There was a crazy guy on my bus home last night.* I’ve encountered enough people that have crossed over  that invisible line that separates “sanity” from madness line in my time to recognize one when I see one. As we were getting on the bus we briefly made eye contact and I saw that slight wildness in his eye, that need to be understood.  It had been a long day, and I just couldn’t fit that much crazy into my commute home, so I sat about as far away as the confines of a city bus allow. Shame really, because a conversation with this stringy-haired flourescently vested fellow might have made this a better blog post.

This particular crazy man was one of the ghost talkers – he spent the ride having apparently one-sided debates with phantom companions. Some of these got pretty heated, so much so that they occasionally earned him nervous glances from the other passengers and even broke through the sonic buffer that my iPod provides. But he was mostly harmless.Seems that every big town, and probably small, has a whole subculture of people that – let’s put it kindly – march to the beat of their own drummer.  Some of them are frightening, some (like your man on the bus) are mildly irritating and some are entertaining. There’s a guy that I see on my way into work in the mornings who rambles around Adelaide’s Rundle Mall singing the same tune over and over. He’s not particularly talented and I’ve not a clue what the song is, but he seems to not care one way or the other. A few years back, when I lived in Seattle, one of my favorite local characters was a fellow who used to wander Pioneer Square and Downtown singing Al Green songs. Only Al Green songs. He was actually pretty good but like the Rundle Mall singer, other people’s opinions seemed of little interest to him.

There was a big part of me that really used to envy these guys. From the outside of their heads – things seemed pretty good for them. Obviously I don’t know what goes on in the inside – what’s shaken loose. But, compared to myself, trudging through life Atlas-like with the combined weight of all my problems on my shoulders, their lives appeared simple, even happy.I’ve been pretty quiet on the blogging front lately. A fair bit of that has to do with work and not really wanting to spend any more time on the computer when I get home. But some of this has to do with the absence of that weight that I used to carry around on my back. I firmly believe that most good writing is fueled by angst or conflict or melodrama.** I don’t know if its age, exhaustion with the energy that being angstridden requires or what but lately, I’ve been tacking toward the street singing state of mind. I just don’t feel it so much these days. I even find myself singing, sometimes, in the street. Maybe that’s how it starts, with a quick chorus of “Jelly Man Kelly” on the way to the bus stop and then it’s a slippery slope to “Let’s Stay Together” on repeat and yelling at invisible assailants on the 721 bus.

This tendency to break out into song stems from the fact that things are pretty good for your underwhelming narrator. On the crazy man bus last night I got to thinking about things and realized that I’m approaching that El Dorado of the spirit I’ve heard referred to as “happy”. I like both of my jobs, a definite improvement from the recent past. I’ve got a beautiful family. I live minutes from the beach (13 to be exact). I’ve got feets to walk, arms to reach and ears to listen. And, crucially, I seem to be developing an ability to leave the buts behind. Like, for example, but:

  1. We’re still borrowing a car.
  2. We’re still renting a house.
  3. Said house is way the hell  out in whoop-whoop.
  4. My daily commute is pushing two hours round trip.
  5. Australia does, in fact, have a winter and it is now.
  6. My family is very far away.
  7. I don’t get to the beach nearly as much as I would like to.
  8. Dr. O’C won’t let us get the cable TV so we can watch something other than “Home and Away” and reruns of “Neighbors“.
  9. I only get to see my son awake for about half an hour a day.
  10. I have to do something this weekend that I really don’t want to do.
  11. I don’t have enough money to buy an iPhone.
  12. I appear to be getting older at an alarmingly fast rate.

Huh, when I put it all together like that, it’s actually a bit depressing. But the fact is that on a daily basis it’s all manageable. And actually liking my job, from someone who spent far too long in a job that I hated, makes all the difference in the world. That list above is daunting, but I don’t actually face it up on a daily basis. I can ride the bus home, and just chill the hell out. Just enjoy what’s in front of me. I probably smile sometimes for no reason, occasionally whistle a happy tune or tap the rhythm of that tune a bit too vehemently. To the random observor, maybe this whistling tapping glint-in-the-eye guy looks a little bit crazy. Maybe that’s why the seat next to me is often unoccupied on the busy bus trip home.

* I realize, dude, that “crazy” is probably not the ‘approved nomenclature’, but just don’t care that much.

** This post has really just been a long-winded excuse as to why I’ve not written a thing this week. And an opportunity to show off my kid. Sorry to put you through that.

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