Do you have the time?

‘Listen,’ said the man in the metal jacket. ‘Life isn’t a game.

‘You can’t hit escape when you mess up. And you can’t switch over when you’re bored.

‘My god, boy- there aren’t any extra lives.’

I could have sworn I heard a gold-coin ding in the distance.

‘You see,’ he continued. ‘It’s about responsibility.

‘If there ever was another word for it, it was Duty. It is duty.

‘It is your duty in life to be responsible for it.’

Oh look, a twist. My moustache nipped at my bottom lip while a chortle rose from the cheesy depths of my stomach, but disappeared behind a smile.

I re-adjusted my cap and made a mental note to wonder why I wear it, at a later time, today. Right now might be offensive; and nobody wants to be a courteous racist. Conversation is chess, after all.

‘And your life is not yours. Biology begot you, and odd botany keeps you alive. Energy is a cannibal’s fairytale. You eat the plants that eat the sun, or animals that eat the plants that eat the sun. Then, a sun somewhere eats a planet, a galaxy for dessert, and Death is Prince Charming for everyone but Peter Pan. When the clock strikes midnight, who knows what pretenses will turn to pumpkins.’

Sometimes I have no idea what people are trying to tell me. I spend the length of the conversation wondering if they’d figure it out; and if it would make all that much of a difference if they did. Though, observantly, growing up is about coming to wonder- exactly what was Cinderella tripping on? Did the fairy godmother do tea-shop stops? Why aren’t traffic cops that kind- aren’t we all just friendly strangers?

Oh wow, he’s taking a breath.

‘We are destined to believe in destiny. But free will is a funny sketch with no hits on Youtube. Freedom is the unnecessary movie adaptation. Who got the sketch? Life is lost to the pursuit of happiness, and gained in the pursuit of harmony. There is philosophy in music, and a wisdom in rhythm. Harmony: to be with what is.’

And just then, as he shifted his weight to his other leg in preparation to launch himself into what the preamble had begun to suggest was a diatribe on modern Liberty- the bus screeched in like meaning on wheels to afford purpose to the bus-stop.

Quickly, he spun around for one last breath, ‘harmony: to be with what is. How can you believe you have any say over that which you had no say in becoming a part of? Karma is destiny is karma.’

And with an uncle’s chuckle, he was gone- hopped on the bus and disappeared down the double-decker’s lower aisle. Maybe life does have fairytale endings.

As the bus rolled out a physical pan-left to my happily ever after, I wondered if maybe the eternal wisdom of ‘don’t talk to strangers’ encompassed asking for the time. Lost in thoughts’ pond, I peered upward, and inadvertently, across the street.

A large man with a pink umbrella smiled amicably at me.

I, then, concluded thus: logic makes no space for randomness the way the universe does. Luckily, people do, and artists are. Who knows what beauty we might have lost to chaos if it wasn’t for art’s search? Nonsense is the essence of order and the study of art. Clearly, I had to conclude thus. The brain does enjoy its pretense of sanity.