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It was
dark and rainy and I didn't have a helmet
or lights for my bike
so I decided to take the good old 44 up the hill from
Ballard to Fremont.
Waiting for buses is as close to a
meditation practice as I get, so I try
to get the most out of it. There are
distractions, sure, like the smell of
KFC or that person slurping a McD's
milkshake by domelight of their
parked car. But at times like this I'm not
observing, but rather breathing
and letting the emptiness of time and
space wash over me. I let go of
preconceptions and projections and
integrate into the present totality.
At least that's how it feels when I decide
(consciously at first, then word-
lessly) to forget that I am "waiting" (for
a bus) and release my mind from
the thoughts, plans, and distractions that
keep the brain spinning and tend
to detach one from simply being. So I go
kind of blank and am just standing
seeing and not seeing the impermanence of
the worldly illusion around me
when the bus comes and part of me which
hadn't completely forgotten it was
waiting is glad to see the boxy lighted
room on wheels coming down the street.
But! Seattle Metro bus racks have space
for only two bikes and both are
already
occupied by two BMXs on this rainy night,
so I wave it on its way and let myself
roll into the next wait, 20 minutes or so
more of standing in the rain with nothing
to do, trying to keep my brain from
wandering into its usual cycles of plan,
remember,
and daydream. (Not to say these things are
bad, but too much thinking gets to
sounding
like a broken record echoing in empty
skull room of the brain.) The nice thing
is I'm
not upset over the extra wait, what
"expectation" would have turned into
"delay."
There is no delay when there is no
schedule so you can never be late. Just
this.
I picked my teeth. Rachel and Staci
happened by, we chatted. The next bus had
one space
left on its bike rack. I got on. A
stranger asked if people ever hassled me
for not wearing a
helmet. "Yes. Once, I was riding and this
guy on a bike got so busy
lecturing me on safety
that he drifted out into the street and
almost got smeared by a truck. That was
the best...."
I got home just in time to watch our
resident porch spider capture a large moth
fluttering in
panic. The spider descended, got its fangs
in, and the wings slowly stopped beating.
The
moth was three or four times the spider's
size. The spider got the wings off,
wrapped it up a
bit and then set about to sucking, its legs
wrapped around the carcass in a lover's
embrace.
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