It doesn’t make me taller. I try anyway, standing with my straightest posture, arms folded. I’m staring into the distance, or at least the four blocks of it before the horizon is blocked by the highway. My bike was leaning against the sign with the bus route markings. Only one of its tires was keeping air. A nail hitched a ride on Exchange Street. My plan was to put the bike on the bus to get it home. I would worry about repairs there.

It’s not a tall hill, but it’s enough of a rise to show me the entire street. Then again, it’s just four blocks. The bus stop is on the edge of the courtyard of the church that the road is named for, and behind me the street splits into creatively named “North Division” and “South Division”. Cars zipping around each other. Buses turning, and then turning again. The traffic on the highway seemed slow and abundant. I watched buses with numbers I wasn’t seeking pass by. Nothing to do but wait.

I don’t have a lot of moments of the type of stillness that is existing in other people’s bustle. It can feel like a separateness, but it’s immersion in the way that standing in a creek is. Most moments of in-between involve pulling the computer out of my pocket to get something done, or to pursue connection. Most of my labors – paid or otherwise – are variation on a theme of writing to people. Let’s plan this meeting. Let’s discuss this program. The communication is about something else but the labor itself? I am a writer and my genre is email. Or Facebook posts. Discord chats? Definitely text messages. The connection we created through letters 150 years ago is now rapid-fire with social media. I am not always taking the moment to just be and watch.

Even the getting from place to place usually involves biking, walking, or driving. If my body isn’t fully engaged, my mind most certainly is. Transit is not often an exercise in stillness, taking in the world around me, nothing to do but to be. I was surprised how calming it felt to watch traffic.

I rarely take the bus in Buffalo. It’s a logistics thing: timing of getting the kids, and per-ride if you already have a car, it costs less to use that. I didn’t have a car in Seattle so bus stops were my frequent haunts. Staring into the distance in Seattle involved aiming my eyes at mountains or water. It was easy to feel small in the majesty of the area’s periphery. It was also possible to feel more important by proximity, by being able to be near such grandeur. I feel like it’s the way a servant of a king might feel fancier than a laborer in the field. (I think people who move to New York City experience something similar). The enhanced importance is an illusion; feelings aren’t always truths. That was a phase of life where I was trying to discern what to do next, where anything was a possibility. All futures could potentially belong to me.

Buffalo is flat. You often just see what is in front of you. Even going to the top of City Hall, Toronto is a blip faraway. If you want to appreciate something, you often need to get up close to it. It’s the depth, not breath, that brings richness. This is also a phase of life where I have given answers to the questions of what will I do with my one wild and precious life. It is more humble than “anything is possible”. Following a path forecloses other ones. You make yourself smaller with commitment but I think you make yourself deeper too. My life in Buffalo is the consequence of my actions. I am mostly happy about this.

Cars kept going by. I kept standing there.

When the bus showed up, I struggled to get the bike on the rack. Its panniers made it heavier than I was strong to lift it to the height. I was surprised – 20s something me never struggled with this. A complete stranger saw what was going on, and with the most inviting and friendly voice, “Could you use some help with that?”

“Yeah, actually I could.” I hope my gratitude was obvious beyond the politeness of “Thank you.” My effort to be more self-reliant but finding a way home without requiring my husband to finagle me into a schedule of getting the kids still included being part of the web of everyone else. The bus driver flags me as I get off the bus – he has equipment recommendations. Good ones, even. In my mind, I lament that I could have spent the ride in conversation with him, but it is what it is. I walk my bike home. The bus driver, the route, the traffic, the community – all of it – I am a piece of it, like everyone else.

Transit, people, community… wherever I am, and no matter what I’m doing, I am connected to it all. Unitarian Universalists call this the interdependent web of all existence. It took me a long time to realize that in bustle and in stillness, no matter what my address is, that interdependence is a place that I can claim as home.