curb, so I prepped for the dash, getting into a runner’s stance, knees slightly bent, one leg in front of the other. When the light turned, I bolted. Unfortunately, dress shoes don’t fare well for running. Halfway across the street, my shoe fell off. Arms flailing, I scattered back for it. My one sock cold against the brick road. Slipping it back on and stepping on the heel, I scrambled on. The folks waiting for another bus made obvious comments like, “You almost lost a shoe!”

“Gotta catch my bus!” I huffed and kept scrambling, arms still swinging at my sides like a ‘20s dancer only much less elegant. Twenty feet from the bus, it pulled away from the curb. I slowed my pace in a disappointed puff of a sigh. Those ten minutes until the next bus really make a difference when it’s the first night you’ve left the office before six all week, and you’ve got over an hour’s commute ahead of you.

Magically, as I pivoted to stand next to the bus stop, another one pulled up. I got on, and it departed. No harm, no foul. Glad to be seated, out of the cold, and on my way home, a happy sigh left me to my commute novel.

By the time I get downtown, I never feel like catching another bus. Of course I have no choice if I want to get home. Sometimes it feels like the rush of catching a bus is the most excitement the day will bring. Sometimes I miss it, and that’s okay. It’s a lesson in patience for sure, but in Paulo Coelho’s Valkyrie, he writes about how we all have an angel. When things happen, like we forget where we put our keys (or we miss the bus), it’s because our angel is looking out for us: there’s a reason we were meant to be delayed against our plans.

Coelho’s guide in the desert says that when those pauses happen, he likes to take an extra second to try to figure out what it is his angel is trying to tell him.

I think of this during all of the rush and rest of commuting. Somehow my angel always gets me where I need to be. Sometimes, it’s just to grab the last muffin in the morning.

someone else.

Two people catch a glance at each other in opposite reflections in the bus windows. Those two people are a stranger and me. What if we met?

I’m learning that I don’t really know how to meet people “in the real world”. I talk to a lot of strangers, sure, but it never goes beyond mindless chatter: “What a beautiful day” or “That’s a good book” or “Excuse me, this is my stop”. As people streamed onto the bus this morning, I stared them all down, as usual. (I always imagine I have a very unhappy morning face on as I do this; probably why I don’t meet anyone.)

A very tall man sat down next to a very tall lady, who I’ve seen before, and I thought they would be a cute couple.

So many women get on the bus with big flashy diamonds on their left hands. The delicately hold their purses and their phones, careful not to let the ring touch anything. Even their lips seem delicate as they sit closed and quiet.

I’ve noticed that the tall woman doesn’t wear a ring. And she always reads the same kinds of fantasy novels that are always printed in the same size. Like how the large balding man that rides the 2 always reads books by the same author –Lee Child. He’s so young and wears cute round glasses, but also sports no ring. Back to the tall lady.

She is beautiful but not like the delicate women. She has a long face and wears little to no makeup. She has straight, blonde hair to her shoulders that isn’t perfect; it lays in small strands and sometimes a few hairs stick out of place. She looks alone. Like she just seems like she would be single, and I wonder if she has a boyfriend. And I hope that she does, the way I hope to one day. This all sounds offensive, but I mean it kindly.

In the meantime, in the waiting, I want to love her. I want to give her a hug and be her friend and tell her that she is beautiful because she is.

When one of the ladies at community first said “I love you” to me—in encouragement, in salutation—I froze. For someone to be standing in front of me and fully say, “I love you” –I forgot what it felt like, a friend to just say it like that and not in “luv u” or “love ya” but the whole thing: I love you.

I’m learning more and more that I have no idea what love looks like. I think back to the boyfriends I had in the past and honestly can’t say if I ever felt love or was in love. This sounds terrible because I know that I told them I loved them, but I just don’t know. I think I want the answer to be ‘no’ because if I did, I loved them terribly.

I know now that, if nothing else, love is a choice. I based past relationships off of fuzzy feelings, though I’m not sure where those came from. But when the fuzzy feelings quickly disappeared, shit got real and hard, and I kept at it because it seemed like the thing to do. But it was always over. Love isn’t a fuzzy feeling.

So how do you find someone when love is a choice? No longer relying on two people to feel fuzzy feelings but two people to choose each other. Someone must choose to love me.

As all of these strangers got on the bus, I wondered what it would be like to know one or two of them. To really know them. There are so many people in the world. I always only ever see the men within my known social groups. Then I tell myself that my next boyfriend must be someone I don’t know yet because there’s a whole world out there. It’s such a funny thing, like I’m always looking ahead and not looking directly in front of me. I don’t even know how to meet new people.

It’s all a very funny topic that I know very little on. My emotions flux on the topic of singleness. As of right now, I have no timeline, just a prayer and a hope, like in You’ve Got Mail when Meg Ryan dreamily gazes up when asked “What about you? Is there someone else?” and she says, “No, but there’s the dream of someone else.”

Oh yeah, I went there. And I’m sitting on it. 

1observation:1encounter

It used to take me a long time to write. I would need to set aside three hours to write a one-page journal entry. Now that I have a puppy, I need to set aside five hours for two paragraphs.

On the bus this morning, your average middle-aged man got on and sat next to me. He said thank you, although I hadn’t done anything.

“I like your hair. Beautiful.” Strange because I also hadn’t done anything to my hair.

I mumbled thanks with a small smile and pretended to read something on my phone because, admittedly, I was a little creeped out.

The bus was hot, and I had my sleeves rolled up. As I stood to get off at my stop, the man looked at my arm, disapprovingly, “Are you kidding me?! Tattoos?!”

Seems like as soon as I get to the Eastside, my tattoos make me an outcast, regardless of long sleeves all summer. 

my Charles Wallace

I just finished reading through A Wrinkle in Time Trilogy. As I moved pagepagepage through each book, I found myself hanging on to pieces of the previous. I hung on to the magic in A Wrinkle in Time and the way that it awakened my imagination, poking at the long unused sections of my brain like the soft and gushy meat in the grocery fridge.

(Vegan aside: despite my meat-free diet, I have never been able to help myself when passing the vacuum-sealed meat in the grocery. My mom always told me not to touch, but it was so squishy and unfamiliar--and to think of its source! And how different it looks cooked. And that somewhere inside us, in a different, but similar, form, we are that!)

I'm still hanging on A Wind in the Door. Charles Wallace is to Meg what Derek is to me. My brother. We could kythe (a form of telepathy in the book) and understand each other in ways that others couldn't. We knew each other's needs without saying them out loud. In this second book in the series, Charles Wallace becomes quite ill, his lungs weakening, the farandola failing to "deepen". All along, all that I wanted was to become Meg, to be taken under the literal wing of a cherubim and delve into Derek's being and encourage his muscle cells to keep fighting the Echthroi, convince them to deepen.

Part of me wanted Charles Wallace to die in the book. I wanted there to be some realism to the fantasy. I wanted to know that even if I could have done the impossible, things would have still happened this way.



On Friday, I fell asleep on the bus. I had gotten up at 4:30am to go to work early, which ended up being much earlier than I anticipated because as I got ready, I soon realized that getting up at 4:30 was ridiculously unnecessary to catch the bus. I arrived promptly at 6:40, and counted down the hours until I could go back to bed.

At 3:30, I made my way home. I sat, book in lap, trying to finish A Wind in the Door when I nodded off. I awoke suddenly. A few seats over, a man was staring at me. I tried to shake off the sleep but couldn't keep my head up. At each stop, my eyes jumped out the window to catch the name of the bus station. I managed to not miss my transfer, and rejuvinated after my nap, my eyes were locked in that lefttoright repeating line like a typewriter's paper roll--so locked in that I was entirely oblivious on my second bus.

There was a sudden turn and sharp incline. I've ridden this bus plenty and don't remember this road... "Next stop, Newell Street". Not one I remembered. I waited one more stop and noticed that we were on 9th avenue. My stop is several stopped prior along 10th.

"Did you already stop at Halladay?" I asked the driver. I was the last person on the bus.

"Yes."

I laughed and stepped down to the sidewalk. Can't be too many blocks. Surely it wasn't, and the sun was unusually bright, especially for my way home from work; I've become so used to leaving in the dark and coming home in the dark. I passed children walking home from school with their parents, and I thought how funny it is to be a child. A little girl cried to her mother about the mean kids at school. That used to be me--how I would cry and whine. What shamefully funny beings we are as children. I thought of Meg in Book 1 and how she would stamp her foot as if she were younger. But we all are that--strange little learners with a developing sense of emotion and very little grasp on why we're thrown into it all.

The wind has been particularly strong. As I walked, my hair tossed across my face, and I squinted my eyes to avoid the chill burn. It was an autumn wind--the late afternoon kind that brings a cold front and fallen leaves.

The only thing on my mind was A Wind in the Door. Why that title? Why Charles Wallace? Why Derek?

The past year, wind has represented a voice. At Derek's funeral, I first learned of the offering of wind chimes to the deceased's family as a token to hear that person through untranslatable tingdings and clinktinks. Dawnna and I would sit on the porch and cry because sometimes, the wind chimes sung without a breeze.

This wind is audible with chimes. It whooos and whooshes like a washing machine. It's the kind of wind that pushes you forward and slams the door behind you.

It's the kind of wind that embraces your tired bones when you're walking, silent, home from work and wondering why Meg can save Charles Wallace but you cannot.

Ramblings on Lifestyle, Operation: Simplify

I finally did it, naysayers! In attempts to simplify my life, I no longer utilize the ever-famed iPhone.

The switch was simple. In less than twenty minutes, I was out of the store, cheap little flip-phone in-hand, just in time to catch the next bus home.

Today, I found myself in the grocery store perusing a shelf of lotion and wondering which to get. Usually, I would pull out my phone and look up information about the brands and their moral backgrounds and their benefits. I gave a small laugh at my new found freedom. Yes, freedom. Why the hell does one need to research lotion in-store?

So many things are re-opening as non-necessities. Like e-mail: I do not need to answer an e-mail as soon as it gets to me. I do not need to check Facebook as soon as a little red circle appears on the homescreen app. These things can wait.



And yet, I am also learning that not every act of simplification feels resolved. As I manually punched in my phone contacts, I realized that I didn't need to include all 117 of them. I put in names and numbers and thought about when I last spoke to each and what we had said and what we might say in future conversations. I thought that, for some of these characters and digits, this would be the last I'd see of them, just memories of college and the variety of people I became friends with there--now ten or so states away.

I narrowed it down to 60 contacts--people that I certainly at least hope to keep in touch with, though I admit that most are either family or like family. Is this what it means to live simply? Less people? I always said that I would rather have a few quality friendships than a ton of acquaintances, yet don't we have fond memories with people we aren't entirely close to?

Then there are the close ones. Sorted by first names, I paused as I got to 'D' in my phonebook. Even though I could dial the number without having it officially named in this little box of technology, it felt like a big step--to scroll through contacts and not see his name; to know that even if I called, he would not answer. Yet just as with the acquaintances, I have to remember that an erased name on a silly list does not mean the memories are not there or did not happen.

I don't want to rely on little microchips to store my emotions, expressions, reactions. A name on a screen is not a face in front of you, is not even a photograph on your desk.



Even so, I saw opportunity in many of the digits that I typed. As I clicked each area code, I realized how far-spread my community is: Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Kansas, Texas, Arizona, California, Montana, and now, of course, Washington, to name a few. I am young and blessed and have many places to see and visit and go.



Every day on the bus, I look around me. People are staring down at their phones, perusing some virtual world. What can be gained from it? Of course, I read on the bus--does that put me at fault too? Still, I like to think that books are a better alternative. You cannot see the world if you aren't even looking out the window.



I finished reading Cloud Atlas today and am a little torn between centuries, past and future.

Observations: Kindness

A man sits on everything he owns. It is piled in a cluster directly between 1st and 2nd Avenue at Pike Street. He holds a stick with an attached string dangling a piece of cardboard that reads, "Fishing for Kindness."


I stood at Virginia Street this morning waiting for my transfer. I was reading and drinking tea, when I heard a sharp, "Get out the road, pidge!" A small, middle-aged woman, no taller than 5 feet and with thick glasses that magnified her eyes, stood to my left. She stared at the intersection where a pigeon sat in the first lane. We both watched cars approach the bird.

I looked down. I closed my eyes and waiting for the stomach-churning crunch, but when the traffic cleared, the pigeon still sat there, unfazed and unconcerned. The woman seemed angry with it; she stomped to the edge of the sidewalk and looked up the road: no cars. She continued to stomp to the bird and gave it a nudge with her foot. Cars were beginning to stream a block away. Looking up, she saw them and looked at the bird again.

In one movement, she swooped down and grabbed feathers, like picking up a kitten by the scruff of its neck. The bird's wings opened and shed small, cushiony feathers. In a parabola, the bird went up into the woman's grasp then smoothly down on the curb in a solid plop from her shuffling steps.

Snuggled back into its nesting position, the pigeon simply went back to occasionally glancing around. The woman looked at the bird, still. She leaned down and ran her fingers down its back a few times, smoothing over any stray feathers. A bus stopped at the curb. She gave the bird a few pats on the top of its head and, in several quick leaps, got on the bus.


A man sits on everything he owns. He is leaning against a building, holding his stick. He is not begging; he is not even asking. People gather around him, and they are talking with him and laughing and motioning with their hands. He is just fishing, and it is a good day.

Random Encounters, Part Three

Pike Place--an iconic scene when thinking of Seattle. Really? I've decided that Pike Place is the drug center of the city. I catch my bus home at Third & Pike every evening, along with countless others, and it is by far my least favorite stop in terms of peace, yet my favorite in terms of people watching.

Anyways, I call it the drug center because I've witnessed several strange scenarios on different occasions. Some are more somber. One evening, a very thin woman stood slanted on the corner. Her face was focused on something no one else could see. She had a needle in her hand.

Others are a lighter. Another evening on that same corner, a man stood with a cardboard sign, asking for marijuana. "I really love weed!!" he yelled as I walked by.

On Friday evening, I stood waiting at the stop, and a man with a beard and a brown paper bag stood to my far left under the cover of the building's overhang. I bounced a little in the cold and to the beat of the song I was listening to. I saw him notice me, and a minute later, he moved closer, over to my right. I continued to bounce and started humming "Painting by Chagall" by the Weepies. Soon, I heard someone talking, as if to me. I shook my head out of dreamworld and looked around. The man with the beard and the bag was speaking to me. He was leaning in close and pointing at me.

"Wm ou sm mrm fr s?" I heard. What?

"Would you like some nice mushrooms for Christmas?" he repeated, pointing to the bag.

"No, thank you," I couldn't help but let out a little laugh and went back to my song. I turned again, and the man was gone.

I'm not entirely sure about the legal status of magic mushrooms, but I found it quite interesting that out of the crowd of people at the stop, he chose me to ask. I wonder what people are thinking in such instances.



How bizarre, also, that in such a big city, I see the same people day after day. There is a woman who sits in a wheelchair at the bus stop and keeps a bag of goods underneath, which she peddles to a crowd familiar to her.

"I've got a nice jacket for you today," she said to a regular customer.

There is another man, who, when he asked me for money the second day in a row and with a different story, has since recognized me and stopped asking. The first day he wheeled up to me, it was, "Miss, I'm just...I'm in tears because I can't find my mom *points up the street* and I just got out of the hospital because I got hit by a bus, and I found a traveler's hostel up the street for $30; can you give me $30? One man only gave me a dollar." I didn't have any money and didn't quite trust his story anyways, so I said sorry and kept walking. The next day, it was, "Miss, I'm homeless and need money."

"You talked to me yesterday." I said. He nodded and committed my face to memory because when I passed on Friday, he nodded and said nothing.

He continued on to a man who was standing where the man with the mushrooms had once stood to my left. The man was fairly old and looked generally unhappy, his entire face sagging into one large frown. His shoulders stooped over, and he crossed his arms. The man begging had a young boy with him, holding an umbrella for him. As the man asked the angry fellow for money, the young boy slipped with the umbrella, and it came close to the angry man's face.

"What the fuck are you doing? Trying to stab my fucking eye out!"

"I'm sorry," the boy sheepishly replied and started to walk away.

"You don't talk to him like that, motherfucker," the begging man said to the angry one.

"What's that, motherfucker? Who the fuck do you think you are?" the angry man began towards the man in the wheelchair, who was starting to look upset in the way that he did the first night I saw him.

"He's my brother, now back the fuck off motherfucker!"

The angry man continued to get closer to the two, pointing and yelling, when a woman stepped between them.

"He's just a young boy. You don't talk to him like that," she told the angry man. "Now you keep going. Get on. Go," she turned to the young boy and the begging man.

It all happened very quickly, and the reason that it is any of my business is, for once, not because I was nosy, but because my bus was sitting at the curb, and the man in the wheelchair was in front of me, and the angry man was to my left, and a shop wall was to my right. There was no getting by the arguing men, and I sure wasn't going to be the one to step in-between them. The city is as safe as you are careful. I'd rather wait twenty minutes for the next bus than get mixed up something like that. Luckily, the woman, who seemed to know the angry man, resolved it quickly, and I took a few quick leaps up to my bus.