Rapture

Today I had the strange feeling that this city was all mine. After waking up to an empty apartment, I cleaned myself up and ate some leftovers from last night. Being fully awake takes me an extraordinary amount of time lately, I have all these rituals of things I have to do before I go off to the outside, some of them don't really make sense but they keep me entertained. Perhaps every day I just want to go out less than before.

My favorite song had just started playing when I realized I had to go if I wished to catch the next bus. These are my mornings, divided in little half hour windows when I can take a bus or have to wait for the next one. As I'm launching myself to the asphalt world, I keep wondering how much time in my life I've spent going from A to B, on a bus, a car, plane, train, walking... Wondering how much time you've used to take showers or laid motionless and awake waiting to get up. Thinking of all the hours you spend getting the "things" that surround your life, washing your clothes, going to get those light bulbs and the toilet paper, talking to clerks and employees and customer service representatives.... Please hold... Hold your life, our next available agent will be will you shortly.

Snapping out of my train wreck of thought, I was halfway to the bus stop, jaywalking so I could get there in time. I realized something seemed a little off. There were no cars to dodge, I was simply walking across Denny, which is always a bitch to cross. Didn't think much of it, so I kept going my usual way, through an alley and a parking lot. From the looks of it, I was barely going to make it. My mind wandered off...

Does it seem like we are always thinking of ourselves as if we were in a movie or a deodorant commercial? I mean, life can be pretty boring, with all the driving, and the countless hours of doing the things that you're supposed to do in order to be part of these "modern" times, such as paying your phone bill, cleaning your all-clad pots and pans or whitening your teeth in only 30 days. Then when you are walking in that last minute errand to get more trash bags, do you usually see yourself walking, headphones blasting, leather cuff on the right arm, as if you were being shot frame by frame in a jittery camera effect by a hotshot director, as a deep voice starts saying in your head "This is the Fabulous Life of ...", only for that thought to be hijacked by the realization that you forgot to feed your cat.

Nobody to be seen anywhere. I'm running that last block, making sure I make it there on time, and it suddenly makes sense, there's nobody on the street, not a single soul. It's hot today. It's that time of day when the warmth reflecting from the cement sidewalk feels sticky and uncomfortable. There are no clouds in the sky, just a big bright sun, a huge city around me, and not one person around me. As I sit down on the bus stop bench, I try to remember when was the last time I was the only one taking this bus at this stop, and I can't think of it. Just the fact that I was actually sitting down and waiting makes me nervous, had it been a little early? had I missed it? I don't like missed opportunities.

Maybe the bus wasn't early, maybe it hadn't come, and maybe it would never come again. In some cosmic fuckup, maybe I was there, in this big city inside this world, and I was left alone. Maybe everybody had been evacuated to another dimension, and I had been left behind for observation. Maybe everyone got so terribly bored that their heart stopped in protest, right in the middle of breakfast, and everybody's bodies were motionless and dead, next to a box of cheerios and a half empty bottle of Tropicana Orange Juice, now with more pulp.

I let go a sigh of relief, my bus is there. To add to this twilight zone effect, someone decided to paint the whole bus white, with some lettering explaining how this new kind of hybrid vehicle is about to save the world and make us sustainable again. I feel like I'm walking into a hospital room with wheels. I look at the driver somewhat craving human interaction. I say good morning and he doesn't say a thing. He keeps staring out into nothing, with his hand covering the little coin slot, but I know I'm supposed to pay as I leave, one of those pieces of useless and strange knowledge that makes you feel closer to this huge organism that we call a city.

There's not a single person on this bus.

I sit down in the very back and put my feet up on the front seat as if I was half my age, it feels strangely comfortable, like sleeping in the fetal position. And off we go, the bus gets on the highway.

Maybe, I think to myself, people didn't all die. Maybe this morning was the breaking point. Finally it came to us all, the thought that maybe we're living a show, trying to fit our lives into these abstract representations of things we need, we want, we have to have in order to live to our fullest potential, in order to follow a life that is marketable and appealing to all focus groups. Maybe today everyone stayed home and called their friends over, and they are now sitting on the floor, talking to each other, laughing, making memories, sharing stories, feelings, bonding, getting to know what it is that makes them special to everyone else, loving and making love, arguing and reaching compromises, building relationships based on truth and emotion, building a chain made of gold, from one person to the next, the biggest piece of bling for a world previously full of shit.

Then I realize it's an hour later than I thought. Everyone is probably having lunch.