to have and to move

there's nothing like Greyhound to turn an individual inside out, so one's true lining shows—and runs for dear life. the pet hatred (bus schedules and connections, both unmitigatibly drawn up by an illogician on crack) pales beside the delight, perhaps equally outside of logic, that comes shining scrappily through beneath the mopped-from-dashing brow. you have to work to ride the bus: sometimes you have to earn your seat or ride, standing, between a couple of cities. the extremes of temperature, the delays (that, ironically, form a system that holds itself moderately in check solely through consistency of aberration: even though the bus you're currently riding got held up, by whim or weather, you won't miss the next one because it will also have had some pressing obligations to attend to before departing).

today there was a bit of tornado-dodging involved, in addition to everything else. leaving Bloomington early (after class, checking out an apartment, and throwing belongings together in 4.48'') only meant that we hit the storm head-on as it moved south. walls of water. walls of undeterred 18-wheelers. it was probably good that i haven't located the bike i'm supposed to borrow for the summer—because then i would have been hard pressed not to bike the 50 miles, as was the original plan. the bus left Indianapolis an hour late and, with that, the stage was set for the expected resolution: in Dayton, the connecting bus had been downed and tipped along its path up from CIncinnati. oh, wait, i mean that traffic along said road had been snarled because another vehicle had done such....

the mad dash to Ann Arbor seems to be working out—albeit with half a journey and two crucial exchanges remaining, of one which being: getting a ride from Toledo. es muss sein. because, you see, i'm up to Ann Arbor for Erica's wedding and this is not the time, place, nor person in/with which to rely with unwarranted confidence upon unreliable modes of transportation. not when others playing formal roles in the ceremony are missing planes, held up and negotiating with every fiber. it takes some doing, to wear the silky black-and-blue, to carry the flower and not play with fire.

it's both hard and necessary, however, to explain that "things going wrong" usually have precious little to do with the vehicle, the circumstances, or the amount of planning, but are far and away more largely dependent on the person involved. you make it work, or you can't—and it's those in this latter category who must (not to ward off disasters and failures absolutely, but only to reduce them as much as possible) resort to classically "careful" measures. crutches can make walking possible, but not for a hairbreadth can these be mistaken for feet.

the Ohio sky dims (earlier than it has, above me, for elongating days now at the far and controversial reaches of the Eastern time zone, but after 21:00, nonetheless). here, where the non-diesel is $2.54, the land flat, the crop rows straight and green. along these arrow roads, past towns called Delphos and Findlay, everyone is just passing through and, by now, most having been doing so for at least two states. it's been longer for some, with more at stake than carsick whining and snatches of music between static—but who remembers any of it when the almost-all arms are, at journey's end, thrown wide?