Three Minutes of Bliss

I got it this morning on the way to work -- it all came together after last night's directionless, artistic babble. I walked into the Porter T sipping my iced coffee, the people as usual moving like robotic wind-up toys down the mighty escalator, like in the opening scene of Metropolis. I stepped onto the subway platform and these two old black men are playing Dixieland, smiling and pulling the stops on an ancient saxophone, and I wanted to cry with joy. I looked around and the people were all worried about getting to the end of the platform to maximize their waiting time efficiently so when the doors open wherever they get off they're twenty feet close to their destination, and I stood in amazement at the acoustics and the full rich sunshine sounds bouncing off the cement walls a hundred feet underground. I dropped my last five bucks in the guitar case with the little sign that looks like it was made by one of their six-year-old kids that said very simply and appropriately "bliss."

I looked around incredulously -- these people didn't hear the music! I mean, they actually couldn't hear it! And I began to understand why i freak out so easily. I mean, if they can't hear that gorgeous Dixieland echoing through the T station imagine all the buried subtleties of day to day that they miss! Never mind words or sounds or colors or full-blown scenes, how about the aura of someone when they walk in the room? If they can't hear this music, how can they tell by a spare wrinkle under someone's eye that they're not sleeping and they need to talk? And now I realized I cannot blame other people for treating me roughly. They do not see the same world I do. They do not feel emotions against their skin. They do not realize how much a tone of voice can wound me. And they do not understand what it's like to live with no skin. How much responsibility comes with that innate sensitivity. How much more I have to think about and worry about and taste and touch and feel. How exhausting it is. And that is how they are able every day to get up and put on restrictive clothing and get on the T and sit in a fluorescent lit office doing other people's important work and arranging other people's important meetings and writing other people's important letters. And that is okay for them because they cannot feel.

But I know I will never be happy doing anyone else's work, or conforming to anyone else's ideas. And I can admit that and stop attacking myself for trying to fit into some round hole. I'm a square peg, dammit. This looming picture of my mother haunts me ceaselessly -- extended finger shaking reproachfully -- put on a dress and some DECENT shoes and blow-dry your hair and go to an office because that is the only job on this planet worth doing. My whole life I've been punishing myself for not fitting some stupid mold and thinking that I was selfish because I wanted live my life differently than most. I may be selfish, but not because I want to be happy. Now I feel I can accept fumbled human interactions more gracefully.

Yesterday I was standing in the crosswalk at Central Square and this car slowed down and waved for me to go, even though it was rush hour, this woman smiled and was like, "Go ahead, hon," you could totally see her at some diner slinging cheesefries wearing a pink apron, smoking a cigarette, driving her lime green '67 Dodge Dart. So I step into the street and halfway across this powerbitch driving one of those metropolitan land rovers that eat up more gas than a Mac truck and kill people who drive sensible Escorts in accidents -- she looks at me, he eyes squinted in a fierce glare, whiteknuckled grip on the enormous steering wheel -- bet she felt pretty big in that truck even though she looked like a five-year-old -- and she floored the gas pedal. I swear she wanted to kill me! She screeched right through the crosswalk a foot from my face going fifty miles an hour. Embarrassingly, I gave her the finger. I couldn't help it. She blew her horn at me as she drove by.

And that is how I started my day yesterday. And that is why I gave those guys in the T station this morning my last five bucks, for three minutes of "bliss."