Bus from Calgary to Vancouver

When the bus started up, grumbling all low like most heavy greyhounds, she started up too. Seemingly unprovoked, she started swearing at a man she did not know on the bus. She spat the ugliest words in his face, you wouldn’t even believe, and everyone rolled their eyes and thought, “There always has to be one crazy on a fifteen hour bus ride, doesn't there.”

She was maybe 35 and dressed well, all in black, but had sunken cheeks and jagged movement. I guess you could say something seemed off about her, and not just because she was yelling 'nigger' at a total stranger. The bus driver eventually got her to sit down though, and everyone sank back into their seats and sleepy minds.

Five hours later we stopped at a rest stop, with a backdrop of spiked, snow-topped mountains against the bright, midday sky. People lounged on the grass, ate corn nuts from the gas station, and tried to remember not to make eye contact with the "crazy lady." I guess I forgot to do that because she came and sat down beside me and told me she was sorry.

She told me she thought the man had said that she smelled, but then realized he could have been talking about someone else, that she was being irrational.

“I’m not well,” she said. “I shouldn’t be travelling. I’m too sensitive.”

It turns out she has AIDS and was only on the long bus trip to Vancouver to visit her ex-boyfriend in the hospital. He's had 11 heart attacks since September. She told me it's hard for to travel, and that she's only left her apartment about 20 times this year.

“The nurses think it’s ok I don’t leave my apartment,” she said. “They say it’s good that I don’t go out and get drunk or do drugs like lots of the other people. But I’ve forgotten how to socialize. I take everything so personally.”

We walked over to the road together and stood side by side, looking at the mountains. She had a cigarette in her hand, and I had a bottle of water in mine.

“I only have three years or so to live,” she said. “I wish I could apologize to that guy, but the bus driver told me to leave it alone.”

We stared at the mountains, and they stared back at us, and then it was time to get back on the bus.

As we walked back she put her mp3 earbuds in her ears and looked at me with a smile,

“I just LOVE Elvis.”

An Ode to the Old

Getting sick and losing my voice this week really made me slow down.
Sometimes you run so fast, and run so fast, and it feels good because you think "Wow I didn't know I could run like this, I'm invincible!"
But then you stop, and your body aches with all the world's exhaustion crammed into your pencil thin bones.
And when you're holding your bones in your arms you think back to yourself running and realize you don't even recognize that person.
Running so fast, you got lost in a current.

I still can't decide how I feel about the current.
On one hand, it feels free and wild to run so fast you can only be fueled by intuition. The problem is that when you run fast in life, the intuition that is guiding you is less yours than it is the current's.
I guess we just have to be sure we dive into a current we believe in before we sprint.

Maybe that is why people build nests, especially as they get older. Our lives get busier and crazier, so we build up walls of things and people we love to keep us on the right track as life sweeps us away.


I want to post a conversation between an elderly a couple that I overheard yesterday. Listening to old people talk always makes me zoom out and look at life stripped to its core. Life is actually incredibly simple, they make me realize. Us young people especially just like to spin webs and webs of mess around everything. Funny we are.

Here is the conversation:

Man: Were you serious when you said I should quit chess?
Woman: ...What?
Man: Were you...serious when you said I should quit chess?
Woman: I didn't say quit. Just don't overdo it

*pause*

Woman: Best soup I ever had.
Man: What's it called?
Woman: Potato
Man: That's a good soup

*long pause*

Man: Funny you like sermons but you don't like lectures

*pause*

Woman: When I turn on the radio, at any given moment I get an ad. On Sunday I heard one that was completely insane.
Man: *laughs* I saw an ad on the television the other day that said it would make you look younger.
both: *laugh*
Man: Well it's 25 to 3, there goes our bus.
Woman: bye bye bus

*Man turns to me and says:*

Man: Does that thing have internet? I always imagined you would have to have a lot of paraphernalia to get internet. My computer is pre-internet, from 1991. But it's pretty good. I can't have a cell phone though. My doctor says no one with a weak heart should use a cell phone. I don't think anyone with a ...strong heart should use a cell phone haha!

Woman: I think that's a bunch of baloney.




photo from: old-photos.blogspot.com