Between Heaven and Earth

from modmuze October 2022

by modmuze

Belonging with Barbie

Between Heaven Between Heaven and Earth and Earth

Sometimes, on the move is the best place to be Sometimes, on the move is the best place to be

There is a place where the bottom of the bus door is meant to meet the floor. Here there are some inches–because the door has been shaken in its frame or because the floor has sunk–there are some inches where the door does not, in fact, come all the way down to the floor. The result is a small opening that allows the rider of the bus to see the pavement they are riding on, albeit only in a blur of gray or black. At particularly bright times of day, this opening is instead filled with the triumphant gold tissue of the sun. At these lucky times, the door seems less like a barrier between the inside and outside of a bus and more like one between heaven and earth.

Scenes like this carry my love for the bus and all of the many other forms of public transportation. But particularly the bus. The bus’s interior is a place entirely separate from everywhere and everything else. It is a waiting room, a green room and an oasis in the desert. To the unlucky rider, it is an office or emergency room. To the tired rider, it is a cradle. But no matter what, it is moving and taking you away. If the bus is taking you away from something like a catastrophe, then that surely is a good thing on its own, right? If it is taking you away from a shiny and joyful setting, then it is a place for you to bask in your new memory. When you are weary and just want to be home instead of on public transit, then at least the bus is taking you there.

But the point is not where the bus is or is not because it’s not really anywhere (it’s somewhere in between and somewhere transcendent, again a space between heaven and earth). What makes the bus so beautiful is how it treats its passengers. It treats its passengers with the brusque but also tender care of a

father who doesn’t often vocalize his love but whose child never questions if it is there. Because it so clearly is there. Or the bus is like a boss who tells his employees to work, but only because he has to. And he will be the first to rise to their defense because of that work. Public transportation may do its job begrudgingly at times, but it does it dependably too. It will be there when your car breaks down. It will be there when the weather is too hot or too cold, and it will be ready to counteract the wrong temperature as soon as you step on board.

There may be other people on the bus. If you are silently mourning, you can imagine them mourning with you, and the same goes for celebration. You may speak to the people, but you probably won’t, and they probably won’t speak to you. So you can just listen to music or your own thoughts. You can take any posture you like. You can hide your head in your hands and bounce your knee. You can straighten yourself to sit very tall against the back of your seat. You can lean back, rest your head on the window, be jostled and feel the engine’s rumble in your chest. You can be anything and the bus will not care. And it will not care what anyone else does either, provided they do not raise their hand against another.

Public transportation loves you and welcomes you in its own way. It will defend you against all manner of calamities, the abstract and the physical alike. This affection may take strange forms, but it is so much greater than the bus’s habit of taking you where you need to go. And even that habit is often overlooked. So please do not let it go away.