287 hours

or

11 days and 23 hours.

or

16,653 km

This is the amount of time that my body spent on a bus in the past 101 days. Nine percent of my past three months I spent marinating in my own odour. It is unknown how much time my mind spent on the bus in the past 101 days. It wasn’t always there. My body withered away while in constant wait. Trail mix and apples will thin a man out when it is all he eats for nine percent of a quarter of a year.

During this time I thought about every possible thing there is to think about. I thought about thought and wondered about the juncture when thought becomes useless. I have always wanted to be thoughtful, but constant thought will only ever make a man more stubborn or more confused. I am the latter. Maybe both. Arriving/settling only accentuates the fact.

A lobotomy performed with a cheese grater. It is like I have nothing left to think about so I can simply glide through the days as if they require no thought. As if every human has a certain fixed quantity of thought time for their life and I spent all of mine on the bus. Or as if my mind can’t keep up to where it seems it should be. Either I’ve thought too much or I’ve thought too little. Which is worse is hard to tell.

But where the bus stole my brain, which includes my reasoning abilities, my decision making abilities, my planning abilities, it gave me a lack of expectation. To expect the bus to be on time is to expect the impossible. The trip made me believe greatly in the possible.

Although my mind feels sterile after two-hundred and eighty seven hours of dizzying thought, I am confident that with a fresh start in an old city I can once again find something to fill it with, be it old cynicisms, or be it something I haven’t found before.