time

To get to the photo lab on Willow Street to develop my film, I take the Green Shuttle from Phelps Gate to Orange and Willow streets. Having gone three times before, I have the timing down. The Green Shuttle comes every thirty minutes, on 5 and 35 of the hour. It takes exactly ten minutes to walk from York Street to Phelps Gate to pick up the shuttle. This route begins at 12:46 PM. In the morning prior to this time, the shuttle comes on 8 and 38 of the hour.

After I found the morning schedule at 11:26 AM today, I scrambled to get ready in 2 minutes so that I could start walking by 11:28 and make the 11:38 shuttle. I made it there at 11:37, and had to wait a couple minutes because the shuttles are always slightly off. I saw the Green coming my way at 11:39...then the driver waved his hand and passed me right by. Thinking that perhaps the morning schedule didn't quite work the way I thought, I waited for awhile longer. Fifteen minutes longer. So when a Blue Shuttle came by, I decided to just take it instead of waiting another 15 for the next Green. Because I can take the Blue Shuttle to Whitney and Canner, which is right near Willow Street. The walk is about twice as long as from the Green Shuttle stop, but I estimated it'd be less time than waiting for another Green.

I got on the Blue, which took me right back to the Med School because the Shuttles don't go back and forth; they travel in loops. When I get there, the driver tells me that he's taking a break and that I have to wait for the next shuttle to get there in 10 minutes. It's near noon by this time, and I figure that if I have to wait another 10 minutes, I might as well walk the 10 minutes from the med school to Phelps Gate, to catch that next Green Shuttle that I didn't want to wait for in the first place. And try to catch the 12:08 Green. Since the 11:38 was on time but just didn't stop for whatever reason; maybe it was a transitional shuttle, I thought.

So I walked back to exactly where I was 20 minutes earlier, having expounded twice as much effort to get there than the first time around. I waited a little bit and saw the Green coming; it always stalls at the red light. I thought I'd made a good choice, even for having wasted a half hour..and then it passes by me again. I swore audibly.

It was another 15 minutes before a Blue Shuttle came by. I took it, again. It brought me back to the med school, again. I waited there for 10 minutes before it took off on its route, again. This time I rode it all the way to the stop and walked the 10 minutes to the photo lab. I finally got there at 1 PM.

When I got there the woman told me that she wouldn't be done developing my photographs until 3 PM, so I sat there and read while I waited. It turned out that I could only develop 2 prints out of 2 rolls (about 24 prints) because something went awry in my camera winder and the prints overlapped, making it impossible to print them. The fact that the Puerto Rico photographs I'd been so looking forward to are now forever encased in negative was bad enough, because I get upset like that. But atop it all my entire morning and early afternoon was taken up with this fruitless commute.

As I walked back, I saw the Green Shuttle pass right by me again and walked on forward to the Blue Shuttle stop, which I did catch. Because there's only one of each colored shuttle for each shift (morning and afternoon), the same driver who dropped me off picked me up. He was a gruff man in his late fifties with scraggly hair who looked through me when he talked to me, but not unkind. In the seat behind him was a boy maybe ten years old, who rode with him. I'm guessing his grandson. His grandson was there on the shuttle I took to the lab, and the shuttle back. He didn't have a book, or a gameboy. He didn't really talk to his alleged grandpa or to anyone else. He just sat in the same seat, looked out the same window, sometimes got up and stood by the driver and sat back down. He didn't look bored or restless. He rode that same route all afternoon.

More than wasting hours on the shuttle and being disappointed with my memories and subsequently my whole day because I get so easily consumed by moments, the image of that boy riding on the shuttle made me hurt. I miss that. I can't even remember when exactly I lost that. The ability to while away, nothingness, without thought to time. Spring break was a slight hint of that, and just this morning I talked for an hour with Dr. Fenn about what I love, and that included writing and stories and traveling, all things that make me distort my sense of time, give me more than what I have concretely, make me think outside those bounds while still feeling their weight.

But from day to day and for the past who-knows but too many years of my life I have been too often obsessed with time. What I could've done instead, whether I was "productive," whether even fun time was spent well. One of my top ten things in the world is commuting. Being a passenger or driving alone, with no real purpose but to arrive. And even that is not quite comparable to this boy on the shuttle. People say it's not the end, it's the journey, but that's assuming there is an end. For the boy, there was no end even. Just the same route.

I'd like to have days I can ride on the same shuttle, even more than twice or three times like I did today, and not be frustrated or think that something has gone to waste or forget to be glad for time itself and not just for what I do with it. I'd like to do absolutely nothing and feel more something because of it, to remove the brackets from time and just go around for a bit.