How to give thoughts on the Metro — B6

Sipping my Starbucks iced coffee. Typing in my phone- ahhh life is good.

Sometimes i look up at people on the bus and it seems like they are stopping what they are doing and look up and make eye contact with me. By intention or random connection, I feel like people need that tenth of a second eye contact with other strangers.

We’re constantly looking around for a set of eyes, just to look away the second we see them.

It’s a quick way to say”hey I see YOU” and then “fuck you” by looking away immediately from them.

A bunch of kids just got on the bus. They probably just got out of school.

In Los Angeles, the school bus is the metro. A mix of kids, adults, the elderly, the fat, the skinny, the hard at work, the 23 year old Starbucks drinker typing in his phone.

It’s so different than my school bus when I was there age. Similarities, bus like vehicle, bus driver, seats without seat belts, big windows. Differences, everyone was going to school or coming back from school. Everyone was relatively the same age, with similar conversations and similar struggles. There wasn’t any surprises to who or what we were going to see on the bus that day. It was a predictively consistent experience.

Maybe I was too protected in grade school. Maybe the experience these kids get on the bus lets them see what real people, the working class, and a glimpse at what life looks like when they are going to and from school.

It’s not just seeing it though, for some of these kids, these families, it’s living it. Not getting on the bus and seeing what real life looks like. But living it. The discrepancy between what these kids and families live like compared with families in the suburbs is like black and white. Or brown and white if you will.

It’s a shame that we should swallow as a nation, as individuals, that there is such a difference in people’s livelihoods across the land.

The next stop is mine. There is not a seat for everyone on this bus. It is absolutely full.

(Capture this shot, immediately getting off the bus — symbolic)