This weekend I spent a lot of time either on my bike cruising throughout the city or on the 54C bus line. The 54C is one of the few cross-town buses in Pittsburgh, and when school days roll around, you can guarantee that everyone who has to come through the Oakland neighborhood for any reason will be on it gliding off to Bloomfield or the North Side or Garfield. So in between cramming next to shrieking college girls taking digital photos of their bus trips to the South Side (this is not a joke, there were flashes popping all over the handicapped seats), bums heading to a better panhandling spot, and regular folks on their way home, I get a chance to see a lot of people I know every time I ride it. One never knows who they might encounter, and generally I have OK luck and don’t run into anyone who is looking to pop me in the nose or some other nefarious plot to befall my person.

But this weekend, I ran into an ex-girlfriend from years and years ago. We had a very brief, torrid courtship, and after a few years, we had resolved any differences we may have had, which weren’t many. I run into her now and again and she asks me how my music or writing or living situation is going and never fails to gush into a swirling rendition of all the wacky plans she might be attempting. These all generally involve “appropriation art” (whatever that is), moving to Chicago, veganism, chronicaling herself in various states of undress to post videos of said half-nudity on YouTube… and now I’m wondering why we ever went out in the first place, but that answer is neither here nor there for your prying eyes and I’ll continue to smirk away while typing, but let’s move on to the point at hand. None of her spiels are ever very illuminating or even based in general rational thought, and my comment in my Anthony Bourdain entry about people my age talking with their eyes closed and everything being such a production, but this last time was different and a little sad.

I never feel the need to go into my personal details in these conversations, and by that I mean giving an annotated run-down of everything going on in my life at that particular juncture, because honestly, she doesn’t care. In a lot of ways, I don’t care that much myself, and last Saturday I’d rather just relax and listen to her talk at length and watch as the trees gain their color back in the spring sun, which lit up the bus and lifted the temperature of the smudged windows to a rate that made them comforting to lean against. So I asked questions about the very things I described at the top, expecting to receive the litany I had come to take for granted, full of youthful idealistic passion, and whether or not she accomplished anything would be immaterial, but just expected.

But since graduating from college in the last few months, she had taken a square job Downtown that seemed miles away from anything she would ever do. I can’t fault anyone for that, as I have one myself, and one that enables me to at least attempt to pursue my other outside interests at that, whether that be blogging for you readers - whomever you are, or picking up records online or reading about interesting subjects and generally getting a lot of time to think about my life and its pros and cons and failures and successes. But I suppose the point I am really trying to make is that when I asked her about these dreams she had discussed for so long, she didn’t have anything to say anymore. Well, what about you moving to Chicago like you talked about? Oh, I can’t do that, that’s crazy, I need to stick it out with this job. Oh, how is your art going? Is that on the backburner? I’m never going to make a living as an artist, that’s crazy. The list went on and on and as the distance to her apartment dwindled away, I began to feel very badly not only for her, but for anyone whose dreams pull away from them. But I thought some more about it as I turned to the window and watched the trees and houses zip by, and I thought that if you have no entanglements in life and you let your dreams die, you’re full of shit and maybe you’ve always been full of it. Out of the millions of crazy dreams I have everyday, every single one is obtainable as long as I don’t go to jail (yikes), knock someone up (good luck), or get in a horrible accident (which reminds me, I need forty dollars to buy a new helmet or you could feel free to donate your old bike helmet, please). Money? I could care less about money. I have determined that I don’t need much to live as long as there is life pulsating out there that one can grab onto and meld with. Moving? What’s keeping me here? Nothing really, aside from a certain comfort level I enjoy. I could disappear tomorrow and few, most likely my sister and mother, would notice, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all. I’m not afraid of living out any of my moronic dreams, because while I may be in the rat race like everyone else and not doing exactly what I would like to be doing at this particular second*, there’s a whole life out there we haven’t lived yet just because of the risks involved in following what truly makes the heart beat and smile turn up and brain jump to light speed. And I don’t mean to wax poetically about dreams and goals and other hippie garbage for people that come here for Lord knows what reason, but I felt for her and I hope that never happens to me.

* What I would like to be doing at this particular second is: sitting on a wooden deck in a backyard with green grass and trees; playing Neil Young ballads on an acoustic guitar; wearing an open button-down shirt with no undershirt, jeans, and no shoes (my vacationwear); drinking a beer; flipping records on back and forth on the stereo behind me with a good book waiting in the wings. Maybe a dog will run by at certain points and I would scratch it behind the ears.

Another non-informative entry, but I’d rather be writing than not writing at all, so I’m afraid you’ll have to go find an exit link if you don’t care to ponder any further. Later days.