I was seated recently on a bus, heading home from school, or school from home, or some other. I was sitting on the bottom deck of the double-decker near the left side by a window. Beside me sat a woman. She might have been older, or younger, her hair might have been blonde or hazel, and her skin might have been pale as paper or dark as night. In fact, she might not have been a woman at all, but instead a man, because I did not pay her that much attention, but only to know she was sitting next to me and I was occasionally thinking about her.

I was minding my own business, sitting still in place, snugly and not occupying much room around me, listening to some instrumental music and tapping my leg on the ground. The woman did not seem at all occupied by me, and was not even looking my way when my considerations took place. My music was playing and I was not listening to it, and was rather listening to my own thoughts, which are commonly much louder and more overwhelming than any music. These thoughts were daydreams, mostly, as they usually are, about happiness and that, about not worrying and not feeling anxious, about talking to people I enjoyed talking to, and about not feeling uncomfortable with any ol’ human that might happen to be around me. Those were my primary thoughts, and they typically are, daydreams and the like, all warm and artificial.

But these thoughts were abrupted my that sudden feeling, that, well, I struggle to capture. It’s like a certainty, or premonition, or—yes: it’s like that worry you feel, when you cannot remember if you turned off your gas before leaving the house. That’s the worry I felt that stopped my pleasant daydreams, and it caught my attention. Most notably it was odd because I did not have a gas cooker or stove, and could not leave the gas on. I had not left the lights on at home or anything like that, and the worry was not of that nature anyway. My mind did not care whether I had locked the door or forgotten something at home, though I certainly could have. The meaning was somewhere deeper, something more or less pressing, and I would have to excavate till I found it. Until I did, I would only be left with the feeling that I had done something foolish or wrong, and could not immediately remember. There was some reason to feel horrible at that moment, I had just forgotten it. But the anxiety remained.

In my new lucidity, I inspected my surroundings for possible origins. Perhaps something had just happened, and through my dense daydreams I had not reacted to it immediately. The woman was sitting by me and looking away, the bus was slowly progressing to its next stop, there was some quiet chatter behind me. Nothing to alarm me, not so excitingly. I looked at my tapping leg, and wondered what it was that made me do that.

Suddenly I imagined something all so vividly. Suppose the woman beside me should turn towards me, and ask my attention, and say:

‘Why is it, dear, that you are tapping your leg in that fashion?’

What would I say to her? There was no indication that she would do such a thing, naturally. She was looking away from me and she did not seem to notice my tapping at all. The rules of etiquette inclined her not to say anything even if she should notice and be bothered by it. Most people are not even confrontational enough to ask my attention, and especially not on the bus, where they or myself will be dismounting in not too long a moment, and the matter will be concluded most civilly. The only suggestion that the woman should ever do such a thing, was the clearest understanding that if she was blessed with any voice at all, she simply could.

For my mind, this was enough. That she could was substantial reason to start considering the possibility as valid, and start preparing some responses to her question.

And was the question not a valid one? Why was I tapping my leg in that fashion? I myself did not know, and could not immediately say. I certainly was tapping it, quickly and quietly, with little shivers and patters, but why? The answer was not at all that clear, and I became interested in finding it for my own sake.

Was I nervous?  Maybe I was, just a little now, since the daydreams stopped and I started considering things. But I’d been tapping so long then, even before that. And besides, the answer held within itself a new question. Why, should that be the justification, was it a valid one? Nervousness made people many things—but I was not nervous—no, that was no excuse. I scurried away from that line if reasoning, finding it too demanding for my thoughts at the time. I did not want to find a reason, not a real one anyway. I knew there wasn’t one, and if there was, it would not satisfy my worries and provoke their passing. No, I was not looking for answers, but just passing the time, and letting things fix themselves. I considered another possible answer, since that one only went so far, and fell flat on its face.

The answer had to be perfect. If it was not, I might be forced to give up tapping my leg around other people, or give it up altogether, even in solitude, just to stay safe from my own mind. And I could not give up tapping. I did it without thinking.

Yes, that might have been the answer. I was doing it without thinking. But what was I? A child, without control of my own actions? How do you do such a thing without thinking? There were plenty other people on the bus. There was the woman next to me, those whose backs I could see, sitting in front of me, and those that were chatting, who had stopped then. None of them were tapping, none of them were acting without thinking. And if it distinguished me from those around me, then surely it was my own intention that propelled my behaviour, and not my environment. This answer too failed then, I had required another. It was not perfect—it was not even sufficient.

Perhaps the tapping was performed without thinking, but rather than that being an excuse for my doing it, it was a call into action. Perhaps I had realised what I needed to realise to better myself, and perhaps now upon reflection I would be doing one less unnecessity, one less foolishness than I had before. Perhaps I ought to thank the woman for asking the question she never asked, and never would.

I stopped my tapping just then, and found it all too easy. It took some focus not to do it—I did it without thinking—but it was certainly possible to give it up entirely. And maybe that was the simplest way. Yes, it surely was. I found this resolution satisfactory, and concluded that if I never tapped, I would not require an explanation for it. This made me a little happy, and alleviated some of the worry I was experiencing.

With one worry less, I tried to invite my mind to think of other things. I looked around the bus. That lady’s coat is nice, it looks well on her, she wears it well. That poster is interesting, what does it say? and I tried reading the little print that was too far away. A new song started playing in my headphones, and I enjoyed listening to it.

But only so much peace was allowed before the worry resurfaced. Why was the coat nice? and the poster, why was it interesting? There had to be reasons. I needed the answers. The perfect answers. Nothing simply was, at least not in my eyes. If you asked around, some would say the poster was not interesting at all, or that they didn’t notice it at all. Plenty would have thought the coat looked quite poor, actually, and they didn’t like it. What were my reasons, then, for thinking different?

What if the woman next to me turned around and asked me? What if the lady in the nice coat walked up to me, staggering a bit from the bus’ motions, and asked me

‘And what is it you like about my coat?’

and I could not treat her to an answer? What if the chatterers behind me raised their voices, and what if the whole bus came down to me and asked, why I liked what I liked? What would I tell them?

But why should I tell them anything? I don’t owe any of them a thing, I don’t need to acquiesce to their demands. Fine then: what will I tell myself, when later I see another woman wearing the same nice coat, and don’t think it’s nice anymore? And when I see the poster, and don’t think it’s interesting, how will I explain that to myself?

I looked outside the window and saw my school’s sign, and pressed the button for a stop. I stopped tapping my leg again, and got up. I forgot what I had been thinking once my focus was shifted. I walked off the bus, and started daydreaming again.

13.X.21