The Thought I Lost
When circumstances conspire to rob you of an idea…
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which hashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
It struck me. So magnificently elaborate, so incredibly crafted, so filled with countless paths of wisdom. Just then, the bus screeched to a halt. Dim ceiling lights flicked on, revealing two columns of sleep drunk travelers, struggling in their slumber to apprehend the reason for the stop. It appears sleepy heads are unthinking heads, or too-slow-in-thinking heads. Or perhaps there was never a chance that even the quickest thinking sleepy head would evade the wrath of the utterly furious uniformed human that then raided the cabin, swinging huge sound blows that stung the eardrums of the wasted-sleepy, the sleep-wasted and the just sleepy.
Passengers unwillingly stumbled through the aisle, down the stairs past the stoned-faced raider. The checkpoint seemed deserted, but for two other uniformed men, both wielding flashlights whose blinding beams searched every face, and checked every card. Artificial light supply had deserted the checkpoint too. Every card that announced itself valid, and matched its bearer, seemed to draw melancholy lines on the dark faces of those whose job it was to ensure that the cards were in fact valid and matched their bearers but whose hope it seemed that the cards be past validity, and not match their bearers.
The beam searched my face, verified my card and, disappointed, pushed the document back into my hand. Past now fully awake water-makers I rushed. Up two steps at a time I climbed. Back at my seat, I pulled out a pen and extracted a bank receipt from my wallet. Time was running out. It seemed to be fading in elaborateness; Its design appeared increasingly fuzzy; It needed penning.
The bus engine hummed as the cabin lights were put out. “Hey driver, stop!” It was the sound of my voice. My neighbor had not returned to her seat. Middle and front sitters echoed my cry to the driver. The bus screeched again, this time to a more unwilling halt. As I dashed for the staircase, someone wondered — not quietly — whether she was my mother. Back at the checkpoint, the uniformed raider’s face beamed brighter than the flashlight. Grandma’s card was not valid. There, in the cargo container that was the checkpoint holding cell, slumbering against a call box table, was my neighbor. She had nothing to offer, or so she had told them, for that’s as they reported it to me.
I raced again, now past thickets whose heavy urea content stung the nostrils, to the bus. It now felt like a profound blackness was pulling at It, taking It further and furthest away from the conscious. Up, a step at a time now — even while trying to claw It back from the dark recesses It was being drawn into — up the staircase I went. Bolts of undiluted passenger anger struck me as I extracted a wallet from my briefcase, then a note from the wallet. I smothered the urge to lash out at the screamers. Perhaps I only managed to contain the urge because I was all too aware that talking, especially the loud, emotionally charged version, was unlikely to militate for any mental effort to retain It within the sandy confines of my consciousness. Consciously blind to the surrounding currents of anger, which were now somewhat diluted with a degree of compassion and shame from inaction, I made once again for the staircase.
Out and past the foul smell of urea, seemingly condensed to a lesser level of pleasantness by its intercourse with dew, I got to the checkpoint just as another bus reared its head on the opposite side of the checkpoint cord. The uniformed marauder, surely out of love for his job, started very enthusiastically toward the newly parked bus. Halfway, he U-turned and ran back to where I stood — complicit. It appeared coins were not his thing; only notes touched his palm. Both expressionless, I gave; he grasped. Then, with half a smile on his face, he ran to the next order of business, expectant.
Hands between closed laps and head against the cold container wall, my neighbor, Grandma, was sound asleep. I watched her for a while, bemused. Perhaps she was Great Grandma. Then, after I helped her to her feet, we re-emerged into the biting cold of the dry season small hours. She sneezed in half-wakeful slumber as newly checked water-makers from the next bus renewed the smell pact between urea and dew. After what appeared an eternity, there stood my neighbor and I at the foot of the staircase.
Slowly, up she went, clutching the balustrade for balance. Tompo, the bus conductor, helped her regain stability as she reached the aisle landing. She was snailed her way to her seat, oblivious of the comments that her pace engendered. Overly conscious of the remarks the episode was generating, I half-wished I had been blind to Grandma’s earlier no-show. Yet I walked ever slowly behind her, with the annoyed impatience of a toddler who wants to run, but is forced to walk.
As the engine re-started, a cheerful wakefulness seized the travelers. The near-universal ill-feeling seemed to have had in Grandma’s oblivion the one thing needful for jolliness — an object of criticism and gossip.
Back at my seat, my neighbor back asleep by my side, I searched for It. While my co-travelers reveled in the latest opportunity to share certainly well-informed views on Grandma’s perceived insensitivity and to reminisce similar and (undoubtedly true) travel episodes, I searched for It. Plume in hand and receipt on briefcase, I reached to the recesses of the conscious. I retraced thoughts right to the moment when It had struck me. I clawed for It in the obscure alley of intangibles. My mind seemed to ache with the effort; I rubbed my temples instead.
Tompo shook me up. I eyed the blank receipt, then the empty bus. It was gone.
