Shift right, merge left

So as I was on the bus yesterday I was doing what I frequently do, study, also I frequently have to look up and out when, because of the construction, we just sit on the bridge over the highway.

I’ve always had to do this. Similarly I used to hitchhike out to the airport just to hang around, and watch the planes take off and land.

When I use to go to bad kid’s school way out in the country, I would often skip the school bus because as the second pickup I would be on it for about an hour and a half. So I would hitchhike there instead, which often meant walking part way. So there I was, standing on the overpass over 23, just in a trance. Watching the traffic and getting all the little flashes off the hundreds of people going by.
All of a sudden the cool hippie teacher pulls up and hollers at me “ get in the car”
It was like being snapped back to reality when my consciousness had been flying out on hundreds of different tangential lines. I could literally feel and see the lines contract back into me.

It turns out that one of the other teachers had seen me and freaked, thinking I was going to jump. So they sent “hippie” Rick to fetch me and “talk me down”.
I think I made it pretty clear that that was not at all what was happening, and he seemed to get me right away when I tried to explain what it was really about.
We had worked at the crisis counseling center together so we knew what was up.
Anyway so there I was yesterday and felt that same odd feeling, like I could feel the people down there and I just started moving outwards from my center. But simultaneously I was having a massive anxiety attack watching the people merging. What a crazy and delicate dance that is. I can’t believe people just take it so for granted. You guys should see it from up there where it’s a lot more apparent how narrow all the margins are.

I did it once because my Dad made me, when I was learning to drive (at age 26).
I can hardly remember it because it was such a huge tangle of fear, adrenaline, sheer panic and determination. How the hell do you people do it all day everyday?

So that’s all, just an odd moment I had. Of how sometimes you’re just in the midst of the most banal activities and the veil just shifts a little sideways and the perspective changes.