This summer, and for that matter throughout my life, for whatever reason, I've spent a lot of time on public transit, in the plastic seats of various waiting rooms, watching the people around me eat burger king, rolling through the night having eaten nothing but overly packaged and somehow unsatisfying 100% orange juice. There is a various viral search for America in these long treks from A to B, I guess, a search that has been undertaken one too many times at this point and which for me anyway has traditionally ended disconsolately. Anyway, here are my notes from the Greyhound, aboveground, from the ground, fairgrounds.
It's 12:07 am and we're at some small stop in Missouri, U.S. of A. The seat next to me is open and the line is long, so I know I won't be alone for long. The man who ends up sitting next to me is Amish. He is tall, a pillar of a man, with a bright red beard and straw hat and piercing eyes. He looks like a figure from a book, almost too real to be real. He looks completely like the Honest Abe who you learnt about in your 4th grade history class, back when history was cool hats and good guys and bad guys. He smells strongly of pipe tobacco and he's going to visit his brother-in-law in Arkansas. He eats some crackers and we talk about his carpentry and the travel restrictions imposed on the Amish, - they can take the train or the bus but they can't fly. I want to be able to really talk to him but it's as though something's preventing me - I feel almost awkward and I can't for whatever reason transcend the bridge, and then I feel awkward for feeling awkward, for allowing this man's lifestyle to obstruct his fundamental humanity - our human experiences have little in common taken generally but everything elementally, yet my fear of seeming rude prevails. And the bus rolls on across the state line.
