“You take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.”
— Italo Calvino
By now, the sky over the bus will be blue. The day will have unsheathed itself and the whole city will be moving like cities do. You won’t be there yet but you will feel it. You will feel the place at the end of the road and it will, I believe, feel you too. From far away. I have always thought that big towns know things about people. They know who’s coming and why. I think the city waits patiently for your arrival. But there is no way to know for sure.
I write this at my desk but you are barreling down the road. Away from me, towards bright lights and music and hours I won’t see this evening. It makes me dizzy to think of the days when I used to stay up so late. But I know you still have it in you.
Above you, above your body taking up just one seat on one bus on one highway heading east, the vastness of everything tumbles over itself on its way towards space. I like imagining you listening to your headphones, with music playing that means so much to you. Sometimes when I notice you are in your music it feels to me as if you are somehow able to exist apart from the world and only in the songs. It’s kind of magical to witness. I used to feel that way myself. Now you are under the sky and the shining sun/ the unseen stars are there/ the stretch of infinity rolls on and out into the place where none of us have ever been. It makes me excited for you. It makes me nervous like you’re moving further from me than you really are.
It’s all relative, I suppose. How far you travel from me doesn’t have to add up to how far I feel you are. Today I feel the miles dropping and it stuns me to sense this gap. Like so many in our situation, we are rarely very far from one another. I think I prefer it that way, but I’m also glad you are on your bus this afternoon too.
A little while ago I saw a cloud that was shaped like Nebraska. I wondered if you could see it too. Probably not, of course, but then again no one can ever say for sure. Clouds mostly dissipate but some could stay together. I have heard tales of clouds that remain in the same shape for centuries. No one studies that though, so it sounds like jive. I stared up at the Nebraska cloud as I was heading home from work to write this and when I was thinking about if you could possibly see it or not, I almost ran off the road into a field of cows. It didn’t happen though and I’m glad about that.
What do you think about when you are happy and in your headphones and heading towards the city? It’s funny how much I like to wonder about things I can never know. They are things that other people really would never care about either, I know that. But this is me. This is who I am for better or worse. I can’t stop wondering if you ever sigh on the bus. Or smile at something in someone’s backyard as you hurl past it. I imagine you slowly checking out the other riders. Are there college kids? Are there old people who seem like they’re maybe going to visit a loved one? Is anyone traveling with another person or is it all solo rollers?
I wonder if you are sitting in the front or the back. I could text you to see, I guess. But part of the magic of travel for people back home is that they cannot see you or understand what you are experiencing. Deep down, I don’t really want the answers. I just want to ask the questions because they help me remember you. And I haven’t seen you since breakfast, you know.
So many have traveled this same route you are taking today. People chasing dreams, people hoping to find fortune or fame. Or love. People take these buses and they ride under blue skies and rainy skies, the tires rumbling low and steady until the bus stops at the truck stop and everyone climbs down to pee and grab a snack. People sit in the bus seats when you’re not in one. That seems so weird to me now because I never think of the buses when you’re not on one. Or we’re both not. I guess I will someday when the kids are riding toward cities without us, but I try not to think about that.
Right now I’m sipping a coffee from our coffee maker.
What are you sipping?
Did you grab a coffee from the Sheetz like you said you were going to do?
I guess it isn’t important at all, but I don’t care. It’s important to me. I like picturing you on your bus with a coffee.
It’s been a while since you texted me.
I like that.
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Serge Bielanko lives in small-town Pennsylvania with an amazing wife who’s out of his league and a passel of exceptional kids who still love him even when he’s a lot. Every week, he shares his thoughts on life, relationships, parenting, baseball, music, mental health, the Civil War and whatever else is rattling around his noggin.
