silva rerum

And so to be delivered entirely from humanity

He boarded the bus, noti­cing the unbear­able, suf­foc­at­ing heat and the tell­tale stench of people whose bod­ies were unac­cus­tomed to the recent, unex­pec­ted tem­per­at­ures. He strode past the pas­sen­gers seated at the front of the bus who were lazily fan­ning them­selves with whatever objects they could muster – a hat, a book, a piece of paper. One seat was empty in the back, hav­ing been thor­oughly baked by the sun’s rays stream­ing through the dirty win­dow. He took a seat any­way and hoped that a seat was bet­ter than no seat at all. The bus star­ted. Turning expertly around the hair­pin loop, the driver nav­ig­ated the bus through and out the bus loop into the city. And as the bus crossed the bridge, he stared list­lessly out the win­dow, think­ing about noth­ing at all. At that moment, a great sad­ness filled his chest, threat­en­ing to engulf every fiber of his being with a burn­ing des­pair, with over­whelm­ing anguish. He blinked once or twice, still look­ing out at the expanse of blue sky above him, puzzled by this sud­den sor­row. After some con­tem­pla­tion, he understood.