Buses Archives - The Pure Life of Dreams

July 12, 2024July 12, 2024

Ethiopian Theater and the Hidden Stage

It was night already as the bus bumped its way through the town of old Addis Ababa.

I was with Liam at the back. The open windows allowed us to peak out onto dim lit streets, street seller stalls dotted along the sidewalks, open spaced parks with meandering iron-post lamps followed their paths.

Liam and I had gone off to take a nap in the sleep house while Lizzie and Siobhan separately went shopping. But now we had to join them to see the play at the old theater.

I held Baby Liam in my arms on the bus and together we looked out through the windows of the bus.

And once we arrived at the old theater building there was already quite a crowd.

The building was yellow with red lined Ethiopian text above the huge double oak doors which also had red lined trim. The text was embossed against the flat of the wall.

The steps leading up to the doors were packed with people jostling to get in.

I spotted Lizzie, she was half way up the steps, and I called ahead to her. I knew that we had seats up in the balcony but we had to get the tickets first.

“We’re here. You got the tickets?” I yelled over to her and unexpectedly, she turned when she heard me.

Lizzie spread the tickets out in her hand, four of them, like they were a tarot deck, shiny and dark green and she reached over to us with them, as we pushed our way up the steps.

The four of us passed through the doors and together we climbed the stairs to the balcony.

All the seats were covered in white sheets, apart from a kid’s size wicker chair that was positioned in the aisle, next to our row. The chair was painted red and brown and must have been for the porter.

At the front there was a cream colored curtain and no view, apart from a slit at foot level were you could peak through to the ceiling of the stage.

Siobhan started complaining about the view.

“It’s the same with everyone,” I told her but the porter indicated the wicker chair for her if she wanted.

“I don’t want that!” she complained again.

We inched along our row, some three rows back from the front. Baby Liam went first and then myself, followed by Lizzie and Siobhan.

Liam was fussing by the time we were all seated. He sat next to an elderly couple who were sat by the wall. They wore brown turbans and long white jellabas and, on their robes, he sprayed grey felt pieces that he’d found from somewhere. They were from the seat cushions, I thought, as he continued to break apart more felt.

In front of us, from the balcony roof, were suspended ornate dark wooden lamps. They were unlit, and instead the balcony sconces were on.

“Liam is going to have swap places,” I called over to Siobhan.

“Why?” She was irritated.

“He’s making a mess with the couple next to him.”

So Liam and Lizzie swapped places just as the lights dimmed.

The cream colored curtain rose, and with it were raised the orchestra and the stage, so that both were directly in front us. The orchestra in front of the stage, a magnificent entrance.

And the view was perfect apart from where the cellist and the stringed instruments sat, where the tops of their instruments poked above the floor of the stage.

Then the musicians started up a low dirge but I wasn’t sure how long we would last.

I mean it wasn’t Broadway or the West End.

Photo by Steffen Wurzel via WikiMedia Commons.

October 11, 2022March 30, 2023

Tottenham Court Road Ain’t What it Used to Be

We had been on a plane to London with two flight attendants, blonde ladies with beige Hubert coats and a confident swagger. And when we got out of the terminal it was already night and there was a light drizzle. It must have been two or three in the morning.

A black cab pulled up and one of attendants turned back to us and said “I feel we know you already, seeing as we’ve spent the last four hours together. More, if you count the hours before the plane.”

Then they got into the cab and were whisked away.

April 21, 2022October 22, 2022

Duck is Nearly Run Over by a Bus

We found a duck.

He stood on our bench in the corner of the diner and looked eye level directly at me. He had small round bead eyes, a white semicircular bill and he stood tall on wide webbed feet.

The duck was very cute, was covered in what looked more like white fur than feathers. I wanted to pet him but I was afraid he might bite.

Caren Nicole gave me a white bath towel to protect my hand but though wary, I stroked the top of his head without using the towel. And when I held it up to him he bit into it, held the soft towel in his bill, while I continued to stroke him. It was to show me that he wouldn’t bite.

“We got to get him out of here,” I said, so we we left the diner and he followed us out into the park.

At first I did not think he would follow us, but when we coaxed him he kept up. We passed a group of people having a cook out on a park bench and Caren Nicole cried out, ”God I can’t stand that.” She pointed out one of the guys, “acting all happy when he’s always mean at work!”

We continued through the park until we hit the road that we would have to cross. And we were crossing at the roundabout with the duck slightly ahead of us when a red double decker drove into our path.

The bus driver could not see the duck and we cried out, ”Noooo…! Mind the duck!”

The duck panicked, got confused and the bus driver span her steering wheel around to avoid him, only to spin the bus round in circles instead. And the duck tried to turn back but the bus was now in the way and hid him from view. I watched as the duck twisted his foot, slow motion, as the tire drove over it.

“No!” I cried in pain.

Then the bus drove on, with the duck left standing, startled, in the middle of the road. He had a tire mark, a streak, across the grey webbing of his right foot; otherwise he was unharmed.

“Thank God!” I said.

We brought the duck back to the pavement and put him in a kid sized Radio Flyer wagon. You could see immediately, he was happier there.

“I think my kids’ Jewish kindergarten will take him,” suggested Caren Nicole, so we started out for their school, pulled the wagon along, with the duck stood up straight in the back.

Once we arrived, we had to take him up three big concrete steps to the entrance. At the top, the door was open and I could see a long brightly lit hallway. Soft, yellow lighting, it looked inviting and it made me hopeful that they would take him.

I announced to the duck, “Hold on… we got to go up some steps.” Then I tilted the wagon so that we could get him up.

As we climbed, I sang ”bumpity, bumpity, bump!” and the wagon bumped up each step, until we reached a black childproof gate at the top. But before we could open the gate a boy, dropped off by his father, bounded up the steps, and pushed past us.

Perhaps we could follow him in, I thought.

Photo by Maren Winter via Wikimedia Commons

December 23, 2021June 7, 2024

Venturing Out From a Hotel in Afghanistan

Fabulous vignettes in Afghanistan. I am in a bland western hotel in the desert, white tiles, travelers milling about but I am bored, so I leave to walk around outside.

The landscape opens up with fantastic open spaces, green brush, Native American like cave dwellings below, inset in rock formations. The walls are carved with Arabic tooling, like the decorations seen on the window treatments of an ornate vizier’s home; an arch outlined with five half circles. Black and white dots fill the space between the outlines; each arch small with respect to the caves, but repeated horizontally, in sets of three, along light brown walls at floor level.

Miniature entrances to another world.

A bus comes by and I get on it. And it leads me further along the desert road, and down a slope before arriving suddenly into a town where the locals are.

The town bustles with tented market stalls, noise and dust, black robed people and kids running around. It scares me slightly that I am far from the hotel, a lone westerner in a crowd, in a town clearly unvisited by the hotel.

But it is the real deal.

Kids, shirtless, are laughing at me. I realize how exposed I am by myself, but the commotion and the press of people are exhilarating. And now I am out of the bus, climbing high and looking down on the street scenes. And below, I see the same Middle Eastern arches in the walls of the market.

Later I am in a tunnel. I think it is for cars, but I cannot be sure. It is dark, and kids further along the pathway, the same side of the tunnel, are pointing at me. It feels a little threatening, with only a single green metal guardrail separating me from the cars, the space very narrow between guardrail and wall. My big western body can barely fit through the space.

The kids yell over to a group coming up behind me, signal my presence. I push my hands against the wall, back flat against the rail, trying to stretch the path wider. At first the rail will not yield, and though the group is ignoring the kids I want to move on. Then on my next attempt, the green metal bends, the gap for the path widens, and the iron buckles and stretches into thin molten strands as it is pushed away from the wall.

I am back in the open, squatting down by the side of a street, at floor level, watching people walking, legs coming down the steps. I briefly glimpse another lone westerner in the crowd, he must have taken the same bus. It is comforting that I am not the only one to have ventured from the hotel. And another, a woman this time, a brief glimpse of long curly yellow hair, she reminds me of Carol B, thick ankles, seen from my low vantage point. She is also walking down the narrow street market steps, but she disappears as soon as I see her.

Then I am really high up and out in the open sun, on the platform of a temple, I could be on the top of a Hindu dais. A narrow ledge leads me across the front. I look down below, see the same market streets, and more of the cave dwelling, Arabic tooled, curlicues. Kids to my right, sit on a separate platform, further along the ledge. They stand at the top of a series of steps that include a red metal guardrail leading safely down to the market street. It is very narrow between my platform and the kids’.

Separating us is the same very narrow guardrail that was in the tunnel. I won’t make it through but this time I do not think it will stretch with my weight. And so I decide against trying.

Main photo by Zeledi via Wikimedia Commons
Arch photo by Maite Elorza via Flickr (Picture fewer circles, gold trim and in miniature)

November 25, 2021October 22, 2022

Lost in a Bus Station in Hong Kong

We have just gotten off the island. It is bright and sunny. The car ferry docks at Yung Shue Wan pier and our bus drives off the ferry and pulls into the bus station. We still have to switch buses.

The four of us are trying to get out but we are at the back, and there are more people doing the same. And when it is our turn, others are already getting on.

Liam, Lizzie, Siobhan finally leave when I see a shopping bag left behind. I pick the bag up but a black woman says to me, No, that is mine!