CTA Bus – #120 Ogilvie/Wacker Express

Lately I have been within my own head, trying to get out. There are no doors or windows. Or at least none that I can see. The light is oh so low. Dim. Emerging from a tunnel. Entering a tunnel. Altogether launching into unknownness with my eyes hurting from the glare.
Friends and colleagues keep talking at me, pressing their words against me, pulling their ideas out of their pockets and dangling them before me. I can’t quite make them out. This blur. This dimness. This muted world feels like a sleeping hand grasping door knobs.
Commuting in a circle behind my eyes, pacing, I await the knowledge of light; the first glimpse. Just lately, this dimness has closed around me and held me like a pool of warm spring water. Honestly, the comings and goings of us all are just so damn hypnotic. It pushes at the eyes like drum flashes of light till we dance away into a numbness of sorts. If you get a chance, balance your gaze out the window of a moving bus and fix your eyes on the air just 6 inches beyond the glass. Don’t focus, don’t grab a look at any particular thing, just let it float there and wait for your sight to disappear. Not for your eyes to close, but for your thought about your sight to disassociate and relax.
There. Right there. Can you see it? Beyond focus? The eyes do you see, the mind sees. The eyes are the tool, like true bus is a tool, or your shoes. The mind sees, 6 inches past the window, a dimness so understandable and delightful; a messy underbelly of life where interpersonal politics matter little. It might be blinding, but it is oh so glorious once we release ourselves from the prison of expectation. Pull the cord and get off.