Life in the Second Class - I Ride the Bus

I ride the bus. I don't have a car, but get wherever I need to be quite cheaply, easily, clean-environmentally (no diesel) by public transportation, or my own two $17 shoes.

I understand that the rules of commuter ideology and common fossil-fuel-based efficiency standards dictate that probably 98% of those reading this post own their own car and use it every day. Not judging--you have no choice. The very serotonin and dopamine in your brain is evolutionarily incapable of letting you be car-less. I know. I was once like you...

For the most part, you DO NOT ride the bus. In your car you have a sacred and personal world of plastic and vinyl, metal and digital conveniences--a living room in motion.

You are in a literal bubble of glass and steel traveling at a velocity that will cause death to anyone you may come in contact who is not similarly surrounded by this modern exoskeleton--the car. And, similarly, this has a good chance of killing you as a side effect. Not judging--I know that blissful state of gambled-ignorance that I once traded euphamistically as "naïvety."

"La, la, la...nothing can hurt me in my 65 mph bubble." As 'Good Day Sunshine' played on the stereo...Yes, I remember...

Here's what I see on the bus...

Black people, Asian people, Hispanic people, Muslim people and of course white people. Maine is, after all, 95% white.

Funny thing: The "people of color" are often up and coming--on their way to improve this or that (first it's DHHS, then the Housing Authority, then Maine Health Clinic...); busy, busy, busy building their lives. Many are immigrants. Wearing headscarves, saris, parvadas... Peaceful people using the small amount of resources they have to find work and establish themselves here, while they send back money to their native lands. The IDEAL of the America with the Maine equivalent of Lady Liberty - if only in spirit - holding her torch so high in the air--welcoming these generations of red, yellow, brown and black faces.

Most of the white folks on the bus are near the bottom of the economic ladder. The folks I saw today are stamped into the very bottom of the bottom. I took Metro Bus 5 out to the Maine Mall. It travels by Elm Street and the Preble Street Resource Center.

There, I saw mostly white people on the sidewalks surrounding the block. There was the guy in the unmotorized wheelchair, shivering as he tried to wake his nodding girlfriend. She sat on the pavement, knees up to her chest, head down upon them, trying to weather her dirty junk injection.

The bus sped up a bit at that point, passing the guy whose plastic trash bag split open dumping his dirty underwear, used-up toothbrush, torn blanket and spilled-out prescription meds all over the cement. I peered back as he scrambled to shove these items into his backpack and coat pockets.

Then suddenly came the Park Avenue bus stop, just before Deering Oaks Park. There, a woman who was not more than 80 pounds, raised her index finger to the driver, in case he might miss this stop. She struggled to lift what looked to me to be only about a ten pound plastic shopping bag and stumbled up the bus steps. She reached around her drooping jeans pockets for the $1.50 but could not produce more than a dollar. The driver waived her on. She nearly cried at the chance to go somewhere away from where she had been.

I watched her boney skull-shaped face staring forward. Her arms were the thickness of broom handles. She had no breasts under her loose tank top. When she peered back for a moment, I could perceive within my mind's eye that she had once been a pretty and happy girl. And though she wasn't old, her sunken eyes, brown and smoke-stained skin had turned her into a hag. She stuck an unlit cigarette in her mouth, in anticipation of getting off.

I knew, somehow, that she still had the Spark. It hovered just slightly above her straight greasy hair. To It, she was still 17, beautiful, worthy of life, worthy of happiness... But I knew, that would never happen... Each of our Sparks does not lose hope--not even until the very end, When it says "Have you done your best? Now THIS is the Way...Walk therein."

At the same stop a fully bearded black man got on the crowded bus, and I pulled my backpack onto my lap to open up the seat beside me. He sat down.

Despite my spoiled, middle class, "natural" aversion to having my personal space invaded, I did not mind that his arm had to be resting against my arm. I felt my cellphone jabbing into his leg and tried to adjust it.

We both faced forward, intentionally stalwart, stoic, manly and yet benign. I had to get out before he did and rose to slip by saying "Excuse me...thank you..."

In a thick West African accent he said, "Of course, my brother, you are welcome!"

Where silence could have fomented thorns and burning social poison, wrought out of mutual mistrust and paranoia, instead, two human brothers exchanged the fresh fruit of pleasantry and continued on their ways...forward.

This is the kind of thing that happens when I ride the bus. I look out at all those cars speeding by; them waiting impatiently for our bus to pull back into traffic, beeping angrily at each other, with middle fingers extended and red faces glowing...

My $1.50 brought me to my destination. I interacted with people who are so very unlike myself. I saw the spirit of a woman doomed to sadness, and I was in contact with one of my black brothers.

Add it up. You will not submit to such "indignities." And, that's okay. The bubble will keep your body in motion and your mind in a pleasant denial. I may be there with you again someday, receiving the title of my own car.

But I have swirled within the soup of the melting pot. And, what I found there was worth a million lonely drives.