thoughts from my bus adventure

This bus is going the wrong way. Maybe eventually it will get me where I'm going, since I asked if it would go to my stop before I got on (I have found that this is a necessary practice), and the bus driver said yes. If I weren't alone, I'd probably get off this bus and get on another one, but as it is, I don't have much of a hurry.

I'm fine with taking the long way. I'm wearing a scarf and a sweater and listening to the fucking Postal Service (I hate the Postal Service--so poignant), and as I look around at the traffic, all the other buses filled with people, all their faces, I contemplate the possibilities: what would happen if everyone in the world felt the way I do right now? Surely the earth would hum with tension.

But no, because everyone's feelings are huge all the time, and everything is just fine.

I'm thinking about a piece Mindy Kaling wrote for the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/fashion/20kaling.html?ref=fashion). The piece is cute and wonderful on its own, but I guess in a sense I found it lacking. She mentions that because she is a writer of romance her "capacity for creating and believing in fantasy is huge". I like this idea, and furthermore find myself thinking of the other things that expand this capacity. For one, reading.

I grew up on the basic diet of "Baby-sitter's Club" books and other similar stuff, but someone (who? why?!) gave me a copy of Garcia Marquez's Strange Pilgrims: Twelve Stories (in Spanish, no less), when I was 8 or 9. Sure, I kept reading Ann Martin's creations, but something changed: I understood what people could do with words, if they wanted. In some ways, I think this expands our capacity to exist. There are other things that do this, too--a sense of spirituality, political beliefs, religion. These and others are the voices that encourage us to believe that other worlds are possible and that we must work toward them; anything that allows us to see ourselves as active participants in something incomprehensibly magical.

I believe in all of it, I believe in the multiple, contradictory truths at once. (I tried to explain to Tony that I don't think the Juan Diego story really happened, but that it's one of my favorites anyhow.) I believe that somewhere, impossible things are happening all the time. And the beauty of it isn't the idea of making impossible things happen or hoping they happen to me, it's just the fact that they exist.

I guess the point is, I believe eventually this bus will take me where I'm going, but if not, who cares? I'll get there somehow, sometime.

(It took forever, but I got there fiiiine.)

So! If you are reading this, I probably won't be posting for a while, hopefully because I will be seeing you!