Mass Transit Excursions (and other musings)

A couple days ago a co-worker asked me, “why don’t you drive a car ?” (I haven’t owned a car in five years) ……

     Yesterday I started to leave the house around 3 but had to wait because cats and dogs started to fall in buckets just as I opened the door. The delay worked out because for the next hour (yes, in a city of almost 5 million people, that would be Atlanta, the bus that comes past my house only runs about every hour on Saturday’s .. but like I said , it was cool because… ) I just listened to some music and uploaded Poe on to my IPod (which I use to detest.. the Ipod, I mean)…. I finally make my way on to the bus a little after 4. It’s still raining but only something close to a mist. Can you think of a day when it was pouring and there wasn’t a hint of yellow light, but you looked up at the sky and knew that before evening the clouds would yield to a fantastic sunset? That was yesterday . I was excited …. I took my usual seat in the back of the bus, on the right of course, and cracked the window so the wind could blow on my face. A couple of stops down a young lady who I’ve shared many a ride with gets on …. “had to get out of the house, huh?” …. She’s like me. Even if there isn’t a point to it, she’ll get out of the house and just “Go” (which happens to be the name of a great book written by a dude that use to hang with …. check it out)…..

     We get to the Doraville station around whenever and my game of train roulette starts…. It’s a game between me and fate. I walk up and down the platform trying to anticipate what compartment of the train I want to ride on and where it will stop and then, once I’ve decided where, commit myself to that spot. Why? Because if I move something that may happen won’t. Something that shouldn’t may. A person I should meet I won’t. Someone I shouldn’t I will… I know, it’s stupid and I’ve broken my own rule more times than I’ve kept it. But it’s exciting to play with chance while realizing at the same time, in some sense, you’re not really a player at all…..

     Anywho, I’m on the train heading south to the airport (no, I’m not going to watch the planes take off… I have to get a new metro card and the store at the airport is the only one open after 5pm). After switching seats several times on that part of the train the universe has chosen for me I come across this fine upstanding citizen …. passed out drunk on the seat in front of me.

     Oh, and if it looks like he was snoring, he was, LOUDLY . What type of a day did he have? How did he even make it on to the train without falling onto the tracks ? Ahhh, life’s unanswerable questions…. But he looked at peace. Who am I or anyone to disturb his rest ….

     When I get to the store in the train station it takes like forever for the attendant to access my records in order to see that I still have a $13.00 balance on my defective card. I offer the receipt as proof but she just looks at it for all of .5 seconds and hands it back to me. After several more minutes she asks me to step to the side so she can assist the next customers. Apparently there was a glitch with the NSA/CIA/FBI interface and systems analyst are on their way to diagnosis the issue (or something close to that) …. 10 minutes … 15 minutes later and I finally have my card. Before I get back on the train I decide to use the facilities. On the way the PA voice announces that the current terrorist threat level is at “orange” (for a million bucks I bet not one of you can tell me what an “orange” threat level means). Coincidence? Maybe? Maybe not? But it’s time me and my new metro card (called a Breeze card here … don’t laugh, some marketing guy who makes a gazilion bucks was paid good tax payer money to come up with that) to gets a goin….

    The part of Atlanta that you pass through on your way back from the airport is old, rusty and looks like the same people have been there forever. It’s beautiful. Atlanta has become one of those cities where anything that is older than five minutes is being torn down for something new. One big giant suburb. Nothing that gives any hint of the city’s history will be allowed to stand, it seems. But this part of Atlanta has been left to itself. I guess gentrification and jet fumes ain’t gonna be neighbors anytime soon…..  There use to be a warehouse nearby, below the tracks on the right (long since out of use), just before you get to downtown, that had painted on the roof “MORE LIKE HOMELAND INSECURITY”. I don’t see it anymore. The jet fumes are a little less in this area ….  there is what looks like a garage with graffiti on it but , strangely, instead of cars, there are too old glue horses eating hay in the front of it (that’s what I call them … do they really make glue out of them?) …. from here it’s a straight shot back to Doraville …

     When I get there I can’t decide whether I want to catch the 104 and walk down the street back to my house or be lazy, get back on the train for one station and catch the slower 103 that let’s me off back in front of my complex … A lady on the platform is having a very intense argument with the opposite wall, the  wind or a person only she can see … I’m staying … I get on the 104 and it’s several minutes before we leave when this lady gets on that could not be …. let’s put it this way, what ever constitutes legal dwarfism she’s about a few inches taller than that (I exaggerate, but you get the point) … she was beautiful … absolutely so … I started to click a picture of her but decide that that would be rude (you have to be passed out and in no way able to give consent for that to be acceptable) …. I’m not the only one that notices how beautiful she is … I catch her look my way a couple times as if she wanted to say something … I imagine myself asking her out but then I think “6′1″ and 5′2″ ? maybe not ” …. I know, I’m shallow …..

     I’m about to get off the bus when I notice this :

…. a polaroid. What a funny place for it … almost like it was positioned for maximum artistic effect … it’s of a little girl on what looks like her birthday. There are people in the background but she is the only one looking into the camera, her and the person taking it the only ones who will ever share whatever instant in time the photo was taken. A window into their life, nudged into a bus window, framing the life passing by outside of it…..

     It’s my stop. It looks like it’s everyone else’s too because almost everyone gets off, including that nice looking woman I mentioned earlier (I should have took her picture… No! I should have said , “hi”)…I’m starving. My day ends (or just about) with a visit to Giant Panda for some wings. Imagine, a “black” kid from Pittsburgh getting Buffalo wings cooked by Latinos at an Asian restaurant; I love my neighborhood …. I’m walking up my drive way now. It’s humid and misty. It’s quiet. And the crickets say “hello” in the night air …

     Emerson said it best, “Give me health and a day and I will make the pomp of emperors seem ridiculous”..

I hope that answers your question, Irene.