The Pizza Noodle Bakery Restaurant Supply truck is blocking traffic again. All you can do is fold your hands in your lap. Unfold your hands. Fold your hands in your lap again.

When your mother said "I just want you to be happy," what she really meant was "Enlightenment is only achieved when you forget about success." On this bus, for example.

The little girl licks her lollipop, "I want to be a snowman."

The little girl licks her lollipop, "I want to be a cat."

There are some other things you can do. Staring at the back of the Pizza Noodle Bakery Restaurant Supply truck is one. The men unload the boxes, and flour trickles out, making thin white trails across the street.

When you are tired of watching the truck, take your book, phone, pens and receipts out of your bag, and line them up across your lap. Then put everything back in your bag. It means something to occupy your hands this way.

The little girl licks her lollipop, "I want to be an astronaut."

The little girl licks her lollipop, "I want to be a cat."

Her mother leans over and whispers something we can't hear. Either "I just want you to be happy," or "You can't be a cat."

Looking at our phones, we watch time pass in digital increments. At least we can be reassured that time runs its course through this bus and through all of us, the same way it runs through the rest of the world.

The thin man in the front seat has bone marrow cancer. Before spring comes next year, he will die.

We're not sure what meaning we can find here. We are delaying the conclusion to our search and we hold tight to this delay. Maybe death will bring us into another life, and maybe it will be a better life. Actual hope might be beyond us, but these images sometimes soothe us.

Your phone rings and its a friend who hopes that you won't answer, and so you don't answer. Instead you turn off your phone. It's exactly this kind of unfulfilled intimacy that keeps you alive.

The pregnant woman sitting next to you shifts in her seat. Her round belly is decorated by the sequins on her shirt. You don't move, keeping your arm pressed against her arm.

The bus driver, in his wisdom, keeps his hand off the horn. He tries not to think of the traffic because he is part of it. Instead, he thinks about his clogged kitchen sink. The problem is with the plumber, who is so friendly on the phone. But when he says he'll fix the sink he never comes.

The woman in the back, wrapped in two coats and three scarves, starts banging on the back bus door. Her pounding makes us realize we all want to get off the bus now, too. We shift in our seats, murmuring our collective discontent.

The thin man in the front seat turns and says to his friend, "You know that sharp pain I get? Sometimes I just put a pillow in my mouth."

The woman in the back screams "Let me off!" but the driver pretends not to hear. This bus can only stop at its predetermined stops. "For our own safety" its doors cannot be opened in the middle of the street.

The little girl jumps up and screams. Then she sits down quietly and licks her lollipop again.

Suddenly, as if compelled by the anxiety of our discomfort, the bus starts moving again. The Pizza Noodle Bakery Restaurant Supply truck is gone and it's as if it was never there at all.

I think that looking back, we'll find some value in this ride, because it shows us how we are, not just how we'd like to be.

I don't know about the rest of you, but there's still a little ways I need to go. I'll just sit here and look out the window for "Last Call Liquor Shoppe." That is the sign for the place where I get off.