Travel: USA : North America States

High Noon at the Lancaster Transfer Station: (Forth Worth City Bus 1/2) sep 11, 2004 11:55pm

At the transfer station on Lancaster Blvd, Fort Worth, I alight the No.2 onto the exchange island, a concrete landing with minimal shade protection from the oppressive sun, and maximum visibility from a 200 meter radius. Not counting the Mickey-D. Beyond the familiar golden arches, a string of pawn shops and out-of-business storefronts square off against new, clean Walgreens and Eckerds, across the highway, side by side. Pawn shops, Mickey-D's, medication. Life's bare necessities.

On this high noon, I hear a sound I hadn't heard in previous days: It is a chaotic rhythm that did not honor Mother Nature's inherent symmetry: It is the sound of children playing in a group. As I scan the station for the nearest available shade, I see an altogether different picture shatter into view: It is two young black girls pushing, punching, fighting, and beating each other. Bra straps fly from pugnacious 12-yr old shoulders as eyeballs narrowly escape clawing nails, a melon fruit scoop in search for an eye for an eye. Wisps of dust trail from feet shuffling for better ground. All this, in the middle of a group of same-aged or older boys and girls forming a circle around them. Laughing.

Am I thinking about jumping in to break it up? Sure, but just so we're clear on this: these are not prime-time television white girly punches from Anniston-clones. Instead, they remind me of Discovery channel specials when big horn mountain goats butt heads, hoofs kicking up gravel and wisps of sand. One accidental block from an intervening outsider with best intentions to prevent a gouged-eye, will result in a police report whereby bystanders justify their beat-down of the stranger as "outrage against a man hitting a defenseless black girl." That's not going to mean much when I'm lying in the hospital with a fractured skull from an angry mob (who were, inexplicably, laughing at violence just a minute ago). The illogical rules of society deems that a man hitting another man is danger or wagered sports, but a woman hitting her own - no matter how violent -is an entertaining catfight. And while a man hitting a woman will forever be a crime, a woman hitting a man is often regarded - usually by people who have never seen it up close- as empowerment.

One wonders if women and children on a lifeboat would make pulp of each other if the men who put them there first should go down with the sinking ship.

As I hear the sirens of squad cars from two adjacent counties closing in, the victor struts with a cocky satisfied air towards me, the crowd in subdue admiration stands out-of-focus behind her, looking at her go. From where they are, her back is proudly regal, in the way of a person who's earned the respect. From where I am, her eyes are a mercurial shine of madness. This is humanity, stripped of every ounce of socialized feminine artifice. Every muscle in her body still unwinding from being focused on destroying her opponent. Crazed rage, fleeting, a flash of insight permitting us a forbidden glance, before the little innocent girl returns.

I look at the little innocent girl in the backseat of the police car, giving her statement, a delicate silhouette behind a glass display, and I ask: "What have I just seen?"

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I saw Elvis on the #2 Bus Downtown: (Forth Worth City Bus 2/2) sep 12, 2004 2:09pm

The TRE city bus at Fort Worth Texas is a box of chocolates: You never know what's gonna get on at each stop. Now I'm not saying they are necessarily all interesting, but there's a vibe on buses that I don't see in other modes of public transportation. Because its route is limited to a specific area, there's a sense of community that may not be present on say, a transglobal passenger jetliner. People get off the bus to help mothers bring their baby carriages on board, seats are readily surrendered without the need for a request to be uttered, even the bus driver often joins in with the passengers in trying to help a visitor get to his destination. The sentiment was, "well none of us are driving a car." Simply put: We're all on the same bus.

One day, I saw a very dusty man stumble on board with a walkman radio. He plopped himself next to me, his body odor gave my anti-perspirant a glad hug. I eavesdropped the contents of his headphone: It was a constant band of pink noise at top volume.

Before I could scamper off to record this on my notebook, the bus came to a stop, and the biggest tastiest white chocolate enters in Southern relaxed time. Here is one of those characters most of us see in David Lynch movies and say, "nah-uh, he's making it all up." She could only be hobbling past me now if David Lynch had spent one tempestuous night in the sack with John Waters one hundred years ago. Impossible.

Her pancaked sacks of skin folded over wrinkles which ran across her face like staff lines to an orchestral score of fire-engined lipsticked mouth and ink-blue eyeshadow spectacles, both painted three sizes too big, large abstract smudges in whole notes from one ear to another. Her teeth was a cubist chair ascending a nude, and her pencil eyebrow was thick enough to shield the Texas sun without effort. Auto-tinting eyeglasses on fellow passengers immediately went dark without any prodding from the sun.

But she was so gracious in her tremulous voice, that the music she created made me blind to her physical wear. Every hobble she took, every inch people anxiously nudged out of the way for her, she'd tremelo gently, "Thank you, thank you very much."

The essence of makeup is to make oneself presentable in the eyes of the public. When the makeup applicator's eyes are failing, what looks good enough to her is no longer presentable by our standards. What we don't appreciate is that a person who needs 20 minutes to put on one shoe, will still take the trouble to apply makeup for us before coming out into the public.

We often equate beauty with graciousness, and youth with virtue.

Regardless of age, our vision may, perhaps, be flawed in one way or another.

It's not always reliable to listen to what your eyes tell you.

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New York City to San Francisco on a motorcycle via Canada date stamp

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second entry

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