Mid-December Bus Ride...

After the all-day tournament in mid-December 
where from within the strangely cold, synthetic, white-walled classrooms and hallways
judging rounds, sitting, standing, eating, pacing, ...filling out final ballots - then waiting
until the awards ceremony convenes in the cramped theater
with much fanfare and zany audience participation...
surrounded by young, raucous debaters and theatrical types
speech-makers, performers all - intoning, emoting, opining,
spilling out into the dark and misty, vaguely sprawling parking lot
with their quirky-funny hats, their bow ties, their business suits and shoes that go click
the aspiring smiles, the confident gait,
girls arm in arm laughing, boys sputtering with mirth
the loud banter and spontaneous laughter of future successful adults in the making
this energetic, dressed-up crowd scene
giving way to school buses slowly exiting
the dark patch of nowhere in particular.

Through creeping fog the school bus winds and weathers up hill
on some sad, forlorn, anonymous wet stretch of road
past warm-lit houses a mere stone's throw away from the reach of traffic
their kitchens and living-rooms exposed,
bearing the movements of restless festive strangers within
those who are already enjoying their dinner and "down time" as they amble about
and on their homes, the front facade, the lights
the bright, brilliant glow of red and green and white
of encouraging, enthusiastic, waving snowmen, Santa's reindeer and elves
here and there in a vast commercial montage mystery of humankind's fantasy wonderland of winter
adorning the trees and porches to mark what "everyone" here calls their "favorite season"
making their mad rush for the 25th...
for yuletide amid the dim darkened north
And we, the bus passengers, bathed in perfect darkness
enveloped by the nighttime such as to feel our own oblivion,
but not so much as to note the sad terror of being completely forgotten
draw down (literally sink) into a state of hypnotic repose.

It is strange to lose one's ego at such moments
as when your bodily frame is somehow merged
with the rumble and hum of a bus engine
as if no one knew at all you were there
(or were ever anywhere before that or would be somewhere afterward)
melding into some anonymous perch on a bench seat
this could be the bus ride to forever.
There in that moment of calm
losing all sense of self-image and appearance
or accomplishment or reputation or public glare...
by breathing you mark the absolute fact
that millions are not keeping track of you
have never heard of you, will not inquire of you...
even the whispered remarks of those few, your fellow passengers...
makes you think of the rowdy entourage that just entered a hotel someplace
and proceeded to ask for towels and ice and a king-size bed...
while calmly you sit, forgetful of yourself because others are preoccupied
and by some miracle, this does not induce in you a panic attack
or that moment of terror - that usually you encounter at this dim-lit time of year

How strangely calm, how perfectly natural for one so obscured
to ponder (for long intervals of time) the countless myriads of human beings...
that fill up this world - who enter and depart like so many tourists
playing out so many vast untold stories and adventures
enduring what for many proves to be an agony, a struggle
either a swift succession of predicaments or mind-numbing, slow-moving monotonous rituals of suffering
and what for you are the exponential, boundless unmapped trajectories of sheer possibility...
this too is the sort of calculation you perform in your head almost effortlessly on long bus rides...
It is so calming, so very uncanny to be released from your typical mundane attention span
the closest thing to a mystical out of body experience that one can imagine...
lasting approximately 1 hour and 10 minutes -
And then - the bus ride ends.

You return once again to your familiar car and your familiar self
And you drive home in traffic - inhaling somehow the same wet dark and the night's ether
And with the glare of lights and the radio pounding out random songs,
you find again that you are the exact same person as before:
half awake, unmindful, disheveled, freezing, panicky, exhausted, spent
almost panting while running inside "that someplace" you call home
immune from the nighttime's cloak that wrapped you in a blanket of nothingness
You fetch a glass of water feeling the warm artifice of indoors
You stare at the familiar faces of wife and children who stare back at you with equal wonder on your present condition of spacey disorientation...
You pace back and forth or stop to lean over the counter
this time asking: who are we, the ones who are tired from riding buses on weekends
lost in uncertainty, clutching for answers...