I am going to try this one again. A thought I have been chewing on for an age or two.
Umbrellas are a plague upon humanity. A small shelter for the timid and the terminally selfish. The cover a breach of the invisible personal space we are all allotted.
They are a burden that could free one arm that would be better used in a gesture that says, "please, you go first." instead it's gaudy bubble is a desperate insult to civility and taste.
Awful colours abound in the Rain City, an array with the colour sense of a newborn. A pack of dogs is better behaved than a dozen commuters out in the rain, each shouldering a barely effective shield against good sense.
Imagine, if you will, a dull grey morning. That dismal Monday that follows a gloomy weekend spent pacing the house, periodic stops at the windows to watch the rivulets run down the plate glass. Well now you're out in it, out in the crashing hiss of wet rubber on rain-glossed blacktop. Your feet are cold already from the sidewalk that looks like a scale model of Manitoba or Minnesota. Thousands of puddles just a few millimeters deeper than the worn soles of your well travelled shoes. Each step splashes a small amount into the leather uppers and the chill worms its way to bone, one little toe at a time.
As you trudge the side streets through the first leg of your dismal commute you find a little spring in your step. The quiet of the dawn is bearable on your own. You're a little wet and cold but you know the bus will be warm once you board. You'll be able to open your coat to breathe a little, and you could shed the soggy hat for a time. Just as you're getting a rhythm going the bus stop arrives like a fucked up painting by a serial killer when he was younger. Colours all over the place, faces all staring and mindless, a black background that clearly still shouts in some dank cell somewhere while doctors take brain samples in exchange for chemical passivity.
The queue for the express to downtown. You will not find a more vacuous and selfish crowd anywhere save on a Friday evening at the local Kale 'n Sale Gourmet Food outlet at 4th and Arbutus. The snoot is palpable above the patter of rain falling.
Dozens of those blasted articulated portable roofs all jammed up on the walkway. And you have to go stand right next to one. Well you park your sorry desk jockey hunch behind one particularly awful floral pattern. No sooner than you stop and resign yourself to your place in life another savage parks his clear with 90's neon splashes of colour cacophonic circle of disrespect right behind you. Already leaning back from the massive spike on Floral the Fidgeter's weapon waggling in your face your new friend Clear Killjoy is dripping sleet down your neck.
Beset on all sides by these eye-poking demons of polyvinyl and gnarled steel, your disparate mind searches for something to occupy it, to quell the fear. But you are having none of it. You start to do the math. You can see twenty of the beasts. Each with at least eight tiny and radially arrayed for maximum carnage pokers, and one I've spike on top, presumably for stabbing a fellow once you've knocked his eyes out. That's all you can see, there is no telling how many more are lurking just out of sight. There are certainly a couple in the bus shelter. Yes, a favourite den of those pricks.
Before you can mutter The Oath of the Shattered Raincover and banish all those foul dumpster-bound umbrellas to their fate, the great yellow brick of a bus pulls up with a sputter. The doors of its great belly open and spew out the miserable cargo. Predictably, the mass each shudder as they step into the drizzle and as if by reflex and insult more of the gaudy circles flash into existence. Pop, pop, pop, the awful tattoo plays as the people march. The virulent spray of well aged and mildewy rain assaults the queue. The line of people begins to shuffle towards the front of the bus. As more of the things puff into existence, ahead as many fold away to a horrifying dimension where no one has eyes to have poked out.
Have you ever heard the saying that you shouldn't learn how sausage is made? Well, I can tell you that it is very much like walking among two lines of people who are each at the handle of an atrocious device surely designed more to injure than protect. The octagonal, the yellow, the huge, the louvered, all an engineered grinder to beat you to a paste, then inject you all sopping wet into a bulk transport where you will be cooked up and served up in a cubicle to your boss. He will chew you out for something. It ain't pretty.
Out of the corner of your eye you spot a kindred spirit. Battered by the jagged mob she looks pleadingly at you, sky and the cast off dregs of other peoples' rain dripping down her face like tears. She may never make it work today, the state she is in. She staggers along, inching towards you, carried along by the machine. Together you two could change all this. You could build a store that sells really good rain coats and nice hats. You could put a new face on the people. A face that smiles and nods, says sorry once in while. You could do away with all these anti-social gizmos. The crowd ebbs and surges along the platform and she is almost in speaking distance. You can almost hear her struggling breath against the squeak and rustle of nylon, the clink of thin metal. You take a breath to say hello when a great flap of pink fills the universe and sprays an age of water all over your face.
Choking, you stagger out of the queue. You stumble away sputtering and wiping at your face. Litres of water come away as you swipe at the noxious liquid. You spasm with coughing and struggle to draw a clear breath. So much water. Your arms thrash about in instinct, trying to swim up to safety.
You manage a ragged couple of gasps and gather yourself. Shake your head to clear the buzzing and straighten your coat. You take a step toward the door of the bus. As your eyes finally blink away the blur drizzle the bus, sated by it's latest meal, barks and closes the door.
The rain slashes over the pavement almost pushing the bus along. Resigned to your fate your shoulders slump even further, they can barely hold up your bag any longer. Alone in the darkness you take a few weary steps to the pole that marks the bus stop.
Thanks for reading,
Pete
