“What do you think about time,” I ponder in my best faux philosopher tone. Four glass eyes stare back.
The smell of coffee and cigarettes invades my nostrils. I sit and wait. The bus has not arrived yet. So I wait. I have never experienced the MegaBus. The bus system is a scare these days. Maybe it always has been, I’m not certain. But ever since the Greyhound Canada incident, it has been.
You see, about midsummer, there was a slight incident on a Greyhound Canada bus involving a cannibal beheading a sleeping passenger at 3 in the morning. After the standoff, the police found a partially eaten ear in the cannibal’s shirt pocket. Wonderful. I had an incident myself once on a Greyhound. Not nearly as serious as a beheading. But an incident none the less.
The bus had just departed from the St. Louis station en route to Cincinnati. Barely a mile from the station, a scruffy, middle-aged man started screaming obscenities. His neurotic claim was that his seat was broken. He said he was falling all over the floor. He was in his seat the whole mile. The bus turned back and dropped him off. He was put on the second bus.
Later on that trip I was asked to baby sit, of all things. The bus had stopped at a gas station in Effingham, IL. A fellow passenger needed a smoke break, so she asked me, a total stranger, to look after her sleeping toddler. That is ridiculous. Maybe I should have taken the baby and ran? Ridiculous.
Anyway, I’m on a double-decker MegaBus en route to Madison, WI with an 11-hour layover in Chicago. This ride is not so bad compared to the Greyhound. It’s just about sunrise. I sit with my head in an early-morning daze. The vibrant reds, yellows, and oranges of the sun rise over the dull green and khaki fields of the great state of Illinois. It is beautiful: the barns in the distance. The cows in the distance-- a calf runs the length of its comfortable prison.
I breath in the journey ahead of me and exhale my worries of the unknown.
This is a special journey. My guru. My friend. My cosmic brother. Mr. Sun, himself . . . N. Otto. Five days. Four nights. Spiritual retreat from the monotonous days of summer in St. Louis. A getaway from the norm. A return to art and beauty and living again. There is a plan, you see. Only an unplanned plan.
The only set plan is Mr. Sun and Madison. Utopia. I have been waiting for this trip. Only the time has not been right until now. The sun is fully up now, and my mind scatters into a frenzy of boredom with these never-ending fields outside my window. I am going slightly crazy with anticipation of my destination. Ready, now. Remember: Be Here Now. So I tune my ip[od to a “Zencast” and breathe.
Two hours left in Chicago now. So I down a pitcher of beer and stumble outside the bus station for a smoke. Another hour of waiting lies ahead, so I down another pitcher, have another cigarette. And I wait. The bus arrives in no time.
By the time I step off the bus and into the world of Madison, my excitement reignites my exhausted mind and body. It never makes much sense to me the way time works. It’s all in how you gauge it, and travel wears you down. I’m here. Really, I’m here. Only, where is the university? I have never seen this Day’s Inn or Phillips 66. It’s just before dawn. I’m lost. And I have no clue where to go.
Nick says he’ll find a car and be here soon. You see, that’s the way Madison works. If you need help, you get it. This is a small Utopia. I trust in Mr. Sun, so I wait. I wait and contemplate what this trip may be and what it already has been. Welcome to another side of Eden, I know.
Ten minutes pass. Forty minutes. No worries, he’ll be here soon. An hour. A jet blue Dodge storms u p through the darkness of the Madison night. Nick, already obliterated from a night of jamming and philosophy, stumbles out of the passenger door. Arms spread, he pulls me in for a hug. Paradise. Do you feel it?
“What do you mean about time,” retorts a shaggy stoner after a long drag from his Ecstasy cigarette- the herbal brand they sell in the local head shop on State Street. It may still be smoke infiltrating your lungs and blackening them, only not from nicotine. Ecstasy offers a wonderful infusion of licorice root and other calming herbs.
“Yes, time. Time. Anything about time.” I adamantly reply. Time and travel are the same. It’s impossible to gauge in any certain way. It’s all in how you take to it. How you move with it. Move forward. Always. Embrace. Remember: Be Here Now. I open my oldest Moleskin notebook from my bag and read aloud:
“Life is a road to where?
made of concrete and gravel and dirt
arrested by bumps and ditches and
traveled with changing weather
salted with crystals of dried-up stars
passing fields and counties
of beauty ignored
running through ravaged
old lands unexplored
chasing rabbits through holes
darkened and cold.”
Through the glass door panes I can hear Mr. Sun in a stoned immaculate frenzy strum down soft on a G chord. Everyone at this impromptu jam session cheers. Half the people on the room do not even know each other. They stumbled through the doors after a remarkable 30-minute jam starring Nick and two buddies. One on drums. One on bass. Nick is the star, and everyone knows it. This is the way Madison works. This is the perfect journey.
And then I remember, he is Mr. Sun, and he makes you feel better when y ou’re shitty.
“Life is a road. . . where
freedom is found
not in a book but in control of bounds.
Take the wheel,
take the car, the passengers.
Pick up the boulders,
you see, are friends.
Take the wheel. It’s yours
and all.
Every turn is yours to decide.
Every hill is yours to climb.
Life is a road. . .
to where you want to go.
So, rule it.”
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