portrait: perugia bus ride

yesterday i was in the umbrian hill town of perugia to meet with a professor who is generously helping me as i investigate the process of translating short fiction from italian to english. so far it is uniquely satisfying, but oh my a lot of work.

i stand towards the front of the bus. i need to see what's going on, where we are. in the future i'd like to be able to recognize those landmarks, navigate on foot. i'd like to have no questions for the bus driver. i'd like to pretend i live here. i'd like to get to the point where all the beauty is old hat. it's awful: it's too easy to pretend i'm already there. even in italy, aesthetic experience asks for eyes up, ears open. there i am, turning over what i read in some book.

in the first seat, a few feet up and to my right, an unshaven man with dark eyes was slouched down in a washed out black sweatshirt. he looked around and i looked away. he was too lean, shifty. a few moments later, a young olive skinned woman in old sneakers came up to my elbow, holding a baby. a woman of her stature had approached me on the train 20 minutes before, asking for money. she had also been holding a baby. cheap, i thought.

but this woman was just waiting for an old man to get out of her way. the man in the sweatshirt was sitting with his eyes closed, his mouth just slightly open and breathing shallow. when she put her hand on his shoulder, he slowly raised his eyelids, then suddenly turned to give the fat baby a big toothy smile. it faded into a gaze of genuine...gratitude. then his eyes fell a bit and his mouth opened again, like something bitter might fall out. i looked for the first time at his right hand, which he was holding up along his jawline. it was bloated and swollen to twice its normal size.

there was a noise in the back of the bus. the man took only the slightest moment to gather his strength. a baby stroller had fallen down into the aisle. as he passed and moved decisively towards the back, i couldn't take my eyes off his hand, held up on a bent elbow against his chest. there was no protecting it from the maze of shoulders; it had to be broken, badly.

man. even in perugia, people are just trying to live. sometimes it is hard - to pack up the baby, come in from the outskirts of town, and take two buses up to the hospital. and the stroller won't stay put.