In a cold city on rainy day(s), provisions provide a windowless vehicle from which to navigate the landscape.
On a brightly lit bus no one can see in. To me.
Hood pulled down, scarf pulled up, whether smiles or tears or both, doesn't matter. Just another amorphous passenger.
No pressure to perform. To feign contentment with strangers (more for their comfort than yours). You've grown weary of social niceties. Yet you value societal harmony. Where does authenticity fit in? Where do I fit in? Asks everyone about their own presumed non-fitting self.
It's deeply relaxing to be unknown.
An aloneness.
Yet I know this is temporary.
Thus, my sense of alone is forever false.
For others maybe it's not.
That kind of isolation would be terrifying.
Not simply aloneness but 'alone in this world.'
Surrounded by, bumping into, witnessing everyone else's beehive lives...with no one to turn to.
Cities.
They hold such curious juxtapositions of the human condition.
