Monday, January 28, 2013

Soul adventurer...

Snow, white, the train passes places I recognise. I jogged there, I cycled there, I cried there, I was happy there, I was sad there, it passed through my memories of the city. I sang to myself, "stop that train I 'm leaving", Peter Tosh. Everything was familiar and known.

The bus was already there when I arrived. 2 mins. I did not have to run. There was nobody on the bus. It was very cold. Nobody was outside. The driver waved me in, without looking at my ticket. Great. It occurred to me that I have been having a particularly good  run with this ticket. I have been all over the city in two days and just two controllers have put a stamp on it. They mostly just wave me in. This might be because I always greet the drivers. People don't greet.I think its rude to enter a bus and not acknowledge the person at the wheel so I always say hi. Anyway, this made me feel like perhaps I was actually a lucky person, despite all the disappointments I usually have, when it comes down to it, on a daily basis, I actually meet more kind people than most people. Random people, of course. I have to be the world's expert on meeting random people. I got off the bus. There was a lonesome taxi at the end of the street. The street was desolate. It would have been perfect for one of those winter horror movies...or something existentialist....the buildings on both sides of the road looked abandoned and sad. If not that I had just talked to my friend, and knew for sure that she was in one of these buildings, walking down that road, with a taxi cab with its lights on at the end of a snow covered road would not have been attempted. What will be in the taxi? A dead body? A weird looking taxi driver, perhaps conveying ´ghosts or vampires to other dimensions of the universe. Who knows? There was no such thing of course, just a taxi driver who seemed to have lost his way. He looked as scared as I looked. Like "what the fuck is this shit all about?". I know men, I know.

My friend had coffee on when I got to the cafe. Its an art cafe, I helped out there in the summer. Had a good time doing nothing, just writing and trying to paint.  She had coffee on when I arrived and a box of luxury chocolates. I thought she had got that as a present, "oh, nice present?" I asked. "I bought it myself" she replied. Well done!  So I settled in with coffee and chocolates and we talked about our lives.

She is much older than me, about my mother's age but she is a good friend. Her husband, who is much younger than she is, is not one for conversations, he scrambled away as soon as I arrived and went about pretending to be busy. Whatever, it would not have been fun with him anyway.

Well, after coffee, I was dropped off at another God forsaken bus stop. A bus almost drove past me but it stopped a few meters after the bus stop. Got on, was waved in, again, empty bus. Still going well with the lucky ticket.

"Stop that train I'm leaving", "Stop that train I'm leaving", still in my head.

Observed all kinds of people getting on the train. I felt good with the mix of the people on the train. Mothers with crying babies, hard core looking gangsters with hoods, recovering alcoholics or whatever else they were recovering from, teenagers with head phones and old people returning from God knows where.

"Stop that train I'm leaving"...




.....whether I am right or wrong...


















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