“The City Bus”
By: Mark Stegman
The bus was heavy, loaded thick with the air of silence, loaded thick with the weight of the engine rumbling loud and smelling thick diesel fumes. The lone reddish pink light of the interior of the bus lit the silent people sitting next to one another, yet a mile apart from each other. They averted their eyes from one another and looking at whatever is not a person, unless their happens to be an unfortunate walker by, then the entire bus takes brief notice; if the unfortunate walker by happens to be a beautiful women, then the men continue to look well after a short glance, there is nobody speaking, a sad trip.
The bus roars and halts, the riders lean forward together in g-force unison. At this stop no one gets off, but a jester boards through the front door. Tis’ a modern day jester, not a decorated hatter colorful banjo toting feather in the cap wearing jester, but an ordinary jester that one couldn’t tell if this funny man was a jester at all or anything but a crazy man smiling like he is at everyone as soon as he boards the bus. His sudden presence though, like color in a black and white world, like rain on starched bleached desert sand, strikes sparks in the lines of reality in the bus. The rider’s on the bus became conscious of the reality of the bus, like the past was pre-life and suddenly time was born, awaken by the stimulus of oddity. This man saw the space between the people and laughed out loud and beamed smiles around the space. He sat next to a giant of a man who has been frowning at everyone since he boarded the bus. As the jester sat next to the large man, all on the bus saw the space in the air between all the people become filled with colorful electric photons zipping and spiraling, snapping, hissing, whirling, and then dropping, halting as each person averted their eyes, looked away from each other shyly with curt smiles. Yet as the sullen riders saw these dim glowing laser beams zipping and whirling and the unaffected smile of the colorful jester, they began to smile. Faintly at first, their smiles enforced the dim lines of energy’s paths and they began to open just faintly, showing colored plains of green and blue. Thus the jester laughed at the exposing awareness and some of the older people began to giggle. Children jumped into the aisle and swiped at the speeding electric lines zinging about, moving right thru their tiny chests harmlessly. They jumped right into their pathways waving their tiny hands; they could feel the pulse of communal electricity in the laser lights. The young teens and hipsters began to shed their cool pose and began awing and talking of these strange energies exposed. “What could it be?” They asked. The elders, being much wiser, knew that what was being exposed was there all along. “It’s only the pre-existing reality.” The older folk told the young teen-agers. The colorful Jester has made it all become visible.
Through all the laughing and kids at play, even the bus driver was smiling and could be heard laughing, there was one man not stirred, one man actually stirring in his own homebrew of hate. He was a brown wall impenetrable, this the jester thought most amusing, and laughed and “hahad” and sent playful arches of energy toward the giant man. The man looked up and with his eyes said
“What the hell you looking at? I’ll kick your ass!” His silent words reflected off the inside of the brown wall surrounding him and broke apart, fragmenting into the air. The jester frowned mockingly, momentarily stunning the giant. While the giant sad man looked confused, for he has never seen anything like a jester, or anyone ever make faces at him like that, the colorful jester swooped his hands up through the brown murk wall surrounding the giant. The people gasped and became silent, their chatter stunned, everyone turned and watched. The jester, taking the dripping brown softball size murk ball in his hands, rolled it into a ball. The giant looked up and speaking through his eyes once more said,
“Huh?”
“What?”
And “Dha?”
The jester smiles a wide grin and quickly shaped the mud into a dove and opens his hands like a magician. A brown dove flew upward to the ceiling of the bus. The happy people gasped and cheered and laughed; the children “Oohed” and screamed for more. The giant took a sudden interest that quickly faded and vanished. The jester turned, turning his smile upside down. At the same time the dove turned upside down and melted before everyone. The crowd on the bus went silent. The jester asked the giant with widened eyes, “Do you see what happened? Do you get that?”
The giant, finding hidden language in ancient energy patterns, growls back, reverberating low waves that bang into each other and creep through the brown wall surrounding him that said, “You can’t possibly understand my hurt, my pain, my anger!”
The jester once again arched his outstretched stretching hand sweeping up ward thru the giants murky wall scooping a heaping handful into his hands. He shaped it into a circle then with one gulp, he swallowed it. The people on the bus choked on their own teeth stunned. Then the bus broke into laughter. The laughter on the bus was quickly curtailed as they saw the jesters face suddenly pale and green.
“He bit off more than he can chew.” One of the old ladies near the back said as she watched the colorful man intently. They watched the jesters eyes speak.
“Ahh yes, a big bite indeedee, painful like all emotion, made of energy, made of light, and(he grunted) with that(he shifted in his seat) we can ( another grunt) make anything into anything we want(He opened his mouth and echoed loudly a rictorious burp). He lifted a leg passing a tsunami fart that literally blew the hair up of the sad large man next to him. A moment of silence then everyone, including the giant, cracked up rolling with laughter ( some farting as they laughed making more laughter). The giant lifted a leg, the hole bus ducked and covered (as if that would help the nuclear affect of such transformed energy, the giant burst out laughing and screaming(no fart); the understanding was made.
The bus had stopped, the driver laughing and wiping tears from his eyes; the jester departed and disappeared unnoticed as all the people were doubled over in laughter with tears of life in their eyes.
Mark Stegman 5/30/2006
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