Bad bus 'karma'

(I put the 'k' word in brackets because of the incorrect usage... but current nevertheless)

In the interests of saving the planet, I took the bus and subway downtown last night.

What, I wondered, would the comparative stress factor be? I mean, I'm not fond of stop-and-go traffic. As a teenager I loved travelling to and from school by bus, happy to relinquish all control to the driver and dreaming along on the journey. This still applies -- once I'm on the bus.

The last six or seven times I've taken public transport, I just missed the bus by a squeak. Last night I managed to miss three!!! One passed me as I walked between stops, the second pulled up and away again while I was buying my automatic ticket, with the third right up its backside.

Panic stations! I was to meet a friend for a concert -- Bach's St. John's passion. Ah, but all was not lost. Believe it or not, a fourth bus arrived. I thought my anxiety was over, till I sat on the subway and 'a problem on the line' was announced. However, reminding myself that whatever time I arrived would be the right time, I relaxed and sure enough, got to the church with ten minutes to spare, soon to rise into the transcendental sphere of the music.

p.s. to last post. I looked out of the bus window, up at the sky. High above, the three-quarter moon hung in the blue and nearby, a plane flew, its parallel lines of vapour trail adding some human geometry to the cosmic. I had to be impressed.

A bit of a shock

Yes, it's quite hard, slipping back into my life after so many weeks away. However, I'm gathering up more threads every day, which is both good and bad. Why, I wonder, is there so much going on in our lives today?

I'm re-establishing my daily constitutional, which helps keep me a little sane (I hope). Spring gave me the gift of mild air for my evening walk yesterday. But, strolling back in the twilight, something awful happened. I looked up at the expanse of deep, cerulean sky, and saw what I took to be the headlight of a plane. Then I realised -- this was no aircraft. It was a star!

I felt terrible about my misperception, shocked at the way the man-made is impinging on the natural in my mind. But after gazing at that bright, shining planet -- actually Saturn, as I discovered -- for a while, I switched the sensation around. I felt again the wonder that such a phenomenon exists, that we can look at the heavens towards twilight time and see these jewels of the sky.

I'm back!

Apologies to those of you who visited while I was gone.

I've been travelling overseas for more than six weeks, and am slowly digesting the richness of my experiences. It feels as if I've lived through at least six months, rather than forty days, so much has happened during the time. And isn't our experience of time a mysterious thing? Everyone talks of it as being speeded up these days. Certainly the years whiz by. But to me it's more like taking a long train trip. There are stretches of rail where the train rattles through the landscape at a good clip, and then it enters a mountain pass, say, and starts winding more slowly, giving me plenty of opportunity to rest my gaze on the scenery.

I might be stuck in a dark tunnel for a while, thrown back on my own resources, then ten minutes can seem like hours, even endless. That's often how I feel when I wake on the plane and find myself thirty thousand feet in the air.

I used to be a slave to punctuality, until I realized I was putting unnecessary pressure on myself. Not that I aim to be late, at all, but I've moved to a different attitude, and that is to think that whatever time I arrive is the right time. In other words, to go along with it, and trust the process of time.