The iPod Shuffle

The truth is, dear Sarah, when it comes to moving around this city, I rely on my iPod to an almost pathetic extent. I take one earbud out of one ear before boarding the bus, to show the driver that I'm "making an effort" to be a part of the bus culture, but I put it right back in when I'm seated, and generally try to ignore all that goes on around me. Generally.

I find my curiosity occasionally wandering beyond the constricts of my tiny music machine, but my world is often so self-contained, so tightly packaged, that I have enough to think about on a Colfax bus ride. The feeling of my leg touching my neighbor's is almost too much information, the wrong kind of information, and I prefer not to process it. Prefer to let it go unnoticed. Prefer to lose my thoughts in something less immediate. The lingering feeling from earlier that morning of Nathan's leg against mine. The electricty of it still makes me squirm. It's so distant and overwhelming that it erases the bus entirely.

The reality of riding the bus is mundane. Inane. Pungent. Dull and unnecessary. Most often, riding the bus is not a metaphor for the possibilities and beauty of this great metropolis, but a morsel of the ugliness. Vague cigarette fumes, boredom, obesity, overcrowding, handicaps and poverty.

We don't all fit in the bus. Not all of us together. It's too crowded, too hot, too much.

But these are just the bad days. When I need to be somewhere else. In Beijing. On the subway. Back in New York City for the briefest of moments, just to catch my breath, to remember why I love it here, in Denver, Colorado.

Sometimes I need breaks from my own unrequited idealism. Sometimes I just need to be the deep-sigher. I need to be the one who gets on and off the bus without thanking the driver. I need to be the one who hates the routine of it, the absence of control, of personal space. Of sitting next to someone so beautiful or plain, so lonely or so tired.

Apparently F Scott Fitzgerald took his notebook to the park and made notes about all the people he saw, and created entire biographies and curiosities to match each. Sometimes it's just too much. I don't want to imagine a life for any of these people. I want to be alone with my iPod, my life, the same dumb songs I've heard a million times already. Really bad pop songs and old podcasts turned all the way up.