Bus Journey Quotes

Go outside. Don’t tell anyone and don’t bring your phone. Start walking and keep walking until you no longer know the road like the palm of your hand, because we walk the same roads day in and day out, to the bus and back home and we cease to see. We walk in our sleep and teach our muscles to work without thinking and I dare you to walk where you have not yet walked and I dare you to notice. Don’t try to get anything out of it, because you won’t. Don’t try to make use of it, because you can’t. And that’s the point. Just walk, see, sit down if you like. And be. Just be, whatever you are with whatever you have, and realise that that is enough to be happy. There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it.

You need mountains, long staircases don't make good hikers.

Kindness Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.

Life is similar to a bus ride. The journey begins when we board the bus. We meet people along our way of which some are strangers, some friends and some strangers yet to be friends. There are stops at intervals and people board in. At times some of these people make their presence felt, leave an impact through their grace and beauty on us fellow passengers while on other occasions they remain indifferent. But then it is important for some people to make an exit, to get down and walk the paths they were destined to because if people always made an entrance and never left either for the better or worse, then we would feel suffocated and confused like those people in the bus, the purpose of the journey would lose its essence and the journey altogether would neither be worthwhile nor smooth.

This was the night bus, not a Journey song. Two strangers were not on a midnight train going anywhere. I was going home, and he was probably going to knock over a liquor store.

Travelling shouldn't be just a tour, it should be a tale.

Travelling the road will tell you more about the road than the google will tell you about the road.

Life is a zigzag journey, they say, not much straight and easy on the way, but the wrinkles in the map, explorers know, smooth out like magic at the end of where we go.

Happiness, I have grasped, is a destination, like strawberry Fields. Once you find the way in, there you are, and you'll never feel low again.

Love, it seems to me, is that condition in which one is most contentedly oneself. If this sounds paradoxical, remember Rilke’s admonition: love consists in leaving the loved one space to be themselves while providing the security within which the self may flourish. As a child, I always felt uneasy and a little constrained around people, my family in particular. Solitude was bliss, but not easily obtained. Being always felt stressful- wherever I was there was something to do, someone to please, a duty to be completed, a role inadequately fulfilled: something amiss. Becoming, on the other hand, was relief. I was never so happy as when I was going somewhere on my own, and the longer it took to get there, the better. Walking was pleasurable, cycling enjoyable, bus journeys fun. But the train was very heaven.

Be a true traveller, don't be a temporary tourist.

And it’s not over-the-top, in-your-face likeable. It’s subtle. The kind of likeable that lures you in and before you know it you’ve bought the ticket, boarded the bus, and are miles into the pleasant journey before you question where you’re even going in the first place.

Henry's recollections of the past, in contrast to Proust, are done while in movement. He may remember his first wife while making love to a whore, or he may remember his very first love while walking the streets, traveling to see a friend; and life does not stop while he remembers. Analysis in movement. No static vivisection. Henry's daily and continuous flow of life, his sexual activity, his talks with everyone, his cafe life, his conversations with people in the street, which I once considered an interruption to writing, I now believe to be a quality which distinguishes him from other writers. He never writes in cold blood: he is always writing in white heat. It is what I do with the journal, carrying it everywhere, writing on cafe tables while waiting for a friend, on the train, on the bus, in waiting rooms at the station, while my hair is washed, at the Sorbonne when the lectures get tedious, on journeys, trips, almost while people are talking. It is while cooking, gardening, walking, or love-making that I remember my childhood, and not while reading Freud's 'Preface to a Little Girl's Journal.

That night I slept like a baby. When I woke the next morning I knew I was going to smoke heroin again. Everything that day was enjoyable: sitting on the bus, working all day – it all felt good. It was the best day of my life.

Travel teaches as much as a teacher.

... she's sad a lot. She's sad in the way Laura wears glasses and Max has freckles and Beth is retarded. There's no reason, it's just the way it is.

Is the journey the destination? Please, no. Let me out of your Volkswagen bus at the next corner.

...as if, one lover gone, I was opening up for an immediate replacement. Smack habit, love habit - what's the difference? They can both kill you. For the bus journey I fell in love with a woman who smiled at me. The motion of the bus made her thick mop of fair curls tremble. We talked about desperados. 'I am fatally attracted to them', I said. 'In fact, I probably am one'.

God’s purpose for the Christian’s involvement in the church was radically different from my gas-station approach. The church wasn’t merely a place to swing by for a fill-up. The journey of the Christian faith was supposed to be made with other believers. The church isn’t a gas station, I realized. It’s the bus I’m supposed to be traveling on.

Then," he says, "as my mind got functioning, everything was just beautiful. There was no right or wrong feeling, no social pressure. I believe that's what heaven's going to be like..." p 55

I realized that most thoughts are impersonal happenings, like self-assembling machines. Unless we train ourselves, the thoughts passing through our mind have little involvement with our will. It is strange to realize that even our own thoughts pass by like scenery out the window of a bus, a bus we took by accident while trying to get somewhere else.

Maybe we are all Beths, boarding other people's life journeys, or letting them hop aboard ours. For a while we ride together. A few minutes, a few miles. Companions on the road, sharing our air and our view, our feet swaying to the same beat. Then you get off at your stop, or I get off at mine. Unless we decide to stay on longer together. p 251

But those were only the headlines. The more important stories lay deep inside... p 292

So you never know when you can get through. p 179 Jack the Bus Driver talking about helping a woman on the bus who was an alcoholic

One of the hardest journeys you make is the one you take from the bus you were thrown under.

I'd seen John around—in the chip shop, on the bus, that sort of thing—and thought he looked quite cool, but would we have ever talked? I don't know. As it happened, though, I had a school friend who knew John. And then I also happened to share a bus journey with George to school. All these small coincidences had to happen to make the Beatles happen, and it does feel like some kind of magic. It's one of the wonderful lessons about saying yes when life presents these opportunities to you. You never know where they might lead.

We grew up on the same street, You and me. We went to the same schools, Rode the same bus, Had the same friends, And even shared spaghetti With each other's families. And though our roots belong to The same tree, Our branches have grown In different directions. Our tree, Now resembles a thousand Other trees In a sea of a trillion Other trees With parallel destinies And similar dreams. You cannot envy the branch That grows bigger From the same seed, And you cannot Blame it on the sun's direction. But you still compare us, As if we're still those two Kids at the park Slurping down slushies and Eating ice cream. Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun (2010)

The bus-driver was whistling, perhaps in anticipation of his wife, who would be a woman with ample breasts, those of a realized maturity. It would be impossible that he did not have, from my point of view, a wife and children, indeed, a happiness such as I could not imagine to be real, even like some legend out of the golden ages. He had spoken numerous times during our journey of his old woman waiting, and he was going home.

We rode back from Richmond decorously side by side on the top of a bus. It was as though my left side (her side) burned and was so to speak dissolving into steam, or gases. Other people may often have experienced this secret journeying with the intention of sex at the end, but I was new to it, as I was new to what Fulla had done to my skin and bone-marrow, my fingers and toes, not to mention the most obvious part, or parts of me. I could have stroked her, or gripped her, or licked her, all that long way back, but putting it off, waiting, keeping still, looking uninterested, was so much more exciting…

If you were on a bus trying to go east in a maze of dirt roads in a large valley, you might not be able to tell your direction from moment to moment. If someone took a series of snapshots, sometimes the bus might be facing north, or south, or even west, even though all the while this is a journey to the east.

These pieces, he already realised, were merely stepping stones at the start of a journey towards something - some grand artefact, either musical, or literary, or filmic, or perhaps a combination of all three - towards which he knew he was advancing, slowly but with a steady, inexorable tread. Something which would enshrine his feelings for Cicely, and which she would perhaps hear, or read, or see in ten or twenty years' time, and suddenly realize, on her pulse, that it was created for her, intended for her, and that of all the boys who had swarmed around her like so many drones at school, Benjamin had been, without her having the wit to notice it, by far the purest in heart, by far the most gifted and giving. On that day the awareness of all she had missed, all she had lost, would finally break upon her in an instant, and she would weep; weep for her foolishness, and of the love that might have been between them. Of course, Benjamin could always just have spoken to her, gone up to her in the bus queue and asked her for a date. But this seemed to him, on the whole, the more satisfactory approach.

I realize, as the tightness yields in my shoulders and hips and feet, that Beth might well have wanted me to meet her drivers because I needed them, too." p 167

Trekking means a travelling experience with a thrilling excitement.

You sometimes have to let people off the bus during your journey in life...not because you don't love them but because they are a distraction towards your growth!

Just because I am not a saint does not mean that I am a demon

But later, just as we're turning the corner into my road, and I'm beginning to panic about the pain and difficulty of the impending conversation, I see a woman on her own, Saturday-night-smart, off to meet somebody somewhere, friends, or a lover. And when I was living with Laura, I missed... what? Maybe I missed somebody traveling on a bus or tube or cab, *going out of her way*, to meet me, maybe dressed up a little, wearing more makeup than usual, maybe even slightly nervous; when I was younger, the knowledge that I was responsible for any of this, even the bus ride, made me feel pathetically grateful. When you're with someone permanently, you don't get that: if Laura wanted to see me, she only had to turn her head, or walk from the bathroom to the bedroom, and she never bothered to dress up for the trip. And when she came home, she came home because she lived in my flat, not because we were lovers, and when we went out, she sometimes dressed up and sometimes didn't, depending on where we were going, but again, it was nothing whatsoever to do with me. Anyway, all this is by way of saying that the woman I saw out of the cab window inspired me and consoled me, momentarily: maybe I am not too old to provoke a trip from one part of London to another, and if I ever do have another date, and I arrange to meet that date in, say, Islington, and she has to come all the way from Stoke Newington, a journey of some three to four miles, I will thank her from the bottom of my wretched thirty-five-year-old heart.

Did you know you can take your bus anywhere you want to go? Say yes three times with me. Yes, yes, yes. You can take it to the movies, the beach or the North Pole. Just say where you want to go and believe that it will be so. Because every journey and ride begins with a desire to go somewhere and do something and if you have a desire then you also have the power to make it happen.

Earth to Beatrix: This was the night bus, not a Journey song. Two strangers were not on a midnight train going anywhere. I was going home, and he was probably going to knock over a liquor store. When

Looking back in time was very exciting to me. But looking forward is more challenging—nothing unfolds as you anticipate, and it’s the small things, not the huge geologic shifts, that make or break you.

Art is supposed to reflect your journey through real life. Your discovery of your character in solitude and around other people, the moments of clarity when you feel loved and the moment when your heart breaks so much that you can hear it crack. When you run careless and free on open fields and when you're struggling on your way home on the bus. This is what makes you a real artist. Experiences, moments, stories. Falling recklessly in love, losing someone you love and then learning to belong to yourself again. Going to new places, meeting new people, driving in the middle of the night on empty streets. Going to the ocean and staying there until 6 a.m, smoking cigarettes and talking about roses and butterflies. These are the things that will give you something worth writing about, worth singing about, worth creating art around.

Okay, look,” I explained, pointing up at the front of the bus. “Look at Rodeo up there. There’s plenty of reasons anyone might love him if they could get past that greasy doormat he calls hair: He’s kind to everyone, he helps strangers, he’s a gold-medal listener. That’s all great stuff, right? But that’s different than why I love him.” Lester snorted. “Then why do you love him?” I thought for a moment. “I love Rodeo because if tomorrow I spit in his face and threw all his favorite books out the window and called him all the worst words I could think of, he wouldn’t love me one little bit less.” The bus rocked and swayed underneath us. I kept my eyes on Rodeo, on the back of his shaggy head bobbing to the music. “I love Rodeo because on the worst day of my life he held me and held me and held me and held me and didn’t let me go.” I tried to clear my throat but kinda failed,

On that bus, I had a lot of miles to stare out the window and think about my journey. About expectations. About destinations. I had wanted my spirit quest to answer questions for me. More than that, I needed it to reveal my questions to me, then answer them. What a burden to put on travel, which in itself is ignorant and indifferent. It becomes so hard to just enjoy the thing as it happens. We make the journey about arrival, not travel. We are so goal focused. We are the dog that won't stop paddling as long as he sees the shore. But, man, my shore had been hidden by the fog for so long.

I can’t divorce Kent and his art from what causes pain in Kent’s life. This is true in the lives of many individuals labeled ADHD. Their greatest gifts are interwoven with their greatest weaknesses. This might be true for all of us. But we can make something beautiful from this paradox. Our lives can sometimes be a sort of poem—part genetics, part individual adaptation.

Invite Wonder What if you bowed before every dandelion you met and wrote love letters to squirrels and pigeons who crossed your path? What if scrubbing the dishes became an act of single reverence for the gift of being washed clean, and what if the rhythmic percussion of chopping carrots became the drumbeat of your dance? What if you stepped into the shower each morning only to be baptized anew and sent forth to serve the grocery bagger, the bank teller, and the bus driver through simple kindness? And what if the things that make your heart dizzy with delight were no longer stuffed into the basement of your being and allowed out to play in the lush and green fields? There are two ways to live in this world: As if everything were enchanted or nothing at all.

I would never wait two minutes in a store without looking at my phone or reading a book. The idea of not filling every minute with stimulation panicked me, and I found it weird when I saw other people not doing it. On long train or bus journeys, whenever I would see somebody just sit there for six hours, doing nothing but stare out of the window, I would feel an urge to lean over to them and say, “I’m sorry to disturb you. It’s none of my business, but I just wanted to check— you do realize that you have a limited amount of time in which to be alive, and the clock counting down toward death is constantly ticking, and you’ll never get back these six hours you are spending doing nothing at all? And when you are dead, you’ll be dead forever? You know that, right?

Of all the big cities in the world where I've been, the Muscovites seemed to be the politest of people to strangers. But perhaps that was because we were Negroes, and, at that time, with the Scottsboro case on world-wide trial in the papers everywhere and especially in Russia, folks went out of their way to show us courtesy. On a crowded bus, nine times out if ten, some Russian would say, 'Negrochanski tovarish--Negro comrade--take my seat!

The road to fulfilling relationships is a journey of change and growth. It means risking, exploring and even stumbling sometimes. It starts with little things: a changed attitude, a reaching out, a look exchanged on a bus, a moment of total honesty with a stranger, but it soon grows into something much larger and more rewarding. It becomes a celebration, a joyful way of living in which we are open and aware in ways we never experienced before.

The homeless man sitting by the road begging for beer money? Christ made manifest. The grocery clerk standing on her feet all day saying a thousand hellos to a thousand different strangers? Christ made manifest. The nun walking through the subway station, the Buddhist monk catching the city bus, the window washer scrubbing the side of a Manhattan sky rise five hundred feet in the air? Christ made manifest, Christ made manifest, Christ made manifest. The image of God imprinted on every human, everywhere—the shiny stuff of heaven made tangible across the faces of ethnicities and cultures and people groups.

Disability is inherently a negation. In our culture, people with disabilities stand more for what they are not than what they are—not normal, not whole—a negation that calls into being its opposite: the normal. The normal looms over all of our lives, an impossible goal that we are told is possible if: if we sit still, if we buy certain consumer goods, if we exercise, if we fix our teeth, if we … The short bus polices that terrain; it patrols a fabricated social boundary demarcating what is healthy and sick, acceptable and broken, enforcing normalcy in all of us. What had I lost in trying to belong to the other side?

Suddenly, the bus stopped in the midst of a vast desert. In a moment everyone got off. Was this an emergency? No, not at all. The passengers carefully unrolled their prayer rugs on the sand and faced the direction of the Holy City of Mecca, performing their Namaz, or offering of prostrations and salutations to Allah and his Prophet Mohammed. Every few hours this ritual was repeated with no consideration of where we were. The religion of these tribal people was their life. They were not mullahs, priests, yogis, or monks, but ordinary family people. Yet in all situations and places it impressed me how their devotion to Allah took priority.

He wants to hold himself to this and not just disappear into the underground, burying himself beneath a city he no long looks at. Tomorrow he'll walk or take a bus – there must be a bus that follows a direct route across the city from his house to his work instead of describing the peculiar horseshoe around which he travels every day beneath the earth – he will make a journey overland, allowing him to look up and take stock of all that each street has to offer. He will roam from one side of town to the other, like a treasure seeker but with no map or coordinates, with no references or clues, leaving chance to do its work, letting an invisible hand carry him through the city, guiding his determination to rediscover something that, until recently, he didn't even realize he had lost.

In The Shawshank Redemption, there's a short scene between Andy and Red that reveals the difference in their points of view. After almost twenty years in Shawshank Prison, Red is cynical because, in his eyes, the concept of hope is simply a four-letter word. His spirit has been so crushed by the prison system that he angrily declares to Andy, 'Hope is a dangerous thing. Drives a man insane. It's got no place here. Better get used to the idea.' And it is Red's emotional journey that leads him to the understanding that 'hope is a good thing.' The film ends on a note of hope, with Red breaking his parole and riding the bus to meet Andy in Mexico: 'I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.

I have learned this for certain: if discontent is your disease, travel is medicine. It resensitizes. It open you up to see outside the patterns you follow. Because new places require new learning. It forces your childlike self back into action. When you are a kid, everything is new. You don't know what's under each rock, or up the creek. So, you look. You notice because you need to. The world is new. This, I believe, is why time moves so slowly as a child - why school days creep by and summer breaks stretch on. Your brain is paying attention to every second. It must as it learns that patters of living. Ever second has value. But as you get older, and the patterns become more obvious, time speeds up. Especially once you find your groove in the working world. The layout of your days becomes predictable, a routine, and once your brain reliably knows what's next, it reclines and closes its eyes. Time pours through your hands like sand. But travel has a way of shaking the brain awake. When I'm in a new place, I don't know what's next, even if I've read all the guidebooks and followed the instructions of my friends. I can't know a smell until I've smelled it. I can't know the feeling of a New York street until I've walked it. I can't feel the hot exhaust of the bus by reading about it. I can't smell the food stands and the cologne and the spilled coffee. Not until I go and know it in its wholeness. But once I do, that awakened brain I had as a kid, with wide eyes and hands touching everything, comes right back. This brain absorbs the new world with gusto. And on top of that, it observes itself. It watches the self and parses out old reasons and motives. The observation is wide. Healing is mixed in.

If spirituality means seeking ['Self'-Realization], why do I need a Guru?' Let's say, all that you're seeking is to go to Kedarnath right now. Somebody is driving; the roads are laid out. If you came alone and there were no proper directions, definitely you would have wished, "I wish there was a map to tell me how to get there." On one level, a Guru is just a map. He's a live map. If you can read the map, you know the way, you can go. A Guru can also be your bus driver. You sit here and doze and he will take you to Kedarnath; but to sit in this bus and doze off, or to sit in this bus joyfully, you need to trust the bus driver. If every moment, with every curve in this road, you go on thinking, "Will this man kill me? Will this man go off the road? What intention does he have for my life?" then you will only go mad sitting here. We're talking about trust, not because a Guru needs your trust, it's just that if there's no trust you will drive yourself mad. This is not just for sitting on a bus or going on a spiritual journey. To live on this planet, you need trust. Right now, you trust unconsciously. You're sitting on this bus, which is just a bundle of nuts and bolts and pieces of metal. Look at the way you're going through the mountains. Unknowingly, you trust this vehicle so much. Isn't it so? You have placed your life in the hands of this mechanical mess, which is just nuts and bolts, rubbers and wires, this and that. You have placed your life in it, but you trust the bus consciously. The same trust, if it arises consciously, would do miracles to you. When we say trust, we're not talking about anything new to life. To be here, to take every breath in and out, you need trust, isn't it? Your trust is unconscious. I am only asking you to bring a little consciousness to your trust. It's not something new. Life is trust, otherwise nobody can exist here.

Voldemort caught up with you?” said Lupin sharply. “What happened? How did you escape?” Harry explained briefly how the Death Eaters pursuing them had seemed to recognize him as the true Harry, how they had abandoned the chase, how they must have summoned Voldemort, who had appeared just before he and Hagrid had reached the sanctuary of Tonks’s parents. “They recognized you? But how? What had you done?” “I . . .” Harry tried to remember; the whole journey seemed like a blur of panic and confusion. “I saw Stan Shunpike . . . . You know, the bloke who was the conductor on the Knight Bus? And I tried to Disarm him instead of—well, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, does he? He must be Imperiused!” Lupin looked aghast. “Harry, the time for Disarming is past! These people are trying to capture and kill you! At least Stun if you aren’t prepared to kill!” “We were hundreds of feet up! Stan’s not himself, and if I Stunned him and he’d fallen, he’d have died the same as if I’d used Avada Kedavra! Expelliarmus saved me from Voldemort two years ago,” Harry added defiantly. Lupin was reminding him of the sneering Hufflepuff Zacharius Smith, who had jeered at Harry for wanting to teach Dumbledore’s Army how to Disarm. “Yes, Harry,” said Lupin with painful restraint, “and a great number of Death Eaters witnessed that happening! Forgive me, but it was a very unusual move then, under imminent threat of death. Repeating it tonight in front of Death Eaters who either witnessed or heard about the first occasion was close to suicidal!” “So you think I should have killed Stan Shunpike?” said Harry angrily. “Of course not,” said Lupin, “but the Death Eaters—frankly, most people!—would have expected you to attack back! Expelliarmus is a useful spell, Harry, but the Death Eaters seem to think it is your signature move, and I urge you not to let it become so!” Lupin was making Harry feel idiotic, and yet there was still a grain of defiance inside him. “I won’t blast people out of my way just because they’re there,” said Harry. “That’s Voldemort’s job.

If i could tell the misfits something to make the journey through school and beyond more comfortable, it would be this: you will always be the same person the bus driver was so happy to see on the first day of school. Never stop noticing things like a bus driver opening and closing a door from way past her reach. Don’t worry too much about show and tell – toys and lunch boxes don’t make you happy and some people are fibbing. Just try to get some laughs. If you’re scared about something you’ve never done before like reading or multiplication or dating, say this: “I’ll figure it out.” Then, remind yourself of everything you’ve figured out so far. It’s okay if it takes you a while to make friends – you’ll better appreciate what a friend is worth. As you grow, so will your world. And the bigger your world, the more people will hear your story and say, “I know how you feel.” In the meantime, hold on tight to your Joanies, Billys, Finns, Lauries, and Sades. And never forget this – all the great laughs come from the minds of misfits.

For the bus ride, which Delaney estimated would be ninety minutes, she had prepared a mix of happy journeying music, which she activated as they pulled out of the campus gate. The first song was by Otis Redding, and the first message came via her phone. Woman-hater, it said, with a link to an unsigned and evidence-less post hinting that he had been unkind to an ex-girlfriend who he’d met shortly before the bay and the dock and the sitting. Thanks for the early-morning pick-me-up! the writer said, meaning that Delaney had ruined the day and tacitly endorsed Redding’s newly alleged misogyny. Delaney skipped to the next song, Lana Del Rey’s “High by the Beach,” and then quickly figured it was too big a risk so skipped ahead. The third song, the Muppets’ “Movin’ Right Along,” was unknown to most on the bus, and survived its three-minute length, during which a handful of passengers furiously tried to find a reason the song was complicit in evil committed or implied. Delaney skipped the next song, by Neil Diamond, thinking any Jewish singer dubious in light of the Israeli sandwich debacle, skipped songs six and seven (from Thriller), briefly considered the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” but then remembered Phil Spector, and so finally settled on a young Ghanian rapper she’d recently discovered. His first song was hunted down quickly in a hail of rhetorical buckshot—as a teen, the rapper had zinged a borderline joke about his female trigonometry teacher—so Delaney turned off the shared music, leaving everyone, for the next eighty-one minutes, to their earbuds and the safety of their individualized solitude.

Life is a little like getting on a bus with loads of passengers who are already on when you get on. A bus to nowhere but going with absolute certainty to nowhere or so it seems to you. And, you somehow secure a seat and think as long as you sit quietly, you might be allowed to stay till the destination, whatever it may be. You wonder if you could buy a more secure seat if you become the life and soul of the bus, since then nobody will want you to get off. So, you try. There are people you like on the bus, some you cannot bear to be around with. People keep getting on. The bus is overcrowded. You watch some who gracefully get down, some who literally jump off the running bus and others who are abruptly forced off the bus. You feel sorry for those who have been forced off, happy you are still there. You must be special then for that privilege. You sit there thinking if you are quiet and decent, and minding your business or counting your beads, you should be ok, not realising that you could be the next. There is deep down a fear that you could be, but you hope that all what you had done since you got on would guarantee a longer passage to nowhere. Maybe, to a better destination? Where could the bus be going? Who will be getting off next? Will it be you? What is this strange journey with passengers you cannot choose, stops you cannot decide and destination unknown. Suddenly you cannot bear this torture anymore. This meaningless journey with atrocious company to nowhere. And, you sit there in this tumbling, roller coaster ride, hanging onto dear life and swear to yourself that you will enjoy the journey while it lasts. Amidst it all, the question arises... who am I who is sitting here on the bus on a ride to nowhere? And, you sit there... waiting, pretending, dreaming, smiling, laughing... living a little, dying a little, hoping your stop is not the next and wondering what if it is.

Oil “Soviet Russia cannot survive without Baku’s oil,” told comrade Vladimir Lenin. One of the plans was to drain the Caspian Sea: “Is it possible? Can you drain the Caspian Sea?” said the powerful Stalin. It was more an order than a question.” (- Angelika Regossi, “Russian Colonial Food”. Chapter: Azerbaijan - Oil Country). Mafia “With his wife Victoria, they reigned here for nineteen years. This period Georgians called ironically the Victorian Era, and his wife got the name Queen Victoria. Victoria created the system when all was for sale: state documents ten times the price; 5,000 roubles to enter the Communist party; 50,000 for the judge job, … “ (- Angelika Regossi, “Russian Colonial Food”. Chapter: Gruzia - Where Soviet Mafia Was Born). Smoking “Smoking breaks in the USSR were long and often—and became an official excuse not to work, causing huge damage to the already failing state economy. But on the other hand, with zero unemployment and prison terms, if you are not on a payroll, the state could not provide enough work for everybody. People had to show up every day in the workplace. Boredom from nothing-to-do turned into massive laziness and Soviet workers spent long hours in the smoke rooms. For some, it was a place to relax, for others, to provoke a frank conversation—because … Well, let’s talk about it later.” (- Angelika Regossi, “Russian Colonial Food”. Chapter: Litva - Friends and Rebels). God “The bus was driving slowly, just forty km an hour on the slippery winter road. Outside was a spectacular view of the Caucasus mountains. Here and there appeared churches: nearby and far away, but always on the top of the hill: “Closer to God, as high as possible,” crossed His mind. The bus stopped with a creaking sound, and He slowly got off: “For me, Khor Virap Monastery will be the resting place: from the Soviet life … from the communist lies … I shall spend here the rest of my life. And from here … I shall go to eternity …” these were His last thoughts before He entered the monastery gate. He was dead tired from all that happened, walking uphill closer to God.” (- Angelika Regossi, “Russian Colonial Food”. Chapter: Armenia - Road in the First Christian State).

However we decide to apportion the credit for our improved life spans, the bottom line is that nearly all of us are better able today to resist the contagions and afflictions that commonly sickened our great-grandparents, while having massively better medical care to call on when we need it. In short, we have never had it so good. Or at least we have never had it so good if we are reasonably well-off. If there is one thing that should alarm and concern us today, it is how unequally the benefits of the last century have been shared. British life expectancies might have soared overall, but as John Lanchester noted in an essay in the London Review of Books in 2017, males in the East End of Glasgow today have a life expectancy of just fifty-four years—nine years less than a man in India. In exactly the same way, a thirty-year-old black male in Harlem, New York, is at much greater risk of dying than a thirty-year-old male Bangladeshi from stroke, heart disease, cancer, or diabetes. Climb aboard a bus or subway train in almost any large city in the Western world and you can experience similar vast disparities with a short journey. In Paris, travel five stops on the Metro’s B line from Port-Royal to La Plaine—Stade de France and you will find yourself among people who have an 82 percent greater chance of dying in a given year than those just down the line. In London, life expectancy drops reliably by one year for every two stops traveled eastward from Westminster on the District Line of the Underground. In St. Louis, Missouri, make a twenty-minute drive from prosperous Clayton to the inner-city Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood and life expectancy drops by one year for every minute of the journey, a little over two years for every mile. Two things can be said with confidence about life expectancy in the world today. One is that it is really helpful to be rich. If you are middle-aged, exceptionally well-off, and from almost any high-income nation, the chances are excellent that you will live into your late eighties. Someone who is otherwise identical to you but poor—exercises as devotedly, sleeps as many hours, eats a similarly healthy diet, but just has less money in the bank—can expect to die between ten and fifteen years sooner. That’s a lot of difference for an equivalent lifestyle, and no one is sure how to account for it.

They heard Hugo ask if the plan for the hors d'oeuvres was still in operation, and they heard Colette ask about plucking the feathers off crows, and they heard Kevin complain that he didn't know whether to hold the birdpaper in his right hand or his left hand, and they heard Mr. Lesko insult Mrs. Morrow, and the bearded man sing a song to the woman with the crow-shaped hat, and they heard a man call for Bruce and a woman call for her mother and dozens of people whisper to and shout at, argue with and agree upon, angrily accuse and meekly defend, furiously compliment and kindly insult dozens of other people, both inside and outside the Hotel Denouement, whose names the Baudelaires recognized, forgot, and had never heard before. Each story had its story, and each story's story was unfathomable in the Baudelaire orphans' short journey, and many of the stories' stories are unfathomable to me, even after all these lonely years and all this lonely research. Perhaps some of these stories are clearer to you, because you have spied upon the people involved. Perhaps Mrs. Bass has changed her name and lives near you, or perhaps Mr. Remora's name is the same, and he lives far away. Perhaps Nero now works as a grocery store clerk, or Geraldine Julienne now teaches arts and crafts. Perhaps Charles and Sir are no longer partners, and you have had the occasion to study one of them as he sat across from you on a bus, or perhaps Hugo, Colette, and Kevin are still comrades, and you have followed these unfathomable people after noticing that one of them used both hands equally. Perhaps Mr. Lesko is now your neighbor, or Mrs. Morrow is now your sister, or your mother, or your aunt or wife or even your husband. Perhaps the noise you hear outside your door is a bearded man trying to climb into your window, or perhaps it is a woman in a crow-shaped hat hailing a taxi. Perhaps you have spotted the managers of the Hotel Denouement, or the judges of the High Court, or the waiters of Cafe Salmonella or the Anxious Clown, or perhaps you have met an expert on injustice or become one yourself. Perhaps the people in your unfathomable life, and their unfathomable stories, are clear to you as you make your way in the world, but when the elevator stopped for the last time, and the doors slid open to reveal the tilted roof of the Hotel Denouement, the Baudelaires felt as if they were balancing very delicately on a mysterious and perplexing heap of unfathomable mysteries.

say these like it’s nothing. Teachers will say, “Obviously in the childlike actions taken by the innocent half-wit Lennie, you can see Steinbeck’s extraordinary literary blah blah blah,” and you’re supposed to go along. I go along because what else can you do? But I can’t go along when kids bungle a book report and smack their heads and say, “I’m such a retard.” Or when someone messes up on the parallel bars in gym, and on the mats below someone else calls out, “What a retard.” You’re supposed to agree that, yes, that would be as bad as getting thrown out of the human race. You’re supposed to laugh. I never laugh. I just stare sharply and say, “My sister’s retarded.

Love is when you care for somebody, and you be willing to go out of your way and do anything for that person, and to take care of that person, and if they have problems, that you can help them out any way you know how. If they sick, that you can bring ’em medicine, or give ’em a helping hand. That’s what love is.

Ah, look at that sunrise!” Tim says at the first stoplight, lifting his arms toward the windshield. “Four billion sunrises, over the dinosaurs, the pharaohs, and now ours today. And no one’s ever the same. Isn’t it just the most remarkable thing? Each day is fresh and unique, yet each is also a link to every dawn all the way back to the Precambrian.

She’s sad in the way Laura wears glasses and Max has freckles and Beth is retarded. There’s no reason, it’s just the way it is.

At the landing, Mommy turns to us and says, “Let’s let the puppy go pish,” so she opens the door and he scoots into the snow outside.

once a willful child who, like many willful children, felt most secure at home, has grown into an extravagantly social and nonconforming adult, one who creates camaraderie out of bus timetables, refuses to trouble herself when people look askance at her—and, in a buoyant refutation of the notion that mental retardation equals sluggishness, zips about jauntily to her own inner beat. My sister (my sister! I boast to myself) maneuvers through the world with the confidence of a museum curator walking approvingly through her galleries, and, far from bemoaning her otherness, she exults in it.

The attacks on the Taj and the Oberoi, in which executives and socialites died, had served as a blunt correction. The wealthy now saw that their security could not be requisitioned privately. They were dependent on the same public safety system that ill served the poor. Ten young men had terrorized one of the world’s biggest cities for three days—a fact that had something to do with the ingenuity of a multi-pronged plot, but perhaps also to do with government agencies that had been operating as private market-stalls, not as public guardians. The crisis-response units of the Mumbai Police lacked arms. Officers in the train station didn’t know how to use their weapons, and ran and hid as two terrorists killed more than fifty travelers. Other officers called to rescue inhabitants of a besieged maternity hospital stayed put at police headquarters, four blocks away. Ambulances failed to respond to the wounded. Military commandos took eight hours to reach the heart of the financial capital—a journey that involved an inconveniently parked jet, a stop to refuel, and a long bus ride from the Mumbai airport. By the time the commandos arrived in south Mumbai, the killings were all but over.

Walking out of the office, her nervous fingers made an ear out of the tissue in her pocket – luckily the thin sheets wouldn't hold the shape, and unfurled as she threw it on the pavement. On the journey home, her bus ticket became a tongue.

To get to El Nido, I had flown from Sorong in Papua to Jakarta, via Sulawesi, then on to Bangkok, taken a train down to Kuala Lumpur, caught another flight to Manila, then one more to Puerto Princesa, where we caught a bus to somewhere near Taytay, from which we had walked to a place where we found a rickshaw to take us all the way to Taytay, and finally hopped on one more bus from Taytay to El Nido. A total journey time of about five days. Now that we had arrived in El Nido, our mission was simple: get out.

Hey I want to go to Heaven how can I get there do you know the way The man said on the bus well I don’t know how to get there but I think its this way Driving a long the word I see the trees the cars the ducks in the river the buildings in the town centre I don’t see the sign saying going to heaven Hey can you let me off I don’t see the sign going to heaven I need to get to go to heaven so I can see Jesus in heaven I understand he is up there and I want to see him so I can see what he really looks like I get off the bus and I get a train ….I say to the train driver do you know the way to heaven I need to go to heaven as I need to see what heaven is really like my mum has told me my dad has told me but I believe but I want to see for myself so I know they are not lying to me can you take me there Well the train driver says if you stay on the train that says the holy train this train is definitely going to heaven but there is something you have to do first What do I need to do Mr train driver well you need to say that Jesus is the way to heaven first then you will get a ticket in return that will take you straight up to heaven… Oh ok no problem This train journey is so long I fall asleep wake up and where is heaven I get off the train and I decide to get on a plane well I ask the pilot will you take me to a place call heaven do you know where it is the pilot says hey no problem I can take you to all over heaven I am your pilot Jesus but it not time to go through the gates yet so you have to wait until your name is called but yes I am Jesus I will take you to heaven when I am ready to take you there. Oh ok well shall I get on a boat then and see well you can if you want to but I think you will be better with me I will let you know when the time is right my clock says not now I have work for you to do first Ok then Jesus I will do what you say because I want to see heaven and be with you one day…good night Jesus love you thank you for talking to me today it was good chatting to you on your line prayer bells of heaven. True Inspirations - Happy New year 2015

Often the topography of who we are is not a story, is not constituted in language, but in the concrete things we do, the places we visit, and the people we know and love.

What I can tell you is what I learned from Jeff, and that is this: If you watch the strange, the other, the bizarre long enough, if you really see these people, you will find familiar pieces of yourself in their experiences. Empathy may be our only hope. I found in Jeff not just something familiar but also a better way to live.

LIFE IS A JOURNEY Life on earth is a JOURNEY where the only certainty is the final STOP: DEATH. But as we journey on towards DEATH, we can create little STOPS along the way, These STOPS can give us a sense of purpose in life, something to work towards to, something to aim for, But let’s not get hung up with these stops ‘cos not all stops are what we expect them to be, For every stop that meets our expectations, there are many other stops that can be disappointing, Just like running towards the next bus-stop to get away from the rain only to find out that there is no shelter or someone has vandalised the shelter, So instead of getting all fixed up on the stops, focus on the JOURNEY, Enjoy the JOURNEY and stop whenever you feel like stopping to enjoy and savour the moment, And lend a helping hand to someone along the JOURNEY, For the stops and destinations are not as important as the JOURNEY itself.

The journey to King’s Cross was very uneventful compared with Harry’s trip on the Knight Bus. The Ministry of Magic cars seemed almost ordinary, though Harry noticed that they could slide through gaps that Uncle Vernon’s new company car certainly couldn’t have managed. They reached King’s Cross with twenty minutes to spare; the Ministry drivers found them trolleys, unloaded their trunks, touched their hats in salute to Mr. Weasley, and drove away, somehow managing to jump to the head of an unmoving line at the traffic lights. Mr.

There are four here.” And she shrugged. “They don’t bother me.” Ellos no me molestan. “They fight with each other,” Miguel had told me on the bus, “and with the police.

The teachers,” said one bus driver. “It’s always the teachers,” the other one said. I sighed, grumbled, kicked at roadside gravel, and slapped my head.

That’s a road. You can take it. Go that way. My bus is too big, but your car can do it.

Rodney

Purpose is the ultimate fuel for our journey through life. When we drive with purpose we don't get tired or bored and our engines don't burn out." only believe in yourself.

Maybe this is how it goes, I think, watching Beth and Melanie, remembering the people I have loved, and the ones I wish I hadn't lost. Maybe we are all Beths, boarding other people's life journeys, or letting them hop aboard ours. For a while we ride together. A few minutes, a few miles. Companions on the road, sharing our air and our view, our feet swaying to the same beat. Then you get off at your stop, or I get off at mine. Unless we decide to stay on longer together.

My childhood at Grant Road, next to Novelty Cinema, was lower-middle-class—we weren’t wealthy, but we had what we needed. We lived in an apartment situated on the first floor of the five-storey Arsiwalla building, nearly a century old and in constant need of repair. It had one long corridor with three rooms that held my brother, parents, two aunts and grandparents. The apartment’s sleeping area was indistinguishable from its other rooms. I recall begging family members to switch with me so their bedroom could become the de facto living room for a while. I lived there until the age of sixteen, privileged enough to go to a school where most of my classmates came in cars while I waited forty-five minutes for the B.E.S.T. bus to arrive.

Being always felt stressful-wherever I was there was something to do, someone to please, a duty to be complete, a role inadequately fulfilled: something amiss. Becoming, on the other hand was a relief. I was never so happy as when I was going somewhere on my own, and the longer it took to get there, the better. Walking was pleasurable, cycling enjoyable, bus journeys fun. But the train was very heaven.

Kindness - 1952- Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.

Everything was new, foreign, exciting. I was buzzing, thrilled with the new and the undiscovered. Until this moment my world had been a small place; the neighbourhood; provincial life; a short walk to school, a bland bus ride into town for work. A place where most public spaces were quiet on weeknights, where the shops closed on Sundays. Even the post office closed for the half-day on Wednesdays. But that morning I witnessed a whole new world.

Molly's having a dreadful day, she quickly gets off the bus and searches for her lottery ticket, as Joe is walking up the street he suddenly sees a paper in the bin and reaches for the paper, "old habits die hard, at that point Molly's lottery ticket flies out of her hand straight into Joe's face, "wow what have we here Patch, "the faithful dog" "I think it is a lottery ticket, "let's see if we have wone, then a whole lot of drama erupts.

Kara gave me a nudge with her foot under the table. I woke out of my reverie and looked at her, my first thought being, who is this girl, and how can she be so cool?” “You were drifting off.” “Oh wow. I’m sorry. I’m really bushed, I guess. The months in Berlin were intense. And then I was on the road like I never could have imagined. I was almost killed in a tunnel in Yugoslavia. Athens was crazy. The last two days have been a blur. I was almost squashed by a bus earlier today, and then I run into someone like you.” “And who is someone like me?” Kara teased.

If walled compound schooling were ended, corrupt relationships with universities, textbook publishers, building contractors, bus companies, and other protected suppliers who thrive on a mass captive audience would wither quickly.

The rest of our journey was uneventful…mostly. While I was in the restroom at the back of the bus, the hand sanitizer dispenser exploded. At one stop, I put a quarter in a pinball machine and the thing started dinging, flashing, and smoking like it was having a nervous breakdown. (I barely touched it, I swear!) I also had a little misunderstanding with a dog walker and a flower vendor. The less said about that, the better. Then there was that weird flash of light in the sky, but that was probably just a reflection off a car or something. Yeah. I’m going with reflection. Oh, and there was this really weird thing with the sword I’d picked up in the library. Sam kept insisting that we needed to keep it with us for protection. I kept insisting that we were going to end up in jail.

Travelling in South America had opened my eyes to how passionate people can be about life. From the market stallholders, to the tour guides, to the bus drivers, to the street cashiers and jungle cake sellers, and the many other travellers we met during our journey, they were all so full of enthusiasm for everything they did. They were passionate about where they lived, passionate about their job – whatever it entailed – and passionate about their existence on this earth. I hoped some of this had rubbed off on me and would stay with me forever.

But the hallucinatory nature of the bus trip did not take hold until after dark, on the dead-straight desert road, to the moan of the engine and slow gear changes, a sound like grieving. And then the visions descended like a fever, with the bus speeding headlong toward the coast on the empty road—few drivers in Mexico risk the nighttime roads—with the silvery glint of low bushes and natural rubble, full moon on the flat backland. I drowsed and dreamed but was jerked awake by the pounding of the bus for unearthly glimpses of the moonlit hills, and the bounce and swerve of the bus rocked me like a dissolving drug. Ten hours into the trip, on the nighttime road, no other cars risking this desert darkness, it was as if we were on a thoroughfare in space, speeding past blobs of stars. But for interludes of wakefulness, I sensed little but gasoline fumes and dampness and, as in all long-distance buses, stale food and feety odors.

I observe that I too must alter my vocabulary. No longer is it proper to say, as I have all my life, that someone “is mentally retarded.” As I discover on other websites, by using the new “People First Language,” one focuses on the person first, the disability last, as in “a woman who has mental retardation,” or “a man with mental retardation.” The analogy is that people with cancer have cancer, they are not cancer itself; the disability is only one aspect of who they are. In addition, with People First Language, one can avoid using the word “retarded,” which is too close to the familiar slur. In fact, some websites minimize the use of “mental retardation” by using as synonyms terms such as “developmental disability,” “intellectual disability,” and “cognitive disability.” As I scribble down this People First Language, I realize that many of my acquaintances might disparage such linguistic changes as mere nods to political correctness, and for a moment I do, too. But then I think, Look at how many cultural barriers Beth has had to deal with throughout her life—and how many physical barriers people with other disabilities experience: sidewalks without curb cuts, restrooms lacking accessible facilities, cabs that refuse guide dogs. Altering the way I speak is nothing compared to what she, and they, go through almost all day, almost every day. And it is such a simple way to help transform the cultural landscape that it seems arrogant and misguided to resist doing so.

I lost myself, but in the end that helped me find myself. You’ve just got to have faith and work at it.” “With anything?” I ask. “Anything,” she says, as a gap finally opens in the intersection. “As long as you accept the hardest thing of all: that you might have to lose to win.

In the Big Apple, you get people like Beth on every bus, and nobody would say a word. You get races mixing, and it’s no big deal. Old people, young people, everyone keeps their mouth shut. There’s just more tolerance there.

When I look back now, after nearly fifty years, at the young boy riding the Greyhound bus from Gallup to Cincinnati, I see how individualistic my pilgrimage was then. I was going to the seminary; I was going to be a missionary and saint. I was aware of and interested in Pete and other people on the bus, in my teachers and fellow seminarians, and later in my confreres in the novitiate and clericate; but it was only gradually, through a long period of humbling spiritual aridity, that the I lost its self-preoccupation and moved toward an I-thou that led to a we. I gradually began to see that all of us on the bus, we, were on the same journey. We were one body on that bus, and at the seminary, so that by the time of ordination, we had replaced I as my dominant vision; we were all on the same pilgrimage.

Any Palestinian prisoner will tell you that the bosta journey is one of the most difficult parts of their experience of being incarcerated. To call it hell on wheels is an understatement. To help you picture it, imagine a bus divided into narrow cells. The interior is all metal, including the seats. Many of the cells, like the one I was in, are barely big enough to fit one person. My cell was essentially as wide as the seat I was in, making it impossible for me to move at all. Never mind the fact that I was also shackled at the wrists and ankles. The cell was so tight that my knees hit the metal door in front of me, and if the driver accelerated or swerved, my body would bang into the sides. Other than forcing prisoners to sit in an extremely uncomfortable physical position for hours, the bosta was poorly ventilated, and its odors were revolting. It often reeked of vomit from passengers who had thrown up on themselves or of urine from inmates who had peed themselves, unable to hold it in any longer. The stench of the police dogs who patrolled the bus was also always in the air. The temperature in the bosta was another major hardship. In the winter, which is when I was arrested, it was freezing. The cold metal chair made it feel like I was sitting on a giant block of ice—for hours. I later learned that layering two pairs of pants, three shirts, and a jacket would help me survive, and I began to dress accordingly. But despite all the layers, each time I returned to the prison, my hands would be swollen and blue and it would take hours for them to regain normal sensation.

Their corner She withdrew her hand from his soft but firm grip, And that was all about their romantic trip, She went her way and he went his way, And they got busy chasing the mammons of the day, The hands that held on to each other had slipped away, To feed the obsequious vanities of every new day, But at that discreet corner where she freed her hand, There she does often for a moments few stand, To hold the same sensation and to grab the same feeling, Under which her heart had discovered a new healing, And as her bus arrives, she occupies her seat, And keeps looking at the fading away corner in that narrow street, Where at dusk two shadows often meet, Holding each others hands as they wish and greet, The memory of the hands that held on to each other, Under the sun, under the moon, under the rain, in every weather, The man stands there moments after the woman has left, And his mind turns contemplative in ways simple yet deft, He too catches the bus and goes away, Leaving behind the shadows that you will find there every night and every day, Today the woman did not visit the corner, Today the man too did not surrender, His wishes and his desires, To this corner where he often her memories admires, And where she experiences his sensations crawling all over her, This corner where she felt him and he felt her, Where could they be wondered the street? And the corner, sadly in its obscurity clad dimension did retreat, The following day, they walked together holding their hands again, The street overflowed with joy and the corner had nothing left to disdain, They caught the bus together and looked at the corner and the narrow street, Where they now often meet, And the corner resonates with their whispering smiles, Because now in their minds they cover journeys of endless miles!

A school bus is many things. A school bus is a substitute for a limousine. More class. A school bus is a classroom with a substitute teacher. A school bus is the students' version of a teachers' lounge. A school bus is the principal's desk. A school bus is the nurse's cot. A school bus is an office with all the phones ringing. A school bus is a command center. A school bus is a pillow fort that rolls. A school bus is a tank reshaped- hot dogs and baloney are the same meat. A school bus is a science lab- hot dogs and baloney are the same meat. A school bus is a safe zone. A school bus is a war zone. A school bus is a concert hall. A school bus is a food court. A school bus is a court of law, all judges, all jury. A school bus is a magic show full of disappearing acts. Saw someone in half. Pick a card, any card. Pass it on to the person next to you. He like you. She like you. K-i-s-s-i . . . s-s-i-p-p-i is only funny on a school bus. A school bus is a stage. A school bus is a stage play. A school bus is a spelling bee. A speaking bee. A get your hand out of my face bee. A your breath smell like sour turnips bee. A you don't even know what a turnip bee is. A maybe not, but I know what a turn up is and your breath smell all the way turnt up bee. A school bus is a bumblebee, buzzing around with a bunch of stingers on the inside of it. Windows for wings that flutter up and down like the windows inside Chinese restaurants and post offices in neighborhoods where school bus is a book of stamps. Passing mail through windows. Notes in the form of candy wrappers telling the street something sweet came by. Notes in the form of sneaky middle fingers. Notes in the form of fingers pointing at the world zooming by. A school bus is a paintbrush painting the world a blurry brushstroke. A school bus is also wet paint. Good for adding an extra coat, but it will dirty you if you lean against it, if you get too comfortable. A school bus is a reclining chair. In the kitchen. Nothing cool about it but makes perfect sense. A school bus is a dirty fridge. A school bus is cheese. A school bus is a ketchup packet with a tiny hole in it. Left on the seat. A plastic fork-knife-spoon. A paper tube around a straw. That straw will puncture the lid on things, make the world drink something with some fizz and fight. Something delightful and uncomfortable. Something that will stain. And cause gas. A school bus is a fast food joint with extra value and no food. Order taken. Take a number. Send a text to the person sitting next to you. There is so much trouble to get into. Have you ever thought about opening the back door? My mother not home till five thirty. I can't. I got dance practice at four. A school bus is a talent show. I got dance practice right now. On this bus. A school bus is a microphone. A beat machine. A recording booth. A school bus is a horn section. A rhythm section. An orchestra pit. A balcony to shot paper ball three-pointers from. A school bus is a basketball court. A football stadium. A soccer field. Sometimes a boxing ring. A school bus is a movie set. Actors, directors, producers, script. Scenes. Settings. Motivations. Action! Cut. Your fake tears look real. These are real tears. But I thought we were making a comedy. A school bus is a misunderstanding. A school bus is a masterpiece that everyone pretends to understand. A school bus is the mountain range behind Mona Lisa. The Sphinx's nose. An unknown wonder of the world. An unknown wonder to Canton Post, who heard bus riders talk about their journeys to and from school. But to Canton, a school bus is also a cannonball. A thing that almost destroyed him. Almost made him motherless.

The final principle is that, more often than not, originality lies on the far side of unoriginality. The Finnish American photographer Arno Minkkinen dramatizes this deep truth about the power of patience with a parable about Helsinki’s main bus station. There are two dozen platforms there, he explains, with several different bus lines departing from each one—and for the first part of its journey, each bus leaving from any given platform takes the same route through the city as all the others, making identical stops. Think of each stop as representing one year of your career, Minkkinen advises photography students. You pick an artistic direction—perhaps you start working on platinum studies of nudes—and you begin to accumulate a portfolio of work. Three years (or bus stops) later, you proudly present it to the owner of a gallery. But you’re dismayed to be told that your pictures aren’t as original as you thought, because they look like knockoffs of the work of the photographer Irving Penn; Penn’s bus, it turns out, had been on the same route as yours. Annoyed at yourself for having wasted three years following somebody else’s path, you jump off that bus, hail a taxi, and return to where you started at the bus station. This time, you board a different bus, choosing a different genre of photography in which to specialize. But a few stops later, the same thing happens: you’re informed that your new body of work seems derivative, too. Back you go to the bus station. But the pattern keeps on repeating: nothing you produce ever gets recognized as being truly your own. What’s the solution? “It’s simple,” Minkkinen says. “Stay on the bus. Stay on the fucking bus.” A little farther out on their journeys through the city, Helsinki’s bus routes diverge, plunging off to unique destinations as they head through the suburbs and into the countryside beyond. That’s where the distinctive work begins. But it begins at all only for those who can muster the patience to immerse themselves in the earlier stage—the trial-and-error phase of copying others, learning new skills, and accumulating experience.

used to take many long and uncomfortable hours in a bus, car, or train to journey between the deep interior of Croatia and the coast. But the building of several massive, graded, and multi-laned superhighways from Zagreb down the mountains to Rijeka, to Senj, to Zadar, and to Split along the Adriatic coast has cut the distance dramatically