Memories, Missed Stops, and Woolf

I was trying to remember what I thought Kath’s apartment would look like. I was sitting on the bus, rummaging through old, long-forgotten items in my brain, trying to remember my preconceptions about Kath’s apartment… it was a night of heavy snow-fall… all around there was beautiful white. And I kept calling my parents, trying to convince them that I would be completely fine, and that they had nothing to worry about! But my dad had been watching the news or listening to some radio station, and he was telling me about all the accidents on the freeway. He demanded that I come home immediately… and now, ah, yes, the memories resurface of their own accord, without my effort… I was in the midst of doing some last-minute Christmas shopping… if memory serves, it was the day before Christmas Eve…
And so I used this as a spring-board for some elaborate lie: I told him I would finish up my shopping as soon as possible, and then I was “going to my friend Katie’s in West Allis,” since I was already “in that direction.” (if you only knew my father, or the Milwaukee metropolitan area for that matter, you would know what a consolation this was to him; it sounded infinitely better than saying “I’m going to take the 8-94 all the way down to the east side to visit my friend Kath’s apartment…” Couple with that the fact that my father was always leery about my extraneous visits to the east side.) so, little by little, I got my parents’ consent, and with that, I was off to Kath’s apartment on the east side.
On the way there, I remember speaking with Josalyn on the phone… and she was telling me how they were assembling a TV stand and hanging up posters… and that Kath’s apartment was very dear and “quaint,” and that I would really love seeing it…
And, consequently, today, as I sat on the bus, I tried to remember what I thought about when Josalyn told me this… yes, a rather absurd detail of memory, but I wanted to bring it to the surface anyway; these bizarre recollections and musings are one of the many reasons I love taking the bus… one never knows what interesting thoughts may surface…
So what did I think it looked like? I think I remember relating it to Cheryl’s apartment, probably because I really haven’t been to very many apartments… It didn’t register in my mind that Josalyn had told me it was a one-bedroom studio apartment, and that it was going to be much different from what I had thought.
All I remember is that my preconceptions were much different from Kath’s actual apartment. And obviously, not in a bad way; I love Kath’s apartment, and already, I have so many beautiful memories attached to it.
But, for some reason, this thought just clung to my brain… I needed to remember the exact image I had conceived before seeing the actual apartment… Maybe there was a living space with white carpeting, and a tiny little bedroom, and maybe--
“Excuse me,” shouted a petite woman adjacent from me, thoroughly disrupting my thought-flow, “this is my stop!” A few other riders seemed to laugh casually.
Yes, yes, he had missed it. I remember watching her pull the cord immediately after we left the last stop, so as to make her intentions very clear… but for some reason, the bus driver completely missed it. Perhaps his brain had not taken notice of the bell, or the “STOP REQUESTED” sign. Or maybe he just made a very human mistake. It was completely forgivable, I think. But evidently not to this woman.
At that point, I was trying to recollect whether or not this type of instance had ever happened to me. But I couldn’t remember any such instance…
“Ah, you should have said something earlier…” the bus driver casually mused, meaning no real harm… probably just speaking straight out of his mind.
“I pulled the cord right away, loser.” The sting in this woman’s words was both clear and deliberate. There were some low, apologetic “ou’s” from the crowd… a few laughs… someone else muttering, “oh, come on, now ‘loser?’ ” it sounded extremely similar to the din of a studio audience at a sit-com… or like the spiritless canned laughter on television…
And I realized that my thoughts had been completely turned by this bizarre incident, and that I would truly never be able to remember my preconceptions of Kath’s apartment… and from there my thoughts ran absurdly and illogically… documenting the bus-driver’s increased velocity after the incident (or at least, I had perceived an increase in velocity; perhaps he had been driving quickly the whole time…) yes, yes, we were driving maniacally fast! And I was thinking about writing all these thoughts down in some haphazard journal, and that I would be like a perfect Woolf, in her bizarre little short story “An Unwritten Novel.” and then I was thinking that it would be a very different story indeed, because it would be based on actual events, not on an interesting fabrication of my own imagination. And from there I wondered if I could ever truly be a legitimate writer, because I “put so much of myself into” the craft. Especially when Woolf, Wilde, and many others, had talked about completely removing one’s emotional mind from his or her art… otherwise he or she was “selling-out,” or something. Objectivity. And realism. No romantic subjectivity… but which was I really aiming for anyway? And wasn’t I writing realistically?
After that my thoughts flew back to the incident, and I thought about thinking about the incident. And I thought about thinking about writing about the incident. And I thought about thinking about thinking about writing the incident. And from there I wondered what a sad end I would come to, if the bus driver got us all killed in some terrible accident… with me thinking about writing and writers and bizarre interpersonal incidents…