Riding the Bus

Riding the Bus

Alone at the bus stop, Samuel L. Jones was waiting to get on with his day. Finally an ordinary city bus, #19, came along. Samuel climbed aboard. Only the driver greeted him.

At each bus stop to pick up another passenger, a different snapshot of a neighbourhood opened to his waiting eyes. Young couples carrying groceries and supplies, young singles eyes buried in books, jouncing to tunes on colourful iPods. There were couples a bit older with growing families, older still were men or women, some stiff and moving slowly. Some were spry and active on their way to ..... somewhere. Samuel could only guess. Envy, curiosity, longing.....unasked for feelings muscled their way into his consciousness. Samuel pushed each one down. He was on a business trip and had no time for dreams and speculations.

With each view of neighbourhoods, when the doors whooshed open and closed; with each chattering and laughing of different languages when passengers visited and told their stories, Samuel stopped pushing those pesky feelings down. The bell dinged signalling another stop.  He stood up holding his briefcase carefully. Stepping carefully down from the bus, he watched it pull away past a neighbourhood he did not know.

“The world is always open,

Waiting to be discovered.”

~ Dejan Stojanovic, Circling: 1978-1987