On Shared Experience

More than many things we are relational. We all must share our lives, to some degree, though I'm sure some feel that need more than others. It seems inescapable, however, that one of my motivations for blogging is the desire to share my experiences. I make this journey alone, and I'm fine with that. In fact, I quite enjoy it. But at times I want to share a glance, share a joke, an experiance. While I waited at the bus stop an old man cycled past on the other side of the road, straining with each peddle, all wrapped up against the biting December combination of damp and cold, and he reminded me very much of Fungus the Bogeyman. In fact he reminded me of Fungus the Bogey man more than anything has ever reminded me of Fungus the Bogeyman. If you have never read Fungus the Bogeyman you really should.

A lady sat down in front of me on the bus and talked to herself quietly until she reached her destination. If I had been sat with someone we would have exchanged looks, but the looks wouldn't have said anything in particular, except perhaps they would have shared an understanding of the fuzzy pathos of the moment. And I won't say anything else now because really, what can you say?

Across from her a couple who both bore a resemblance to Mick Jagger gave a running commentary on the journey. They talked about how expensive that flat might be, and how futile that mans attempt to run for the bus was, and how that lady is going to get herself killed if she keeps stepping out into the road like that.

Old Man Flags Down Bus

I recently bought a PDA, complete with scribbly note-taking software (as you may have guessed). Using this I faithfully recorded the posture of an old man flagging down the bus.

Time-Lapse

I pass at least a couple of building sites on the journey at the moment. Each time we drive past some small change has taken place, the buildings growing slowly up from the ground like, you know, things that grow...plants and things.

And it occurs to me that seeing a snapshot of the progress, as we chug past each day, is rather like watching one of those time-lapse videos, except, of course, that I have to wait a while between each frame.

There is something fascinating about the illusion of time-lapse photography. We see a process take place at a speed that matches the speed of our lives more closely, and it becomes a whole new process. I think that we're just not very good at understanding things that happen too quickly, or too slowly, in the same way that we struggle with thinking about things on the wrong scale, too massive, too tiny. The world that we know, it seems, is only a small subset of what is out there.