I open my laptop and press the button down. As the black screen glows grey and the fan whistles I look outside.
Up: Blue sky, fluffy white clouds. The sun in my eyes makes me look Down: pavement, the bus driver is helping another passenger put their bike into the rack. It's like a silent movie. I look on for a moment trying to figure out what they're saying, what makes the girls eyes crease in small crow-foot-ed smiles.
Turning back to my screen I see the purple of the bootloader. Linux Mint 13 and Windows 7 stare back at me while the boot countdown ticks. Wiping the dust off my keys I hit enter.
"Could you please turn that down or off? It's a little disrespectful to everybody" an unpleasant self-righteous s feminine voice echos behind me. The white static din from someone's device continues on for a moment, I can imagine whoever the owner is silently cursing the woman. The noise gets lower, just a quiet tick and tack now. A few more comments from the woman, but her voice is lost in the roar of the bus engine as we begin to move again.
I'm lost in thought again: Why do some people try to speak on the behalf of others? An interesting debate begins in my head as I think about how the government is really elected officials responsible for speaking on the behalf of other people. That doesn't seem too wrong. So why do I have a issue with someone on the bus raising their voice and speaking for me?
Contemplative for a moment, I decide that it's because I was enjoying the white noise from those headphones. It sure beats the crippling silence of the hour bus ride to work -- or the cries of the voice's child asking questions in it's tight small voice.
Incident resolved, I look out the window again. A broad flat plain is sitting on the horizon. Cut off by a wall of green, gold, and red mountains, the stark contrast with it, the grass, and the heavy fog make a picturesque image.
If I could just snap a picture with my mind...
"Sit. Back..." I hear the abrupt voice snap into my world of thought. The childs response is muted and all I can make out is "don't do that". Great. Just what I want to hear as I try to concentrate on work before work. The bickering of a mother and a child who clearly hasn't been disciplined enough. Ironic, considering the mother's ability to whip the fellow passenger into place about their music.
I smile at the interesting point of view that an all-seeing third party would make of this. A man just wanting to listen to music and drown out the world. A woman scolding a child. A child's blissful ignorance of the world around it. And me. A bleary-eyed, disheveled, contemplative mess of a man.
What a world, huh?