Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Reflections on my way to work on the bus

At a bus-stop shelter, you'll often see marker pen graffiti on the glass. I started scratching it with my nails, with limited and messy success. I picked up a wet leaf, and surprisingly it came off with ease.

You can't tell a book by its cover it's mostly true. But as a ship bears flags of its purpose and provenance so do people tend to be revealed by appearance. However never take an aphorism to be true just because it is an aphorism. Just as you wouldn't rely solely on appearance as definitive evidence of a person's nature. Truisms are weeds to the logical mind.

Across from me is a man who boarded the bus at the same stop as I did. He had been singing audibly at the bus-stop, and in the lack of company in his vicinity, has been talking effusively in a quiet voice several rows ahead of me, to himself. His readable cover might be that of a person with dementia, or perhaps just a little eccentric. Both conclusions come from my mind only - nothing compels them to be true. He leaves the bus with his business satchel slung over his shoulder, just as I might. I sing as I walk to the carpooling point too.

Man, the photo for the TV1 drinking age survey advertisement has two of the fakest smiles you'll ever see. As I write this, several row behind me, the girls in the back-row start discussing the drinking age. Psychic networking?

The background song in my mind as I write is Thom Yorke's "The Clock". I had heard it for the first time on the radio (Radio Live, the only commercial station I have found any interest in of late, 100.6FM - although I've never listened to the main hosts) - it sounded like an incessant whining drone - a song I was surprised to be hearing on the radio. Now I have the CD and suddenly its unique beat has created its own imagined music video in my mind. I can picture Thom beating a bongo drum (not unlike Andy Kauffman in Man on the Moon) even though its an electronic song with a dead serious face as he wails against the Clooooooock~ It's a beautiful song.

The bus almost pulled into a white sedan trying to squeeze by at speed before the bus came out. I wouldn't have notice if it weren't for the same girls behind swearing in shock in a loud voice. I'm too busy writing in amongst the mental drumming.

A man is patting his thighs waiting at a crossing. Is it Ka Mate? He dashes across opportunistically, before the signal.

Tim Allen is the Shaggy Dog, In Cinemas April

(Inuit) Exeunt

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