I’m on a bus to Riverdale.  The chapter I just read on Maitri, Loving Kindness, is still resonating through my being.  I’m paying attention.  There was an automated announcement over the loud speaker: “Customers, if you see something say something.”  Orwellian thought police is a step away, only a step.

There are advertisement slots that run from the back to the front of the bus; they’re above the seats behind the hand-hold bar.  Typically there is room for eight separate ads.  Today, all are filled with the face of a Latin-American teen girl and to her right in blaring yellow, the exclamation, “FREE Abortion Alternatives.”  The last add slot toward the back is empty with signs of rippage, clearly one of the same ads was there as well.

In another seat in front of me sat a Hispanic fellow who was reading a book.  He stepped off a number of stops ago.  The book was called El Effecto Mariposa, translated: The Butterfly Effect.  I don’t even know what it’s about, but I’ve heard of it.  It certainly doesn’t pertain to the typical, vogue topics of the day.  Here was a man asking questions.

I too am asking questions.  I’d just read a chapter of Pomo Chondron’s, When Things Fall Apart.  That’s what woke me up a bit from the stupor I’d been in all morning.  It’s not going to last though, I can feel the awareness fading already.

At least it was enough time to write down these words.  What are we doing?  Where is our “free” society turning?  Religious politics on advertisements in NYC?!  Then compounded with McCarthy type audio encouragement from a neutral female, digital voice.  What movie am I in?

Than, thank goodness, there are still those reading about the Butterfly Effect and Loving Kindness.  People know something is off; this blatant contrast between what is in our hearts and what our society is manifesting is scary.

One almost has to inundate themselves in their own world just to feel that it’s all OK.  I do it.  It’s what I wake up that things get frightening.  No camera could have caught that experience on the bus.  Maitri brought me to tears and then I woke up to see.  Then I wrote in down, if merely, to keep my sanity.