Lost in Transit

Sitting on the Third Avenue bus.
waiting for the sun
If the sun don't come you get a tan
from standing in the English rain

But it's New York 2008, and there's no Beatles, and no Walrus.

Instead the Dow is through the floor and we are lucky to have jobs. Times are tough. It's been a long day's day.

Commuters all, we sit and sit, waiting for our stop to come.

What's this? There's an elderly woman opposite me. She is talking to a golf club! I kid you not.

She bends her face so that her mouth is almost touching the head. "What a bumpy bus. Do you want to walk dear?" she asks tenderly.

The man next to me looks up, distracted momentarily from his Blackberry. A woman opposite stops chatting on her cellphone. An overweight teenager turns the volume down on his Ipod, and stares.

There's a mischievous look in the old woman's eye. Is she having us on?

"Don't worry darling, we'll be home soon", she says to the golf club.

I go back to reading my Kindle. The man next to me answers his Blackberry message. The woman opposite re-kindles her conversation and the overweight teenager turns up his Ipod.

Life goes on.

And that is what I love about this city. We don't expect much. A golf club, a bus, an Ipod, a Blackberry.The karma of acceptance. The stock market might be plummeting, houses might be foreclosed all across the country, Sarah Palin may be a celebrity, but as long as little old ladies can talk to golf clubs on the Third Avenue bus, all is right with the world.