Stellar Ride

You wake in a bus. It’s dark out, pitch black, and you’re seated at the back so you can’t even see headlights. You can’t remember anything about your life. Heads bump along with the bus. There is dust in your eyes and mouth—on your teeth. You have the tiredness of recent sleep on you and the sound of cymbals in your ears. No, that’s the motor, or air conditioner. This bus has fold seats, so there is no aisle. Maybe you’re not even on a road, though it’s so bumpy, just whirling through the universe like a pack of stars, waiting to land somewhere and glow for a short part of eternity. You’re in a free fall. No, that isn’t it. You remember something un-stellar. You remember once having parents. You weren’t always on this bus. What kind of life would that be? You’re on a bridge now with rickety wooden planks beneath you. You have feelings, this helps you know more, this one is fear. Absolutely. Dark, bumpy, and crunched in a bus. Fear.

One man is standing. Why is this man standing. This bothers you. Really irks the fuck out of you.

You hear singing—resonating out of the pitches in the motor. It sounds like Hindu music somewhat, but gentler, more like forests, lakes, temples, somewhere remote, these swirling pitch-melodies—changing speeds suddenly, fitfully; it’s amazing this road doesn’t give the bus a flat. And how could you sleep in these conditions? You’re sweating and your knee—this is good, you have a knee—keeps hitting the bar of the seat in front of you. You remember poetry (this is bad!):

Is the kitchen real?

A squid pulls you into numb eternity.

This bus is a squid; that’s why the bus does not get a flat—it has no tires, no motor, no air conditioner; really there exists no bus but only squid, unreal squid, no kitchens for miles, at least not in the sense you’re thinking. This squid ride could be considered kitchen to some other being, whatever being put you here now listening to those swirling dissonant pitches coming from this strange swimming squid. Now you understand why you can’t see headlight, but how do you explain the seats?