Morning writing exercise

Traveling east by bus. The morning, like most mornings is rote movement. The traffic on either side sits listening to radio or streams or saved bytes. Some relaxed, some contemplative, some late, some early. The singing and the sneering compete for the lane while the drivers, the professional drivers that is, keep it all even.

Familiar roadside slides by the window and the blank gray pavement stands as an apt reflection of my thoughts.

It’s a strange time. Not just the morning but the epoch. So much emotion and fear yet nothing much to say. Not yet anyway.

I’m reading fiction again. Not sure what that means but it feels meaningful. So many years looking for answers and theories and facts that perhaps I lost sight of the notion that truth can only be found in stories.

Truth. Not fact. Abstract ephemeral unknowable truth is a thing that only the imagined can touch. Characters. The invented. The disembodied. The reflected.

Anyway I’m not sure I believe in truth anymore. Not for us. The real. The flesh. The blood. The mediated. We deal only in propaganda and marketing. We sell and influence and persuade and tailor our own individual truths from the bits of signal we find most attractive among the growing noise.

The tunnel approach. Curling into line we ease alternating head to tail into one long snake. All of us head deep in a screen responding replying remarking. This then that was where and with great food as drinks but that shirt. It makes no sense until it chimes. The soft and validating chime. I’m alive.

What are we doing for lunch?