Archives for January, 2007

The man sitting next to me on the bus takes his glasses-case out of his bag, takes his glasses out of the case, puts them on, and then proceeds to indulge in the National Post.
I refrain from judging him. Much.
After he’s finished reading about Islamists, holy wars, and weapons of mass destruction, he carefully folds his paper and tucks it into his bag, puts away his glasses, and folds his arms.

The man siting next to me and I sit in communal do-nothing, watching the nothing-scenery slide through the windows. Faded browns and grayish whites this late winter.
The bus makes a wide turn and we swing together around the corner: almost there.

And he is looking sideways at my bag now, the man sitting next to me. At the red button standing out against the tan of my messenger bag, now sitting innocuously enough on my lap, un-ticking and resolutely bomb-free.
But of course, this man sitting next to me, he’s near-sighted.
So with the bus now pulling up to the station, he slides his gold-rimmed glasses back on and peers at my button without turning his head, his eyeballs straining to make out what it is that defines this lurking Islamofascist sitting beside him.

I am laughing, getting off the bus.

Listening: Talib Kweli: Lonely People (feat LaToiya Williams and The Beatles)

I once had to make an important decision and having made it, I found I could not say it out loud. And not saying it out loud was tantamount to making no decision, to succumbing to the way things were going, which was all wrong.
When I did say it out loud, it was just one word, just one little, broken No, but it took about a life and a half to get from the back of my throat to just outside my lips.
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It is 8:45AM, three days into the new year, and I am sitting here at a dusty library computer, on a stained swivel seat, instead of in class, preparing to tell you why it is I hate York so much. And right now, I do. In a particularly dull, shell-shocked kind of way.
And this keyboard is making this difficult to do, being a clunky, uncompromising keyboard, for all its shiny black plasticness.
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