It's 6:13 a.m., as I start this, and I've just sat down at my computer after getting home from work.
We are having some new cables & hardware installed at my theatre, and all of the work must be done after hours,, and a manager must be present. So from 10 p.m. to 6-ish a.m. I get to be at work and not really do much. Hang a bit, do some work on projectors, veg. and philosophize.
It has only been my second night of this, but already the differences are highly noticeable. I normally speed home round 1:30 a.m., the highway completely clear, some Circa Survive or Brand New blaring from the one working speaker in my truck. If the temp. rises above eighty degrees sometimes the left speaker will cut in sporadically.
But coming home is different at 5:30 a.m. With the highways full of cars you realize that there is a world out there and that other people actually exist. I rarely see this.
I was speeding down I-35, doing my normal 14 miles above the posted speed limit - the last two speeding tickets that I ever received had me doing 14 over - and I zoomed by a place off of the highway that I have passed, literally, a few hundred times.
It is a business in Merriam, a school bus place. I know it used to be called School Services & Leasing back in my day; now it is Durham Schools Services; or something to that extent.
Normally when I pass at 1 or so a.m., it is dead quiet, and nothing is going on. But today it was alive and awe-inspiring.
I exited off of I-35 and snaked my way back to this business and parked on the side of the road and watched the business' parking lot. There were 75 -100 school buses parked there, all of them with engines running, smoke billowing out of the tailpipes - steam filling the air - like my cigar smoke on my patio some nice evening. The headlights were off but the parking lights were struck and glowing orange, like the nostrils of a dragon inside some deep, dark cave.
Bodies of bus drivers walked back and forth, bundled up, fighting off the chilled 10-degree morning, cups of coffee in their hands, probably some sleep still in their eyes.
The buses were like an armada of yellow ships getting daily inspections, being prepped and readied for battle. Their stop-arms flashing and swinging back & forth. Forth & back.
Small fluorescent lights flashing insanely, like little crack-heads flipping a light switch on & off. Off & on.
I sat there, watching this for maybe fifteen minutes, which was both too long & nowhere near long enough. And I thought about the roads, the course, & the journey that these buses will take within the next twelve hours.
Picking up the pimply-faced high school douche-bags, with their floppy hair and androgyny. Then the elementary school kids and then the middle school jackasses.
Taking these poor, defenseless motherfuckers to educational penitentiaries all across town.
Taking them to buildings to "learn". To be taught. To be instructed, to be guided. Forced to go to a place that force-feeds ideas and bullshit trivia.
Within these walls they will fall for the guise that only through hard work &
sacrifice will you ever be anything. Will you ever be happy. To lead a good and fulfilling life you have to have a real career, a high-paying job, an important job!! You should be a DOCTOR, or a DENTIST, or a LAWYER, or a POLICE OFFICER, a PARAMEDIC, or a TEACHER.
And if you don't study or pay attention you will be doomed to a life of servitude. If you don't work hard you will flip burgers all your life, or work telemarketing, do menial labor like a dishwasher or pile bullshit like a politician. You have to strive for greatness, if not you will end up in a failure with a dead-end job like a busboy, film projectionist, or as irony would have it, a bus driver.
All I could think was that these people, in these humongous yellow contraptions - which apparently still aren't noticeable enough 'cuz some mo'fuckas run into them with their cars - spend their days & earn their wage, by taking kids, young lives, to get an education that teaches them that only some jobs should be respected, and some should be looked upon with downcast eyes.
Anyone who earns a wage, and puts food in their stomach, or another person's; puts a roof over their head or someone else's head, deserve respect. Not all of us can be doctors. Not all of us can be lawyers.
Hell, not all of us WANT to do a job like that.
Just live a life that makes you happy. Live a life that gives you pleasure and gives you space.
Space enough to watch buses light up like christmas tres on a march morning, while the rest of the world is going to work; and you are going home to a few drinks and a warm bed.
A warm bed under a roof paid for with money earned at a job that isn't a lawyer, or firefighter, or a CEO of a huge corporation.
It's 6:46 a.m. as I finish this, & all I know is that for some reason I saw magnificence in a piece of minutiae.
Love.
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