now playing: eastmountainsouth, “one picture”
i gotta tell ya – you definitely have some serious variety on your work jukebox when you segue from loreena mckennitt to kiss…that’s kinda jarring, from a listeners’ standpoint.
happened today. right here in my shop. no shit.
crazy.
i’m taking the bus to and from work this week…and it’s been an adventure in people-watching, if nothing else. i’d prefer to have done this in weather a little less punishing…but then again, if the weather weren’t as bone-chilling as it is at the moment, i’d still be driving, because the van would probably start. as it is, it’s cold and the van ain’t goin’ nowhere.
i’m moving on to a new mechanic this time – one who doesn’t appear to be quite so eager to shrug his shoulders when you describe a problem to him. i’ve also made an appointment to go look at something new on saturday…i don’t know how that’s going to work out. to say that i’m skeptical is a bit of a leap…i’m sooo beyond skeptical.
i had hoped to jump into something substantial before now, but as it is the bus comes in twenty minutes or so, and i’d rather not wait for the next pass…as i don’t see it getting warmer as the night deepens…so this will be necessarily brief.
i’m a pretty judgemental person, i think. i wasn’t always this way…certainly not to the extent that i am now, anyway. but i’m finding that some pretty awful things pop into my head from time to time when i’m observing people in whatever element they present themselves to me.
today, for instance, i watched the same disheveled woman in a purple sweatsuit check the pay phones at the bus terminal for ignored change three times in the twenty minutes or so i was there…and not a single person used any one of them during that time. my first impression was that she might’ve been “special”, but a conversation i overheard eliminated that possibility (she was perfectly capable of normal Berks County conversation, anyway)…so i moved past “special” and went directly to one of two other possibilities – “bored” or “stupid” – or both…of course, it could be a nervous behavioral thing, or something of that nature, but watching her stand there in her lavender purple sweatsuit with her kelly green coat and her black boots kept bringing be back to “not too bright”….
now, for all i know, she might be brilliant and color blind…or maybe she was homeless, maybe destitute…but i jumped right off the “stupid” rock without really taking a step back to give her the benefit of the doubt.
i’d like to be able to write that off to my very consistent disposition at that hour of the day (not one prone to reach for kindness in the face of agitation, to be certain), but i don’t think that’s the foundation of it. i think i’m just way more judgemental about people that i have no basis for judgement than i’d like to admit to myself.
kinda shitty.
i sure do wish i’d have taken a picture of her outfit, though.
judgemental or not, it was truly a sight to behold.
another thing i’ve noticed in my bus-related travels…the railroad tracks pass through reading right at the edge of the sovereign center…and there are the customary barriers to traffic on penn street in front of the arena, but there’s also a “mini-barrier” that falls at the curb of the sidewalk as well…
…which prompted me to wonder – how fucking thick to you have to be to need a two-by-four falling in your path to keep you from walking into a train?
just as my ride home pulled up next to me, as if to illustrate how it worked, the rails dropped and the bell went off…but then they rose again, as if it were all a joke. i have witnesses. this really happened.
crazy.
off to feel the exhilirating sensation of nosehairs crystallizing….
...from the rear view mirror 