My Bus Trip
My name is Esmerelda. Esmer is short for mesmer(ise) and el is Spanish for “the” and da is short for day. Therefore my name means mesmerize the day.
I am sitting on a Greyhound bus. The chairs are grey except for down the center of each is a rainbow stripe that takes up one third of the whole chair. The sky is grey too, and it looks ominous, and I hope it rains. I fantasize that a storm will sweep the bus off the road, and will continue to sweep us until we crash into a jungle. I know there are jungles nearby because this part of Texas looks like a jungle from the window of an airplane.
I am reminded of a horrible song. The singer sings over a background of dramatic and emotional instrumental music “God is watching us from a distance,” blah blah blah “From a distance, we all have perfect wings” blah blah blah “From a distance we are all sisters and brothers…” And I’m thinking, every time I hear that song, about how white people all look the same to Chinese people, and I wonder if the lady who sang that song thought about that.
Anyway. I like my skirt. It is grey like the bus and the weather, but with small red and green shapes all over it, and the bottom, which touches my toes, is pitch black. The material is billowy and wispy. When you sit on a bus for hours and hours, and everything is mostly grey, the other colors become magnificent. At least, relative to anything else going on, which you’ve seen before – but I’ve never seen it quite like this before because for the first time that I can remember, my chair is comfortable. I am comfortable and so my mind is free to wonder.
I am Esmerelda!
Imagine this: A man who has never seen a bus before falls asleep holding his walking stick and leaning against a tall Eucalyptus tree, far out in the Ugandan bush. (I assume there are Eucalyptus trees in Uganda.) Anyway, he falls asleep to the sounds of Ugandan crickets. The air is quiet. The world is quiet. He is a thin and muscular man, and his hands and feet are calloused and strong. He is 29 years old and has 4 children, and one wife, so far.
He fell asleep peacefully in Uganda.
He wakes up standing beside a bus at 7 in the evening in August in Texas. The sky is filled with thick billowy grey clouds. The bus’s engine is roaring, the bus’s air conditioner is roaring, and a thick diesel smell surrounds the bus like an invisible hallow – invisible to the men and women who have smelled diesel hallows all their lives. The people are old and young, all shades of brown, a bit dirty and wrinkled and crabby looking.
Our Ugandan hero is told by a quiet voice that he should be calm. He is told that his soul has traveled across the world in his sleep so that he could see the way people are in Texas.
He is calmed by the voice and allows himself to look around – a deep and joyous laughter wells up in his throat, from his belly – what an amazing universe! To his left – gravel – grass – train tracks – medium sized buildings with neon signs – and no more than 2 feet to his right, a growling, grumbling, glowing bus. He walks around the bus, examining its wheels, it’s steel-looking body, it’s tinted windows, it’s side doors, and the backwards American flag painted near the front door. After walking around the bus, the Ugandan walks through the bus. He can walk through people too. It is a funny sensation. He stands for 2 minutes looking at a woman with 4 children. “I have 4 children” he thinks. He carefully sits down inside of the woman, positioning his arms inside of her arms to hold her baby. The baby does not seem to notice that he is being held by 4 arms. The Ugandan follows the motions of the woman’s body perfectly. When she reaches down to her purse to get a pacifier, he reaches down with her. I am looking at them in awe.
When a soul takes leave of its slumbering body, and goes and stands in another body, it can feel all of the things that the other person feels. The Ugandan gathers that the woman is tired and frustrated and bored.
After some time, much to my horror, the Ugandan stands up and looks at me. I look at him and I am unsure about what is going to happen. I don’t want him walking through me, or sitting in me, or anything like that. He walks towards me and crouches down so that his face is directly in front of mine. I can see through his face. He can probably see through mine. He smells like a Ugandan should smell. We stare at each other, and then he smiles, and I relax. He touches my shoulder, and a thrill runs through my body that is unlike any I have ever felt.
Our exchange got a few strange looks, but everyone got over it, and I realized that traveling Ugandan spirits are not unlike children. Earlier today a little girl sat in the chair next to me at the bus station and stared at me while I read my book. I pretended not to notice because, what else could I do? 2 year olds are allowed to stare. When she touched my arm and started playing with my arm hairs, it made me smile, and I wished that people could do that. I wished that I could sit down next to an interesting looking person and just stare at them. I wish that sort of thing wasn’t awkward.
In some places, that sort of thing isn’t awkward. We call them insane asylums, or psychiatric wards or loony bins or institutions. In these places people are free. They are free to laugh at their soup, and to cry when someone says good morning, and to hold their limbs in strange positions for hours on end, or to bellow and howl if the urge becomes overpowering. They are free to play with each others arm hairs, and be delighted.
I am also free to do all of these things on the bus, but here, on the bus, my neighbors would look at me funny, and then I would feel weird on the inside because my fellow humans are looking at me like that. It is better to keep a low profile, and squelch the urge to do anything that is un-directly-explicable.
Of course, that rule doesn’t always apply. There are places where being “weird” is expected. For example, in Austin, Texas on Eeyore’s birthday, all sorts of strange behaviors are smiled upon, because on that one day, all of the people with strange urges that go squelched most of the year are free to act upon them, in celebration of the birth of the world’s most depressed donkey. They dance and play drums and smoke grass and hallucinate and twirl around in hoola hoops, and wear costumes, in broad daylight, in the presence of children.
There is also an exception when people love each other. When people love each other, they are allowed to act strangely, because someone told everyone a long time ago that “All is fair in love and war.”
The Ugandan went home when the bus left the station. I continued down the highway and landed in Dallas. The Ugandan flew over Georgia and some other states, and then over the Atlantic Ocean. And when he landed in his own body again, he directly became one with it, falling instantly asleep. I got in a car with my dad and my aunt and drove to my parents’ house. Then I ate a cheese sandwich.
The End.
I am sitting on a Greyhound bus. The chairs are grey except for down the center of each is a rainbow stripe that takes up one third of the whole chair. The sky is grey too, and it looks ominous, and I hope it rains. I fantasize that a storm will sweep the bus off the road, and will continue to sweep us until we crash into a jungle. I know there are jungles nearby because this part of Texas looks like a jungle from the window of an airplane.
I am reminded of a horrible song. The singer sings over a background of dramatic and emotional instrumental music “God is watching us from a distance,” blah blah blah “From a distance, we all have perfect wings” blah blah blah “From a distance we are all sisters and brothers…” And I’m thinking, every time I hear that song, about how white people all look the same to Chinese people, and I wonder if the lady who sang that song thought about that.
Anyway. I like my skirt. It is grey like the bus and the weather, but with small red and green shapes all over it, and the bottom, which touches my toes, is pitch black. The material is billowy and wispy. When you sit on a bus for hours and hours, and everything is mostly grey, the other colors become magnificent. At least, relative to anything else going on, which you’ve seen before – but I’ve never seen it quite like this before because for the first time that I can remember, my chair is comfortable. I am comfortable and so my mind is free to wonder.
I am Esmerelda!
Imagine this: A man who has never seen a bus before falls asleep holding his walking stick and leaning against a tall Eucalyptus tree, far out in the Ugandan bush. (I assume there are Eucalyptus trees in Uganda.) Anyway, he falls asleep to the sounds of Ugandan crickets. The air is quiet. The world is quiet. He is a thin and muscular man, and his hands and feet are calloused and strong. He is 29 years old and has 4 children, and one wife, so far.
He fell asleep peacefully in Uganda.
He wakes up standing beside a bus at 7 in the evening in August in Texas. The sky is filled with thick billowy grey clouds. The bus’s engine is roaring, the bus’s air conditioner is roaring, and a thick diesel smell surrounds the bus like an invisible hallow – invisible to the men and women who have smelled diesel hallows all their lives. The people are old and young, all shades of brown, a bit dirty and wrinkled and crabby looking.
Our Ugandan hero is told by a quiet voice that he should be calm. He is told that his soul has traveled across the world in his sleep so that he could see the way people are in Texas.
He is calmed by the voice and allows himself to look around – a deep and joyous laughter wells up in his throat, from his belly – what an amazing universe! To his left – gravel – grass – train tracks – medium sized buildings with neon signs – and no more than 2 feet to his right, a growling, grumbling, glowing bus. He walks around the bus, examining its wheels, it’s steel-looking body, it’s tinted windows, it’s side doors, and the backwards American flag painted near the front door. After walking around the bus, the Ugandan walks through the bus. He can walk through people too. It is a funny sensation. He stands for 2 minutes looking at a woman with 4 children. “I have 4 children” he thinks. He carefully sits down inside of the woman, positioning his arms inside of her arms to hold her baby. The baby does not seem to notice that he is being held by 4 arms. The Ugandan follows the motions of the woman’s body perfectly. When she reaches down to her purse to get a pacifier, he reaches down with her. I am looking at them in awe.
When a soul takes leave of its slumbering body, and goes and stands in another body, it can feel all of the things that the other person feels. The Ugandan gathers that the woman is tired and frustrated and bored.
After some time, much to my horror, the Ugandan stands up and looks at me. I look at him and I am unsure about what is going to happen. I don’t want him walking through me, or sitting in me, or anything like that. He walks towards me and crouches down so that his face is directly in front of mine. I can see through his face. He can probably see through mine. He smells like a Ugandan should smell. We stare at each other, and then he smiles, and I relax. He touches my shoulder, and a thrill runs through my body that is unlike any I have ever felt.
Our exchange got a few strange looks, but everyone got over it, and I realized that traveling Ugandan spirits are not unlike children. Earlier today a little girl sat in the chair next to me at the bus station and stared at me while I read my book. I pretended not to notice because, what else could I do? 2 year olds are allowed to stare. When she touched my arm and started playing with my arm hairs, it made me smile, and I wished that people could do that. I wished that I could sit down next to an interesting looking person and just stare at them. I wish that sort of thing wasn’t awkward.
In some places, that sort of thing isn’t awkward. We call them insane asylums, or psychiatric wards or loony bins or institutions. In these places people are free. They are free to laugh at their soup, and to cry when someone says good morning, and to hold their limbs in strange positions for hours on end, or to bellow and howl if the urge becomes overpowering. They are free to play with each others arm hairs, and be delighted.
I am also free to do all of these things on the bus, but here, on the bus, my neighbors would look at me funny, and then I would feel weird on the inside because my fellow humans are looking at me like that. It is better to keep a low profile, and squelch the urge to do anything that is un-directly-explicable.
Of course, that rule doesn’t always apply. There are places where being “weird” is expected. For example, in Austin, Texas on Eeyore’s birthday, all sorts of strange behaviors are smiled upon, because on that one day, all of the people with strange urges that go squelched most of the year are free to act upon them, in celebration of the birth of the world’s most depressed donkey. They dance and play drums and smoke grass and hallucinate and twirl around in hoola hoops, and wear costumes, in broad daylight, in the presence of children.
There is also an exception when people love each other. When people love each other, they are allowed to act strangely, because someone told everyone a long time ago that “All is fair in love and war.”
The Ugandan went home when the bus left the station. I continued down the highway and landed in Dallas. The Ugandan flew over Georgia and some other states, and then over the Atlantic Ocean. And when he landed in his own body again, he directly became one with it, falling instantly asleep. I got in a car with my dad and my aunt and drove to my parents’ house. Then I ate a cheese sandwich.
The End.
posted by Xgoose at 12:24 PM
2 Comments:
The flag is painted backwards because while the bus is driving forwards, they want it to appear as though the flag is flying back in the wind, like it would look if it were real.
Good story :)
thanks argyrios. :)
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