Sunday MUNI

She leaned towards me. Face hovering in that safety zone empty seat separating us. The bus was still uncrowded, but at each stop more arrived and fewer departed.

Are you going to give that to him? I bet no one has ever done that for him before.

I don’t know.

I think he’d like it.

Yes perhaps he would. And if he did, would that somehow redeem me? My all day endeavor, riding bus after random bus, sketching strangers, peeling away layers of the soul, like skins of an onion, stealing that fragile privacy in public places, without asking permission or forgiveness, could be redeemed. This old man had been my favorite. Pinched lips, thick frames, hair wispy white like a snow blown hill, knuckles gnarled, labor swollen, some deep grease of some old time caked in the creases, ineradicable in his palms and beneath his nails. His eyes were keen, but distant and belied an uncommon energy or intensity dormant within his aging body. From his wrist and from his belt dangled clusters of keys like grapes on a vine. When he moved they jingled.

As the bus pulled to a stop and the doors hissed open, I stood as if to leave. In fact, I intended to leave, to give him the sketch and then exit. But I couldn’t, it seemed unfair. So I handed him the sketch. He was surprised. Simply.

I drew this sketch of you, I thought you might like to have it.

Oh. Is this me? Thank you.

I could not return to my seat, the bus was quite crowded now, so I stood nearby. A slow evolution began to take place, like a door opening and letting light in a dark room. This old man and I stood on either side, now seeing each other not as mere incidental passengers, but somehow united. He began to speak with surprising warmth and familiarity. Speaking of his father, asking my name, joking with me. He chuckled in a way that was fully present. Those around us also, the two women seated before me, and the man standing beside me, entered the dialogue, somehow affected by this uncommon gesture that I had made. I felt a glow about us and it seemed to occur to me, for the first time in my life, that art could really bring light into the world. It really could.