Rarely is the normal unusual.

But today seemed one of those exceptions, as the bus driver bellowed to his customers, who he’d slowly, throughout the ride, taken on as children. Today, the unexpected curled up and invaded the usual. He did not talk to every passenger in the same way. There was no standard greeting, he would rage and whine to some, lamenting the obligation to grant the smallest of favours, to open the window, or pass over some change. Sometimes they were his closest buddies, you could say he still lived close to his feelings, he was still affected by the weather, not only outside, but in the souls and spirits of his riders. You could say he lived closer to the spirit of the Earth as well, and that anyone who climbed into his micro bus, did also, but default. Sometimes he played music with a force that pounded the Earth, sometimes he discussed the merits of marriage, or singledom, or children or economic subsidies for the dispossessed. Occasionally, he sat next to someone who would chime in with his chatter, who would supplement it with his wide repertoire of poetry in other languages, or meticulous precision in the dates of modern Middle Eastern peace treaties and political conferences. These people’s income wasn’t immediately deducible from their clothes, but some slur usually betrayed it, some reference to paperwork, some suggestion of work as a cage and constriction rather than a

pastime or a sport, as the engineers, politicians and doctors would feel. Sometimes the other passengers got the feeling that they were listening to one of those lost by the country, spent by the reserve, opened by education and then quickly closed again by work. But that over frothing, that over brimming, some might call it a thirst for knowledge, and others, a will to fill that thirst in others, spilt out into their work. Right in its middle, so it could be neither properly conceptualized or politicized, because it took place right in the centre of work’s very transactions, it took place right in its brain. Sometimes they got the feeling that a man was spending his knowledge in order to buy their approval, and often were reluctant to pay, it was this kind that reminded them most of their own mundane financial circumstances, the in-elasticity of their own lot. The passengers were no one in particular but also almost everyone, and that was how the bus kept its life, often off the backs of its lifeless load.