2006-11-14

The soft blue light of the angel

With every stop, the doors open, and up come the blue lights. They flicker, and buzz and go out once we are on are way again. I slink deeper into my seat. My exhaustion is total, and with every second I know the bus is carrying me closer to the sound of rest, closer to home. It's too hot in here, but the sky is clear and the city is glowing stubbornly in the darkness, and the bus driver – she is nice, and she is conducting me home with the care and grace of an angel.

That sound…its mouthy ohmm. It is the deeper sound of the meow my cat makes when it is raining and he is outside and wet and wants to come inside. Meeoowwwommh, he says, and he means it. There is no place like home when you're tired and not there yet.

I imagine the bus is carrying me away – that I might fall asleep in here, or otherwise disconnect with reality, and be conducted instead into the soft blue glow of the afterlife, with my bus driver as my guide. Or perhaps a negative world, with the sun scowling down in a blue-black anti-light. But we're not in that world. We're on a bus in this world, and she is the angel that is slowly but surely conducting me home.

She was friendly, almost forcefully so, when I inserted my ticket into the ticket-reading machine. We exchanged greeting and she seemed genuinely pleased with our interaction as strangers. We talked about the weather (what else do strangers do?) and I mentioned the name of the weather system that had been dumping rain for the last two days on us – 'It's called a one-day Pineapple Express,' I told her, and she seemed nonplussed. 'That's because the curtain of tropical moisture that this downpour is a part of extends all the way back to Hawaii.' She looked at me still. 'That's where they grow pineapples,' I said. I can't help it. I'm a teacher. I want people to know stuff, I want them to understand why. Always why and how.

We drove on.

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