Poetry & Blindfolds

I have taken to riding the bus home from work each day, as the Chicago Transit Authority is in the middle of their famed Operation Fuckeveryoneupforyears project, which, from now until 2010, has doubled the commute for three major train lines, one of which I live near.

Bus riders seem to be different than train riders.  They look more weary, more beat-up, more accustomed to the amusement-park-worthy bumps that accompany a standard commute.  In the morning, the bumps are like a boxing coach, readying a champion for a fight by smacking him around and charging his adrenaline.  In the evening, the bumps are more like an abusive, alocholic spouse, punishing all of us for crimes unknown.

I try to limit what I take to and from work to a small book bag I can put on the sticky bus floor, as bus commuters also tend to be, shall I say, wider in scope than train riders and they are drawn to sit next to me.  Once trapped with glass on one side and burbling flesh on another, I catch up on reading books with small pages.

I watch all of the buildings on Michigan Avenue as the 148 leaps, jerks and halts like an undisciplined horse.  There was a time when I thought, gosh, there’s all those buildings and people and things out there and I may never know them all.  Now, with the horror of turning 40 already a distant memory, I look out and think, damn, there’s all those buildings and people and things out there and they may never know me.  At these moments, I really want to write.

(Of course, by the time I get home, I log onto Myspace, am distressed by the predominantly useless crap out here, lose my ambition and find that opening a beer is far more satisfying.)

The masters of buildings – the architects, the builders, those who live and work there – don’t stand a lick of a chance in outliving the buildings themselves – unless, of course, you live in New Orleans during a Republican presidency.  It’s a sobering thought to muse that, no matter what you might think of during your whole lifetime, chances are the little water tower on the corner of Michigan and Chicago will trump them, simply by living on.

Today, with the Girlfriend’s recent flu hanging around my place like a ghost, I am ill.  I am inspired to challenge the buildings for a bit and going off to write up some more of those silly cartoons that I channel from somewhere.  Maybe today I will write that one one-frame doodle that will successfully win out and outlast the buildings.

Then, of course, the one-frame doodle will outlive me.

There’s always something.