n o w p l a y i n g - s c r i p t b i n - f a n c l u b - s t u d i o

make love to the camera



Jan 5 2001 - 4:18

East Meeting West

I had errands to run today, and in a lucky stroke I stepped outside and onto a waiting bus. Boarding, I looked around for those like me as made my way to the rear exit. I was presented with a menagerie of faces. Like the broad brushstrokes of a lazy painter, they were arranged in their seats carelessly. They sat, waiting, a brutally suicidal look of a lack of self-awareness in each of their eyes. These were not my people, even though I was an honorary member of their culture for the length of ten blocks.

The bus lurched inefficiently forward, and I took notes. The lazy painter had not left out details after all: A large, smiling man with a child's face rocked back and forth in his seat, enjoying the pure bliss of bus riding. If he were a dog, his face would have been out the window, enjoying the wind slap against his tongue. A young girl riding with her mother made the scene stranger, her face completely covered by a ski mask as she waved her hands in the air in front of her, conducting an imaginary symphony. I watched her, thinking of how fictional it would seem when I wrote it later. A fat, old woman in a green coat stood up to get off, loudly explaining to the man who had been sitting next to her that she was going to complain to the CEO, no matter what anyone thought. I made myself look forward in her life, and watched her entreaties fall on patronizing and weary ears. I couldn't decide whether later, when she reflected, she would blame herself or her listener. She probably wouldn't reflect at all, and blunder mystifyingly into her next neighborhood of contempt.

And then, down the sandy floored tunnel of the middle aisle, random chance spun it's wheel and spat forth a familiar face. She shot at me and asked whether I knew who she was. I admitted that I knew her face, and just that, and drew that recognition around me like a shield, shrinking the size of this bus universe down to the few feet that we occupied together.

We caught up quickly, as I would be departing in a few minutes. She told me of her grad studies in Chinese theology. I told her of my studies in Television. We smiled, appreciating fate's decision to inconsequentially throw us against one another.

It wasn't until I was off the bus that I realized that the CTA acted as a conduit for the moment, bringing the religion of the East together with the religion of the West, however briefly.

As I walked on, I threw a snowball at a tree.

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